The Health Benefits of the Midday Nap

If you've ever been to a Mediterranean or Latin American country you may have noticed how common it is for people to take naps in the middle of the day. This might have seemed like a nice luxury, but actually, research is showing that midday naps can be very beneficial to your health - both mental and physical.

A study by Harvard University researchers in 2002 showed that naps in the middle of the day can help people learn - and retain what they've learned - better. It's common for people who are in training to eventually get to a point where they don't seem to be doing as well as they were earlier. This "training fatigue" usually happens in the afternoon - unless they've had a nap.

In the 2002 study a half-hour midday nap stopped "training fatigue." An longer nap - of about an hour - seemed to even reverse the fatigue, so that the subjects did just as well in the afternoon sessions as they had in the morning.

The theory behind this benefit to learning is that nightly sleep sessions help our brains absorb what we've learned during the day. Longer naps, which have been discovered to contain much more deep and REM sleep than shorter ones, help get the information into the brain that much faster.

So it seems that midday naps can do a lot for the learning process. But a more recent study shows that they can also be really good for your heart.

In the most recently published study, a joint effort by Harvard University and the University of Athens Medical School, 23,000 healthy men and women between the ages of 20 and 86 were followed for six years. All the study participants were from Greece, where it's common for people to work close to where they live and go home for lunch. Lunches typically include both a large meal and a nap, after which the person returns to work.

In the Greek study, the participants who took regular naps - 30 minutes or longer at least three times a week - had a 37% less risk of dying from heart disease. Those who took shorter or less regular naps - maybe once or twice a week - lowered their risk of heart disease by 12%. The 37% reduction is significant because it compares to the benefits of reducing one's cholesterol, eating a healthier diet, and exercising more - all of which have been promoted for years as good ways to keep your heart healthy.

Most of the study results did focus on men, both working and non-working (the working men had a much greater benefit). But these results weren't skewed deliberately; it was just that the death rate among the women in the study was so low that the statistics weren't useful.

You can probably guess the main reason naps might keep your heart healthier - stress reduction. But stress can have an indirect effect on health, too. For example, it can lead to unhealthy behavior like smoking and drinking too much.

The researchers did stress that napping doesn't eliminate the need for regular exercise. Both are important for heart - and overall - health. And both have another benefit - they don't cost anything (except time) and they have no side effects.

In our research-driven medical culture this one study, even as large as it was, isn't enough for physicians to recommend that employers start allowing - or even encouraging - midday naps. So you probably won't see this benefit at your workplace anytime soon.

But if your work environment is more flexible - for example, if you're self-employed - a lunchtime nap may be a good idea. It'll help you face the afternoon more refreshed mentally, and you'll be doing a very good thing for your heart as well.