French to make "Power Naps" law

[Lee Macro]

Now this is one EU rule I'd love for them to bring into the UK

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=470 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Want a Siesta?

By Carly Lockhart</TD></TR><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD>As if long lunches and 35 hour working weeks aren’t enough to maintain the relaxed ambiance of the French culture. Now they are considering reviving the siesta too.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width=140 align=right><TBODY><TR><TD class=primary></TD></TR><TR><TD class=primaryLight></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>French health minister, Xavier Bertrand, suggested that a short afternoon nap might become a legal right to all workers. Under this policy, employees could doze off in special ‘quiet rooms’ provided by management, or pop home and curl up on the sofa.
The country already boasts an average 35 days holiday a year compared to a mere 20 days in Britain, prompting other nations to brand the French lazy!
However, Mr Bertrand has pledged £5 million to a programme intended to get people to sleep better. He wants companies to allow their employees 15 minute power naps each day. He also believes bringing back the siesta, or ‘la sieste’, will improve efficiency and safety in the workplace.
Dr Andy Luksza conducts sleep studies in Jersey and said that having a siesta makes physiological sense. Our usual biological rhythms dictate that we get tired after lunch between the hours of one and three o’clock. He believes that if we were given the luxury of a power nap, it would be particularly pleasant.
Forty winks in the afternoon was an activity Sir Winston Churchill indulged in, which never hindered his performance in the political arena.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/..._feature.shtml

[CzarJunkie]

Where's the link to the original article?

[Lee Macro]

Knew there was something I forgot. Soz chaps

[BBK]

Vive la France! Sounds perfect, and I think I can commute to Paris almost as quickly as I can central London!

[diablos]

What about power wanks that would be more productive i feel.

[diablos]

Where's the link to the original article?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/..._feature.shtml

[GTI]

Its scientifically proven that us blokes would benefit....

Naps good for ticker, study says

Report shows siestas cut risk of cardiac death, especially for working men
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer

San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Link

Here is one we've all been waiting for: A Harvard study has found that a regular afternoon nap could reduce the risk of cardiac death by 37 percent.

First we learned that a glass of red wine is good for the heart, and now so is the midday snooze. For the wine, we have the French to thank. For the nap, we can thank the Greeks.

Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, an epidemiologist with the Harvard School of Public Health, uncovered the protective effect of siestas in a detailed study of 23,681 Greek men and women whose health and habits were followed for a minimum of six years.

The benefit was most pronounced among working men who napped regularly, for at least 30 minutes a day, at least three days a week. Their risk of cardiac death was 64 percent lower than their peers who did not nap.

Even the occasional nap was beneficial. A five-minute siesta a couple of times a week offered men and women a 12 percent reduction in heart risk.

In Greece, as in Italy and Spain, it is common for businesses to close up shop in midafternoon and for society as a whole to take a collective snooze. The payoff can be renewed energy for the rest of the day and, perhaps, a healthier heart.

"Thirty-seven percent? That's huge,'' said Dr. Matthew DeVane, a Walnut Creek cardiologist and board member of the American Heart Association. "The numbers are comparable to what aspirin and statin drugs can do.''

DeVane said unhealthy habits are built into the American lifestyle. It is common for patients in his East Bay practice to get up at 5 a.m. to catch BART and come home from work at 8 p.m.

Lack of sleep is a common problem, so a nap a day sounds like a good idea.

"Unfortunately," DeVane said, "the workplace in America is not conducive to this intervention.''

Harvard professor Trichopoulos, reached in Athens, said napping just isn't possible at his job in Cambridge, where he was once chairman of the department of epidemiology. "When I was chairman, I couldn't even eat, let alone nap,'' he said.

Trichopoulos knows his study is provocative and bound to raise issues in workplaces around the country. So he is cautious. "It's just one study. It needs confirmation,'' he said. "You can't go to your boss with this and claim you need to take a siesta.''

His goal, he said, is to stimulate other researchers to try to replicate his findings. The more the study is confirmed, the more convincing the case.

Trichopoulos stressed that earlier studies, using different methods, had found that napping had either no effect on heart health, or could have been slightly harmful. But those studies had potential flaws -- such as not including the napping records of people who died. Or they included people who napped because they were already ill; in those cases, napping was a symptom, not a solution.

So the professor mined data from the Greek arm of a large and continuing European epidemiology study called EPIC. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer is the largest study of diet and health being conducted in the world, and its goal is to gain a better understanding of the link between nutrition and cancer.

Trichopoulos used a variety of statistical techniques to filter out the roles of age, diet, weight and exercise to isolate the effects of siestas on cardiac death among previously healthy men and women.

Overall, napping reduced the risk of cardiac death by 34 percent. If the naps lasted at least half an hour and were taken three times a week, the risk reduction improved to 37 percent. The study seemed to show naps helped men the most; there were not enough heart deaths among women to make meaningful conclusions about naps and heart health for women alone.

Although his study is strong evidence that naps are protective, other similar evidence must be built up to prove it.

Dr. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep scientist at the Stanford Sleep Disorders clinic, said it is possible that the protective effects found in the study are the result of napping, but they also could turn up because those who napped are people who lead less stressful lives.

He also noted that napping is not necessarily a good idea for patients who already have heart disease, because short bouts of midday sleep tend to be high in dream content, and dreaming sleep is characterized by more irregularity in heartbeat.

Napping longer than 90 minutes, he noted, can leave a person groggy and disoriented upon awakening. But he is a fan of the siesta. "We were meant to nap. The ability to nap is innate,'' he said.

Executives have coined the term "power napping" for the re-invigorating nature of a 30-minute afternoon snooze.

For those with busy lives and not enough nighttime sleep, naps do make sense, Pelayo said. "Naps are like snacks. If you are not getting enough food, a snack is a good idea.''

Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at UCSF, called the Harvard findings very provocative. "It is certainly worth a discussion among employers,'' she said. "I can't think of a physiological reason why a nap would be so good, so this is very interesting.''

Redberg cautioned, though, that epidemiological studies of this nature have led to erroneous conclusions in the recent past. For example, studies suggesting that hormone replacement therapy was protective of heart health were structured similarly to this one. It took a rigorous, controlled investigation -- the Women's Health Study -- to discover that post-menopausal women taking the pills for long periods of time were at higher risk for heart attacks and strokes.

Redberg said she has no plans to close her office a 3 p.m. for a nap of any duration. "There are lots of things I would like people in my practice to do that I know work. Eat fruits and vegetables, walk every day and stop smoking,'' she said.

Back in Athens, Trichopoulos reflected that, with globalization, the traditions of afternoon napping are starting to slip away, even in Greece. "Longer working hours in the banks, and the supermarkets, are forcing people to abandon something that may or may not be healthy, but certainly has been a pleasure,'' he said.