I was recently writing an article about my experience on Corfu, Greece when I was in my early twenties. Only rather than being about Corfu as a destination, this piece was about how the way I learned to live there has shaped me into a healthier person. Things that at the time I thought were deplorable to my diet—everything was drenched in olive oil!—I’ve now come to realize are tasty components to healthy living.

In putting together the piece, I was checking to see if any of my previous sources on health and lifestyle had released any new studies. And indeed they have. One in particular, by Dr. Antonia Trichopoulou, a professor and researcher at the University of Athens who has spearheaded several large-scale, long-term epidemiological studies around the Mediterranean lifestyle and diet, caught my eye. It was about, of all things, naps.

As anyone who has traveled to the Mediterranean or Latin America knows, siestas are stitched in to the fabric of many cultures. Businesses close, streets quiet, and everyone grabs a bit of shut eye during the mid-day hours, even if only just a few puffs on the couch. Well now Dr. Trichopoulou has proven that naps really are good for our health. 

In a prospective study over several years of 23,681 healthy Greek men and women between the ages of 20 and 86, those who napped for at least 30 minutes a minimum of three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. Those who napped occasionally lowered their risk 12 percent. The correlation was especially strong for working men.

We tend to focus so much on what foods we should eat or shouldn’t eat, what we should drink or shouldn’t drink. But in the end, it’s the little habits that we build into our everyday lives that are going to either contribute to a long, healthy life or become our demise. Just like I learned on Corfu without even knowing it.

If you’d like more information on the siesta study, check out this link to the American Heart Association’s summary: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3045773

On that note, I’m going to lay down for a bit . . .