Take a Nap: Prevent Heart Disease and Do Better on School Tests

by Heidi Stevenson

11 March 2010

The quickest and easiest way to improve heart health and get smarter doesn't cost a penny. Just take naps. Recent studies document that sleeping during the day improves learning retention as much as 10% and reduces men's mortality from heart disease.

Heart Benefit

Men's reduction of death from heart disease was particularly striking. Men who napped occasionally reduced their risk of death by 12% and those who napped daily reduced the death rate by a whopping 37%—a figure that no drug can approach, even with the tortured statistics of Big Pharma studies.

The Archives of Internal Medicine reported on a study that followed 23,681 Greek citizens to see what effects napping would have on health. None of them had any indication of cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the study. They were followed for an average of 6.32 years. They found that occasional nappers, those who take naps shorter than 30 minutes and do so irregularly, had a 12% lower mortality rate from coronary disease. Systematic nappers, those who nap a minimum of three times a week for at least 30 minutes, had a death rate from coronary disease 37% lower than non-nappers.

One of the study's authors, Dr. Antonia Trickopoulou, commented, "Afternoon siesta in a healthy individual may act as a stress-reducing habit, and there is considerable evidence that stress has both short- and-long-term adverse effects on the incidence and mortality from CHD."

A spokesperson for the American Heart Association, Dr. Gerald Fletcher, said, "The siesta may be a stress-reducing habit that allows people to slow-down."

Brain Benefit

As reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a study done at the University of California, Berkeley, gave 39 healthy adults a task in the morning: to learn 100 faces and names by noon. They were tested immediately. 20 of the subjects took a 90 minute nap. Then, in the evening, they were all given another set of 100 faces and names to learn.

After the naps, the nappers were able to recall 10% more after sleeping, and the non-nappers had lost 10% of their learning. The net difference between the two groups was 20% better recall in nappers than non-nappers.

One of the researchers, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, said, "It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder."

At the AAAS meeting, Sara Mednick, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, further discussed napping benefits in terms of how long a nap is needed to improve different functions. She said that a short 20 minute "power nap" is adequate to boost motor memory. The ability to recall, such as memorizing a list, seems to require a 60 minute nap. It takes a nap of 60-90 minutes to help visual, perceptive, and creative learning.

Prescription

Imagine going to your doctor, complaining of poor memory and worried that your endurance has dropped. Instead of telling you to take a drug, your doctor writes a note on the prescription pad:

[Your name here] must take a 30 minute break in the afternoon in a quiet room to sleep.

It would do you far more good than a handful of pills—and none of the harm. Your work would likely improve, and you'd probably live longer. Don't hold your breath, though. The nap-heart study was reported three years ago, and so far we aren't seeing prescriptions for naps. Instead, we're seeing more and more statins prescribed. They're even being pushed on the healthy as a preventive measure—in spite of the fact that no statin study has shown anywhere near the benefit of regular napping.

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