Plan B Forum

A Spanish mayor has issued an official edict insisting that all those living and working in his town be allowed to take a three hour nap every afternoon.

Joan Faus Vitoria, the mayor of Ador in the province of Valencia, has formally designated the hours between 2pm and 5pm as a time for locals to take their afternoon siestas.

During the official nap time - the first of its kind to be introduced in Spain - parents have been told that children must be kept indoors and residents and tourists are instructed not to make unnecessary noise.

Mr Vitoria said the plan was introduced as a way for farm employees and manual labourers to take a break from work at a point in the day when temperatures reach their peak.

His edict states that the three hour pause be respected by employers.

As well as allowing residents to return to their properties and spend a few hours catching up on sleep, the siesta time is also intended to bring quiet to municipality of Ador.

A key rule is that locals who choose not to spend their time sleeping are not allowed to use the siesta period to carry out work that makes any noise. Mechanics, for example, wouldn't be allowed to test cars engines in case in wakes neighbours.

Meanwhile parents have also been asked to ensure their children play indoors during the three-hour period to avoid noise travelling into open windows.

Mr Vitoria said that those found guilty of breaking the rules will not face penalties, adding that the edict should be treated as 'merely a suggestion' rather than an 'obligation'.

A Town Hall spokesman told The Local: 'Everything closes between 2pm and 5pm.'

'Many people here work in the countryside, so it’s very usual to take a long lunch break and have a siesta after eating,' he added.

Researchers say that an hour long power nap in the afternoon could repair the damage caused by a lack of sleep.

Having a 30-minute snooze can help relieve stress and bolster the immune systems by restoring hormones and proteins to normal levels.

Scientists hope their findings will help shift workers and those suffering insomnia, by mitigating the damage caused by too few hours sleep.

While siestas are common in southern European countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece, many northern European nations say the culture of sleeping while the rest of Europe is hard at work puts these nations at a competitive disadvantage and has had a negative impact on their economies.

Why taking an afternoon nap 'raises risk of an EARLY DEATH by a third'

Adults who nap are more likely develop deadly respiratory issues
Scientists say napping can trigger inflammation in the body
The findings from say dozing could be a symptom of lung disease

By Pat Hagan for MailOnline

Published: 17:50 EST, 11 April 2014 | Updated: 02:03 EST, 12 April 2014


Napping, once thought of as a harmless way to recharge one's batteries throughout the day, could now have deadly effects
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Napping, once thought of as a harmless way to recharge one's batteries throughout the day, could now have deadly effects

It seems a pretty harmless occupation, but taking an afternoon nap can knock years off your life, say researchers.

British adults who sleep for an hour or more in the day increased the chances of premature death by almost a third, scientists found.

The biggest risks appear to be associated with lung diseases, such as bronchitis, emphysema and pneumonia.

Adults who nap every day are up to two-and-a-half times more likely to die from respiratory illnesses than those who don’t.

Researchers said that this could be because napping triggers inflammation in the body.

However, the findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, also suggested that dozing during the day could be a signal that the person already has lung disease.

Experts at Cambridge tracked more than 16,000 British men and women over 13 years.

They studied adults who, in the late nineties, signed up to a major research project investigating the effects of diet and lifestyle on cancer.

As part of the project, volunteers gave details of their sleeping habits – including whether they took a nap in the day.

Researchers then followed them up for 13 years and recorded the number of deaths – just over 3,000 – and what caused them.

When they matched mortality rates with sleeping habits, they found the risk of death increased slightly by about 14 per cent in people who dozed less than an hour in the day.

But if their naps lasted more than an hour, the risks increased by 32 per cent.

When they looked at causes of death, they found the chances of dying from a respiratory illness more than doubled if naps lasted over an hour.

Napping and Human Sleep
Posted on 2. August 2011 by Victor

By Victor

“Blue Zones”

This is the name given by epidemiologists to places where people tend to have extraordinary lifespans. Sardinia (an Italian island), Ikaria (a Greek island), Okinawa, the Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica, and Loma Linda California are such Blue Zones.

The Ikaria Study looked at nearly two hundred subjects, men and women, over the age of eighty in order to identify modifiable risk factors associated with longevity. Lifestyle questionnaires revealed that the majority remained physically active. They also consumed large amounts of olive oil, fruits, vegetables and fish; they ate little red meat and very few sweets. None of this is very surprising. However, one discovery was unexpected. Eighty four percent of the men and sixty-seven percent of the women over age eighty took daily naps. This result is consistent with two earlier Greek studies. The MEDIS study reported that of nearly 12,000 subjects, virtually all over the age of ninety took daily naps. The EPIC cohort study of nearly 24,000 subjects over a six year period found that “those occasionallynapping had a 12% lower coronary mortality, whereas those systematically napping had a 37% lowercoronary mortality”.

These results are surprising because they contradict other research showing increased mortality associated with napping. See: Don’t nap!, Daytime napping and mortality, Napping, Nighttime Sleep, and Cardiovascular Risk and Napping Is Associated with Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

Why would napping have such adverse metabolic and cardiovascular effects, increasing the risk of mortality? How can we reconcile such striking contradictions in the epidemiological data? Is napping beneficial or detrimental to health and longevity?

Sleep is a physiological process observed in many diverse species including invertebrates. While all mammals sleep, only primates exhibit consolidated (monophasic) sleep. All other mammals display fragmented sleep, a series of brief, episodic sleep periods. Interestingly, marine mammals, such as dolphins, sleep with one hemisphere of their brain at a time, always keeping the alternate hemisphere awake, presumably to maintain respiratory and sensory functions while swimming.(ref) The fact that cetaceans have developed such an unusual form of sleep emphasizes the indispensability of this universal phenomenon. Sleep is known to serve many important purposes, including memory consolidation, improved cognitive function, motor skills, etc. Given the many beneficial effects of sleep, and considering that periodic sleep is the norm in other advanced mammals, it is quite surprising that the additional sleep associated with a daily nap would have harmful consequences.

Reduced sleep has adverse consequences.

There is no controversy about the adverse health consequences of reduced sleep. Both population and clinical studies have consistently reported increased mortality associated with reduced sleep. ... "