Get snoozing!
Two naps a week is officially good for you.
A new study suggests getting forty winks during the day can half your chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
Researchers at the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland tested 3,400 people aged 35 to 75 for an average of five years. They looked at the relationships between napping and the risk of heart attack or stroke and found that snoozing once or twice a week meant a 48% decrease in risk compared to those who didn't.
They put it down to the fact tthat a lack of sleep raises the risks of atherosclerosis - a cause of cardiovascular disease events. The researchers in Switzerland also discovered that napping more than twice a week didn't give people any further health benefits.
Over the five-year study, there were 155 heart attacks or strokes and Dr Nadine Hausler was the study author and told Pretty52 that the team considered some outside factors:
"This association held true after taking account of potentially influential factors, such as age, and night-time sleep duration, as well as other cardiovascular disease risks, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol"
"And it didn't change after factoring in excessive daytime sleepiness, depression, and regularly sleeping for at least six hours a night."
