Sam Rolley | Sep 03, 2012 | Comments 0
Take a health tip from John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison: Enjoy an afternoon nap. All of these men believed a daytime nap was a perfect way to re-energize and spark creativity.
What they didn’t know is that those naps also benefit the cardiovascular system. Research now indicates that a daytime nap may help your heart repair itself from the strain of daily stress.
The study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, shows that sleeping 45 minutes to one hour during the day lowers blood pressure and can reinvigorate your day.
From the study: “Our findings suggest that daytime sleep may offer cardiovascular benefit by accelerating cardiovascular recovery following mental stressors. Further research is needed to explore the mechanism by which daytime sleep is linked with cardiovascular health and to evaluate daytime sleep as a recuperative and protective practice, especially for individuals with known cardiovascular disease risk and those with suboptimal sleep quality.”
If the short-term benefits are not enough to encourage you to catch some shut-eye, the long-term health benefits may. Because busy and technologically dense modern life has shortened our average night’s sleep by about two hours over the past 50 years, we are all at an increased risk of hypertension and cardiovascular problems linked to lifestyles with too little slumber.
http://easyhealthoptions.com/sleep/great-minds-healthy-hearts-take-naps/
