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Naps help prevent heart-related deaths

A study conducted in Greece, having more than 23,000 Greek adults as subjects, demonstrates that afternoon naps helps prevent heart-related deaths.

According to the study, the results of which are published in the February 12, 2007 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, there’s evidence to suggest that in countries where siestas are common, the rate of death from heart disease tend to be lower.

Only a few studies have assessed the potential relationship between heart-related deaths and naps, or, for that matter, sleep. Those studies also were not controlled for other factors that may influence heart disease risk, such as physical activity and age, according to background information in the article. In plain language, the researchers involved didn’t screen the participants for variables that could have an impact on the outcome when it came to those crucial factors.

Between 1994 and 1999, Androniki Naska, Ph.D., University of Athens Medical School, Greece, along with his colleagues, studied 23,681 Greek men and women between the ages of 20 to 86.

Getting the information upfront

To be involved in Naska’s study, the participants could not have a history of heart disease or any other severe condition when they enrolled in the study.

One of the first phases of the study involved asking the participants if they took midday naps.

That’s something I remember reading about in junior high school. It fascinated me why other some other countries had this custom of taking a nap in the middle of the day, but here, in the U.S., it’s hustle-bustle. “Hurry up! Get over here!” It seems we, as Americans, have always had to live life in the fast lane, which science repeatedly demonstrates is not always wise, at least from the health perspective.

When the study participants were talking about their napping habits, they were quizzed about the frequency and the length of naps. Personally, I prefer a daily nap, either 45 minutes or 90 minutes long. A sleep cycle goes in 45 minute cycles, so instead of trying to wake me (read that as: bombs won’t wake me when you catch me in the wrong place in my sleep cycle) at the wrong time, I simply set my alarm for the right time frame and life is good.

Next up for the study’s participants: discussion about their level of physical activity and dietary habits for the year prior to becoming involved in the study. That’s to get a good baseline about each participant, knowing if they were regular visitors to the gym, folks who did some jogging and biking, or others who were sedentary, using the daily routine of walking the dog and taking out the trash as exercise.

Over an average of 6.32 years of follow-up, 792 participants died, including 133 who died from heart disease, the study’s authors report.

Do you like naps?

Now comes the interesting part.

After the researchers factored in other cardiovascular risk factors, individuals who took naps of any frequency and duration — folks who napped at all — showed a 34 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who did not take midday naps.

Those folks, much like me, who are classified as “systematic nappers” — people who nap for 30 minutes or more at least three times per week — had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-related death. Wow! Now that’s the stuff of which dreams are made! No pun intended, but give me a pillow and I don’t care either way.

Among working men in the study, the authors found that those who took midday naps — either occasionally or systematically — had a 64 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the study than those who did not nap.

The odds were almost slashed in half for non-working men who napped. They had only a 36 percent reduction in risk, but that’s still better than those who didn’t nap.

What about the women? 

Since women were involved in the study, the numbers should be somewhat similar, right? Well, not necessarily.

The authors say they couldn’t really do any analysis on women in this time. They explained the problem:

“We were unable to undertake a similar analysis among women because there were only six deaths among working women,” the authors write.

Does that mean working women fare better than working men? Did those women take more naps than men? Did the women have jobs that allowed them to sleep at will? There’s no answer to that, at all. That will have to be answered in another study, sadly.

 Shakedown time for HR and boss-types

Maybe it’s time that human resources departments, supervisors, and well, even companies, as a whole, take a whole new look at the work day.

The authors summarized their findings, saying,

“We interpret our findings as indicating that among healthy adults, siesta, possibly on account of stress-releasing consequences, may reduce coronary mortality,” they said. The fact that the association was stronger in working men, who likely face job-related stress, than non-working men is compatible with this hypothesis, they write.

“This is an important finding because the siesta habit is common in many parts of the world, including the Mediterranean region and Central America,” the authors conclude.

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Daylight saving time begins earlier starting this year

When the U.S. Congress decided to change the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) in August 2005, that brought a lot of headaches to the world, including for computer manufacturers. No, Microsoft isn’t alone in issuing patches to change the date. There’s discussion about a fix for the Mac OS X (Tiger), and finally, discussion on Oracle’s site about the issue for the various ‘Nix flavors.

The biggest headache, though, will be for some unlucky people who have calendars, or, worse yet, bought calendars that were printed in bulk two or three years ago, shipped to a warehouse, and then distributed last year. Yes, there are some people who have calendars that show the old date for daylight saving time to begin. The real date this year for moving clocks ahead one hour ahead is March 11.

How the new daylight saving time changes came to be

That change, part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, was signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005, and causes Daylight Savings Time to begin three weeks earlier than before. It now begins on the second Sunday in March.

Be happy that a modified version of DST was approved. Under the original version of the bill, two full months would have been added to the DST scheme. One month would have been added on the Spring side of the change, and the other, obviously, on the Fall side of the calendar.

Some U.S. senators argued that farmers complained about the two month extension of DST, saying that drastic of a change could possibly affect livestock in negative ways. Farmers weren’t alone in the complaint department. Airline officials argued that scheduling international flights could also become a nightmare.

To deal with many issues and arguments presented, lawmakers hammered out an agreement that DST would start on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November of each year.

Now that you understand all of that, here’s the tricky part. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 does not alter the rights of states or territories to opt to not observe DST. That means a state in the “DST zone” may not actually change its time.

Two books on the subject that you may be interested in reading are:

• Seize the Daylight
• Spring Forward

History of Daylight Saving Time

For those not up on history, it was Ben Franklin, back in 1784, who first conceived the idea of changing the time on clocks

At the time, Franklin was an American delegate to France, and had just witnesses a demonstration of the then newly-invented oil lamp. After giving due consideration to the lamp, he conceived a way to help people the oil they would use oil lamps and candles.

Since Franklin lived in a world before computers, PDAs, and typewriters, all his notes were penned using a quill, parchment, bottled ink, sand, and a blotting cloth. He penned his now famous essay, Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle. It was subsequently published in the Journal de Paris, where it was published on April 26, 1784

Debate over his essay — then and now — have opponents on both sides of the fence. Some argue he wrote the essay as a joke, yet others argue he conceived a way for workers to have more light, warm, and productive hours. On the flip side, as AroundCentralFlorida.com notes, Parisians did not warm up to the idea, since they enjoyed sleeping until noon.

The British, in 1916, viewed the economical benefits of having longer days, so, in April of that year hey moved their clocks forward in April, recognizing the start of summer on the third Saturday of April. Could it have been a miser-like approach, perhaps an idea borrowed from the “Ebenezer Scrooge handbook on getting the most from each pence”? The energy saving benefits were later recognized during World War II, when British clocks were set two hours ahead.

Tips to ready your sleep-cycle for daylight saving time

One problem that crops up each year is people have trouble adjusting their sleep habits when the clocks are psuhed an hour ahead. Why shouldn’t your body have issues? Actually, it’s something called the circadian cycle that has control of our sleep habits.

To help you prepare your sleep-cycle, as well as those of children, check out Awake In America’s site for tips about readying your circadian rhythms for Daylight Saving Time.

An appropriate ending for this entry from good ol’ Ben Franklin seems to be:

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.

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A study just published says 18 percent of men, aged 20 and up, suffer from erectile dysfunction. That’s right, it’s impotency but branded with a new name.

Yes, it’s a sad thing, I’m sure, to be in that situation. I’ve never had that problem, thankfully. I’m one who’s always been on the far opposite end of the spectrum in that regard, which isn’t always a good thing, either.
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