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Napping addicts are said to be 12% more likely to develop high blood pressure and 24% more likely to suffer a stroke than short sleepers.
Sleeping properly and in sufficient quantity is essential to preserve our health. But sleeping “too much” is not without consequences: frequent naps could indicate an underlying heart problem. At least that’s what a study published in the medical journal Hypertension.
360,000 “sleepers” took part in the study
To try to determine whether frequent naps were associated with a risk of high blood pressure and/or ischemic stroke, Chinese researchers analyzed data from more than 360,000 participants, aged 40 to 69.
Between 2006 and 2010, volunteers had to regularly send blood, urine and saliva samples to the bank.
They were then divided into different groups, depending on the frequency of their naps: “never/rarely”, “sometimes” or “usually”. These short periods of sleep were then examined four times in a row – from 2006 to 2019.
However, only the frequency of daytime naps was analyzed, not their duration. Researchers therefore don’t know how nap duration may affect blood pressure or stroke risk.
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Naps are the body’s “alarm signal”
At the end of the follow-up, the scientists found that people who usually took a nap had a 12% higher chance of developing high blood pressure and a 24% higher chance of having a stroke.
People under the age of 60 who enjoyed taking naps also had a 20% higher risk of developing high blood pressure compared to people of the same age – who never took a nap.
On the side of the elderly, the difference was smaller: after 60 years, naps were “only” associated with a 10% higher risk of high blood pressure.
“Naping is not harmful in itself, but many people take it because their quality of sleep is insufficient. Poor quality of sleep is linked to poorer health and naps are not sufficient in this case”, says Michael Gandner, author of the new “Life’s Essential of the American Heart Association 8”.
For the authors of the study, the results are therefore quite clear: taking too many naps can reveal the presence of major health problems, particularly heart problems.
In fact, most of the participants who took regular naps during the study smoked, drank alcohol daily, or had insomnia, the researchers report.