To Nap or Not to Nap

About 16 years ago, Paula and I spent several weeks (spread out from March to October) helping our son Matthew build his boat-building shop. The daily routine went something like this: start early, break for lunch, take a 30- to 45-minute nap, then work the rest of the day. Matthew and Kerri live near Charleston, SC, where summer temperatures aren’t really conducive to construction work, so napping during the hottest part of the day made a lot of sense, but we also found we got a lot more accomplished every day.

I’ve used that approach off and on ever since. Recently, a couple studies were published that called into question whether naps were a good idea as they might be related to cardiovascular disease (CVD).

The research news caught my attention because the last time I read a research paper about sleep and napping showed that there was no relationship between napping and cardiovascular disease. In fact, the risk over five years of follow-up was a 42% decrease in CVD events when a person took a nap once or twice a week and no risk if a person napped every day (1).

In the most recent research, there was a relationship between napping and hypertension and napping and CVD in two separate studies with thousands of subjects (2, 3). Why? We’ll delve into why there were different results on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:
1. Heart. 2019;105:1793–1798.
2. J Am Heart Assoc. 2022;11:e025969. DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.122.025969.
3. Hypertension. 2022;79:00–00. DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.122.19120.