In a recent report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the Greek European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study report that men who took regular naps had significantly fewer heart attacks than those who did not.
This association was found by examining information from over 23,000 participants in EPIC. However, the association between napping and a lower risk was found only in working men, and not in non-working men - and also, not in women.
DrRich comments:
This article generated widespread media commentary, which leads one to wonder how long it will be before legislation is introduced to mandate nap time in the workplace. I hope not, as napping makes me irritable for the rest of the day. As did this report.
It is always worth reminding ourselves that an association does not indicate cause and effect. It is certainly true that, just the popular media now claims, naps might help relieve stress, and in this manner may reduce cardiac risk. On the other hand, it seems to me equally likely that those who nap in the middle of the day (when, apparently, they should be working) are most likely not your typical, driven, stressed-out Type A personalities. So the association discovered in this study might simply indicate instead that regular nappers have inherently low stress levels (which may be why they feel no compunction against napping during the work day in the first place).
One would need to do a randomized controlled trial to prove that napping itself reduces risk (assuming that real, honest-to-goodness American type A's would ever agree to participate in a study in which they would have a 50-50 chance of having to fritter away valuable work time snoozing). Indeed, I humbly suggest, such a trial should be required before well-meaning advocacy groups begin lobbying for nappy time at work.
Sources:
Naska A, Oikonomou E, Trichopoulou A, et al. Siesta in healthy adults and coronary mortality in the general population. Arch Intern Med 2007; 167:296-301.
