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According to a study published in the journal Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association (AHA), the official open-access scientific journal, people who take frequent naps during the day are more likely to suffer from hypertension and have a stroke. The research was conducted by a group of Chinese researchers led by scientists from the National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders at Xiangya Hospital Central South University, who collaborated closely with colleagues from the Department of Anesthesiology of Central South University in Changsha and the Center for Medical Genetics – Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics. The study, coordinated by E. Wang, professor and president of the Department of Anesthesiology of the Chinese university, was conducted on the data of 500,000 people aged between 40 and 69 years. The data was provided by the UK Biobank, a biomedical database containing genetic and health information of half a million participants in the United Kingdom, which collected information between 2006 and 2010. Of these, the data of 358,451 participants were examined and used. free from hypertension or stroke.
The study in detail
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Although taking a small afternoon rest is not in itself considered a dangerous activity, the aim of the study was to highlight that poor night sleep potentially increases the risk factor for hypertension and stroke. “This may be due to the fact that while napping itself is not harmful, many people who take naps could do so because of bad night sleep. A bad night’s sleep is associated with poorer health, and naps are not enough to compensate for it, “said Michael Grandner, former director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona. The people involved in the study had provided regular blood, urine, and saliva samples throughout the study, with the survey on the frequency of daytime naps taking place four times over the four years. However, the study only collected the frequency of the nap, not the duration. based on self-reports from participants.
What the data say
After comparing the data, cross-referencing the observational analysis of participants for the first time, Mendelian Randomization (RM), a method that uses measured variation in genes to interrogate the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome, the study found that a percentage of the participants had low education and income levels, had a habit of smoking cigarettes, snoring, drinking regularly, and suffering from insomnia. The research team found that people who usually napped were 12% more likely to develop hypertension, and 24% more likely to have a stroke than those who did not rest during the day. In addition, the study found that participants under 60 – who used to take naps – had a 20% higher risk of developing high blood pressure than people of the same age who never took a nap. This risk, however, dropped to 10% for people over 60 years of age. Despite this, more in-depth studies will be needed to determine the true impact of napping on the development of hypertension and stroke. “I believe napping is a warning sign of an underlying sleep disorder in some individuals. Sleep disturbances are linked to increased stress and weight-regulating hormones that can lead to obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, all risk factors for heart disease, ”Dr. Raj recalled. Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.