Daytime nap could help control blood pressure
02 Mar 2011
An hour of sleep during daytime could help control blood pressure level following mental strain, according to researchers.
In a study conducted by Ryan Brindle and Sarah Conklin from the Allegheny College, US, the researchers found that participants who slept 45 minutes during daytime had lower average blood pressure level after stress as compared to those who did not sleep during daytime.
The researchers formed two groups from 85 healthy university students - one group was allotted a 60-minute interval during the day when they could sleep while the other group did not sleep during the day.
The students were also asked to answer questionnaires assessing sleep quality and undertake a cardiovascular reactivity task, involving a complex mental subtracting exercise.
The researchers measured the students' blood pressure and pulse rates at regular intervals throughout the experiment.
They found that daytime sleep had a restorative effect with students who slept during the day reporting lower scores of sleepiness than others.
Although in both groups blood pressure and pulse rates rose between baseline and the stress phase, in the recovery phase, students who had slept showed significantly lower average blood pressure readings than others in the study.