Nap a day keeps the doctor away
A DAYTIME nap is as good as medicine at cutting blood pressure, researchers have found.
Doctors tracked 212 patients who had an average systolic blood pressure of 130 mm Hg – verging on unhealthy. They found snoozing for an hour at midday resulted in levels dropping by an average of five points – a similar effect to taking medication or cutting salt from your diet.
Dr Manolis Kallistratos, of the Asklepieion Voulas General Hospital in Athens, Greece, said the findings are important as a drop ‘as small as 2 mm Hg can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack by up to 10 per cent’.