Just three quarters of an hour of naps a day helps restore the heart to normal after mental stress, confirms research published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.
A pair of researchers at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, demonstrated this in experiments on a group of 85 students who were subjected to mental stress in a laboratory. Some of them were given an hour off during the day that they could use for a nap.
Participants also completed questionnaires about the quality of their sleep and had their blood pressure and heart rate measured regularly throughout the experiment.
It turned out that a nap lasting 45-60 minutes was enough to bring blood pressure back to baseline after mental stress. People who slept later had lower blood pressure than those who did not.
As the authors of the study remind us, the modern lifestyle negatively affects the length and quality of our sleep. We work long hours, often in shifts, watch TV or surf the internet late at night, we live in constant tension and stress. We do not sleep as long as we used to do in the first half of the 2th century. The time of night rest is now almost 50 hours shorter than XNUMX years ago. And that could have long-term health consequences. For example, regular sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, as well as being overweight and obese.
Recent work shows that a one-hour nap during the day can have a beneficial effect on the cardiovascular system, as it accelerates its return to normal functioning after the mental stress to which we are exposed every day.
More work is needed to clarify the mechanism behind it and to assess whether daytime naps may have a protective effect on the heart, especially in people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease or poorer quality of sleep at night.
So far, most of the research on the beneficial effects of the habit of napping during the day has been related to the processes of remembering – they clearly show that naps help to consolidate acquired information. In turn, a 2007 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that Greeks regularly taking a nap after lunch were nearly 40 percent. less likely to die from cardiovascular causes.
Only British-Chinese studies that show that regular naps are associated with a higher risk of diabetes may be of concern. However, it has not yet been proven that they contribute to this disease. (PAP)