Sleeping your way to heart health

A new Harvard School of Public Health study indicates that there's more than just olive oil and red wine keeping heart disease rates down in Mediterranean countries. There's the naps, too.

A study that followed more than 23,000 people for six years showed that regular napping can cut deaths from heart disease by as much as 37 percent, providing a benefit in the same order of magnitude as that linked to lowering cholesterol, eating a healthy diet, or exercising.

"If confirmed by other investigations, these results would imply that a siesta could be added to the several means available for the control of coronary heart mortality, like healthy diets or cholesterol-lowering medications," said Dimitrios Trichopoulos, the Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and the study's senior author. "The magnitude of the effect appears to be considerable."

The study, published in the Feb. 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, was conducted by Trichopoulos and lead author Androniki Naska of the University of Athens Medical School, along with colleagues from the University of Athens and the Hellenic Health Foundation.