Every day afternoon nap? You may be at risk for stroke or high blood pressure

According to new research published Monday in Hypertension, a journal of theAmerican Heart AssociationDo a nap regularly is associated with increased risks of hypertension and stroke.

I study

Chinese researchers working on the study used information from the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database it contains genetic information, on the lifestyle and health of half a million participants in the UK. E Wang’s group, professor and chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at the Xiangya Hospital Central South Universityexcluded from the analysis the people who they had already had a stroke (what it is and how it manifests itself HERE
) or they had high blood pressure (read the factsheet on hypertension, HERE
) before the start of the study. 358,451 people remained with the data collected for about 11 years. Participants were divided into groups based on frequency of naps: “Never / rarely”, “sometimes” or “usually”.

The results

Compared to people who reported never taking a nap, siesta aficionados had 12% more likely to develop later high pressure And 24% more probability of having a stroke. Participants younger than 60 who usually napped had a 20% higher risk of developing high blood pressure than peers who did not sleep in the afternoon. After age 60, habitual napping was associated with a 10% higher risk of hypertension. If the frequency of naps increased (from “never” to “sometimes” or “usually”) the risk of hypertension increased by 40%.

The reasons

Being a correlational study, the figures do not necessarily imply a cause-and-effect relationship and therefore that the “blame” for the health problems lies with the naps themselves. The fatigue that causes some people to fall asleep during the day could be due to a insufficient sleep at night. In turn, poor sleep at night is associated with poorer health, and afternoon naps do not compensate for a night’s rest. This may explain why taking more naps seems to reflect an increased risk of health problems heart. In fact, most of the nap aficionados were males, smoked, drank daily, and reported both insomnia and snoring episodes. A higher frequency of naps was also positively associated with genetic predisposition to hypertension. Rather than being the cause of each other, naps and hypertension could be both symptoms.

Napping is also good for you

Both conditions implicated in the study are serious: hypertension, diagnosed through the persistent high blood pressureis a leading cause of early death andstroke it can cause severe long-term disability and death. Studies on the nap itself and its benefits on health, however, they also say that it can be good under certain conditions: we have talked about it HERE
.