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Taking a daytime cat nap for up to an hour may be good for your heart and its reaction to psychological stress, new findings suggest.Sleeping during the day seems to help the heart repair itself after a stressful event, according to a study by researchers at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
The authors say that participants who took a stress test and then slept at least 45 minutes had lower blood pressure on average than those who didn't sleep at all after the exercise.
"Daytime sleep may offer cardiovascular benefit by accelerating cardiovascular recovery following mental stressors," the researchers wrote in the paper, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.
Co-authors Ryan Brindle and Sarah Conklin looked at 85 healthy college students, dividing them into two groups. One was given the chance to nap for up to an hour after taking a mental stress test in the lab; the other wasn't.
Participants also had to fill out surveys asking about the quality of their sleep and do a cardiovascular reactivity test, which asked them to complete a difficult mental math problem, according to a summary of the findings.
The students' pulse rates and blood pressure were taken regularly throughout the exercise.
The authors found that daytime naps seemed to rejuvenate the students who were able to sleep, with those subjects reporting lower levels of sleepiness than the group that stayed awake. And while the blood pressure and pulses of both groups increased after the stress test, the nappers had much lower blood pressure readings on average than those who didn't sleep.
Brindle and Conklin say more work needs to be done to pinpoint the link between daytime naps and cardiovascular health and examine why a short daytime sleep may help the heart recover from stress.
Previous research has uncovered a link between lack of sleep and obesity, depression, cardiovascular problems and hypertension.
