A 45-minute catnap helps lower blood pressure, American researchers reported last week. They said a daytime snooze could improve heart health, particularly if you’re not getting as much sleep as you should at night. This follows a recent six-year Greek study which found that people who took a 30-minute siesta at least three times a week appeared to have a 37 per cent lower risk of heart-related death.
The theory is that napping, by encouraging you to relax, reduces blood pressure. It can also help your brain. A study by the University of California found that after a 90-minute daytime sleep, volunteers performed better in complicated written tests than those who were kept awake. The study leader, Dr Matthew Walker, says napping works over and beyond helping you catch up on lost sleep: ‘At a neuro-cognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap.’
This has been backed up by research on pilots which shows that a 26-minute in-flight nap (during which the plane is manned by a co-pilot) enhances performance by 34 per cent and overall alertness by 54 per cent.
The researchers suggest the brain uses this snatched extra sleep to help it process short-term memories (effectively moving them into a longer-term storage area in the brain), creating ‘space’ for new facts to be learned. But it’s not just enough to put your head down. Here, we show you the right way to nap.
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