Nap to Save Your Heart

“It is Siesta time!” While this is usually shouted in glee signaling the cessation of the daily drudgery for the customary mid-afternoon nap, this celebration should be more for the number of wonders a nap can do for our body and health.

From a report, released last month, the experts at the Harvard School of Public Health continues to support the long standing perception that a power nap can refresh us, improve our memories and be good for our heart. Through a 6 year tracking study on over 23,000 Greek adults, the report concluded that Greeks who took regular 30-minute siestas were 37% less likely to die of heart disease than those who never napped. They also found that napping benefited working men the most.

So why is a nap this good for us?

Researchers believe it gives the human body a chance to reset the heart rate and blood pressure in the middle of the day. Hence, sleep at any time of the day, acts as a valve to release the stress of everyday life. Blood pressure is reduced and heart rates are slowed down.

Take it from this pair of mother and daughter – they are on to a good thing.
But a mid-afternoon snooze is something more likely to be perceived for leisure than necessity especially in-between jobs. Do assure your boss that you are definitely not sleeping on the job! In fact you nap to effectively deal with the work pressure and provide higher productivity.

Our other powerful bedfellows include the former US president Bill Clinton and the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Even Singapore’s late president Ong Teng Cheong also enjoyed 10-minute power naps to recharge his batteries. A power-napping habit certainly did not stop these famous men and women from being most effective at what they used to do.

So why did you start eating/ living organic?

Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and the recent Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" has heightened the awareness of whole generations towards our impact on the environment. Carson focused on our agriculture practices and the devastating impact of usage of pesticides and DDT. Al Gore had built upon that firmly establish the existence of global warming and our seemingly "ostrich" behavior about it. As if the world is not round and that the smoke produced in another's country will stay within their borders only...

I also learnt of "Yoko Agriculture" in my early childhood. It is a movement towards organic growing that helps achieve unity between God, humans and nature. Yoko meaning yang (bright, positive and sun) light.

While organic products had been mostly focused on food related products, they have branched out into multitudes of consumer products that indirectly affect our health such as baby care products, cosmetics, toothpastes, soap etc.

Most importantly, organic living is not about drastic changes to the current food we enjoy and the products we use. There is also no need to convert to be a herbivore or adopt a new religion. While I do not live organic 100%, but every effort counts. Personally, I like to think of it as a form of responsible living as our every dollar spent on big businesses determines whether if our next generations still have blue oceans and green forests. weird

So why did you start eating/ living organic?