There are three categories of people. Morning people, night people and ‘taking a nap in the afternoon people.’ While many would call these afternoon nappers’ as lazy, this study will shut them up.
According to a study, people who manage to take a nap in the afternoon are almost 50 per cent less risk of suffering a heart attack as compared to the ones who don’t.
The researchers from the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland monitored 3,400 people for an average of five years. They were aged between 35 and 75.
But during the study, there were 155 heart attacks or strokes amongst these people and the ones who napped had almost half the risk of these attacks as opposed to the ones who didn’t.
Study’s lead author added,
This association held true after taking account of potentially influential factors, such as age, and night-time sleep duration, as well as other cardiovascular disease risks, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol. And it didn’t change after factoring in excessive daytime sleepiness, depression, and regularly sleeping for at least six hours a night.
Another professor added that the afternoon nappers are generally healthier,
Those who nap one to two times per week have healthier lifestyles or organised lives that allow them to have these naps, whereas those who nap nearly every day are likely to be more sick. This means the former pattern of occasional napping is intentional and the latter of more regular napping likely represents sub-clinical illness linked to poorer lifestyle. This would then explain the differential risks.
It’s not like the study is asking us to take a nap every day, but we won’t mind our bosses having a nap room in the office.
