Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A nap is good for you but don’t do it often...
My husband has taken an afternoon nap ever since I’ve known him. He may be unusual here in the UK by having a post-lunch doze, but he wouldn’t be across Europe where the “siesta” is well accepted as a way to make your afternoon more productive.
The afternoon nap is good for your health too – especially your heart – as long as it’s not too often.
Having an afternoon nap once or twice a week halves the chance of suffering a heart attack, stroke or heart failure and it doesn’t seem to matter how long the nap is, say researchers from Lausanne in Switzerland.
Plus, the link between heart health and naps holds true after other factors like age, blood pressure and cholesterol readings are taken into account.
Surprisingly, napping more than twice a week has no benefit and people who take a siesta three or more times a week tend to be generally less well.
The researchers suggest a twiceweekly siesta lowers stress levels because you catch up with physical rest. But people who nap more often than that may have health problems.
Heart and circulatory diseases cause more than a quarter of all deaths in Britain and somebody is admitted to hospital with a heart attack every five minutes. Nearly one million people are living with heart failure. Strokes cause more than 36,000 deaths every year and are the most common cause of severe disability.
The research studied 3,500 people without heart disease aged between 35 and 75 living in Lausanne, recruited between 2003 and 2006. Information on their sleep and napping patterns was collected and their health monitored for an average of five years.
There were 155 fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease “events”, including heart attacks and strokes.
Those who nap most frequently – between three and seven siestas a week – tend to be older and male. They’re also more likely to smoke, weigh more, and sleep longer at night.
They report more daytime sleepiness and more severe obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition in which the throat relaxes during sleep, interrupting normal breathing.
Experts Yue Leng and Kristine Yaffe, of California University feel it is “premature to conclude on the appropriateness of napping for maintaining optimal heart health”.
But they added that we should be studying napping more closely with a view to using it as a tool to promote health, especially in the millions of people with heart problems.