| Sports |
By LOUISE
DALY
Siesta touted as defence against heart disease: Study
CHICAGO: Forget oatmeal and sweaty
work-outs, if it’s heart disease you’re worried about, the best
insurance policy might be a regular afternoon nap, a study
released on Monday said.
That’s because a little shut-eye in the middle of the day can
dramatically reduce the risk of death from heart-disease,
presumably because of its stress-busting effect, the authors of
the study said.
In fact, in a long-term study of Greek men and women, the ones who
took at least three 30-minute siestas every week had a 37% lower
risk of heart-disease related death than those who skipped an
afternoon snooze.
Among working men, the benefits of the power nap were even more
striking: the men who made time for some daily downtime, either
occasionally or systematically, had a 64% lower risk of death from
heart disease than their more hard-charging compatriots.
The researchers were unable to assess the impact of the siesta on
working women because of insufficient data, according to the paper
in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
“We interpret our findings as indicating that among healthy
adults, siesta, possibly on account of stress-releasing
consequences, may reduce coronary mortality,” the authors said.
The findings are culled from a six-year study of more than 23,000
Greek men and women between the ages of 20 and 86.
Volunteers were enrolled in 1994 and followed for more than six
years, through 1999. At the end of that period, 792 participants
had died, 133 of them from heart disease.
Researchers from the University of Athens Medical School in Greece
and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, hope
that the results of the study will settle a question that has
vexed investigators for some time: namely, whether the lower rates
of coronary heart-disease seen in Mediterranean and Latin American
countries are related to the natives’ habit of taking an afternoon
siesta.
Several studies have explored the connection, but the results have
been conflicting.
With this study, the researchers were careful to enrol only
healthy volunteers and to take account of other risk factors, such
as diet and physical activity, providing for a more robust
analysis.
In Spain and Mexico, the cultural institution of the daily siesta
has come under attack in recent years, with critics arguing that
the midday work stoppage puts businesses at a competitive
disadvantage in today’s global economy.
But the authors of this study suggest that what may be bad for the
bottom line may be extremely good for the health of employees.
“The public health message is clear – if you can take a midday
nap, do so,” Dimitrios Trichopoulos, professor of epidemiology at
Harvard School of Public Health, said.
Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide,
with the highest rates of the disease seen in developing
countries, according to the World Health Organisation. – AFP
 
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