Naps are not just for kids. On a typical day, about one-third of adults manage to take a nap. From allowing you to feel physically refreshed to helping you stay cognitively fit, there are a lot of benefits to napping. But for some people, naps can actually do more harm than good.
Stress, smoking, fast foods—these are all risk factors for high blood pressure.
“We call it a silent killer because people don’t pay much attention to it until you have, what we call, end organ damage,” said Dr. Siddharth Wayangankar, MPH at Interventional Cardiologist Baptist Health.
A recent study from China shows that taking a midday nap may also raise your blood pressure. Researchers looked at more than 350,000 people and found that those who napped were 12% more likely to develop high blood pressure and 24% more likely to have a stroke than those who didn’t take naps. The risk was even higher for people under 60 who napped, raising their high blood pressure risk by 20%.
People who have insomnia or who have difficulty taking short naps should also not take naps. Experts say naps eat away at your daily sleep quota, making it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep at night.
But for most people, naps are beneficial if done properly: nap between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., keep the nap short -- no more than 20 to 30 minutes -- and try napping on the couch instead of your bed so you don’t sleep too long.
One expert suggests a surprising way to make a nap work for you: Have a cup of coffee before you lie down. By the time you wake up, the caffeine will have kicked in to help you get back to work.