If you’re like us, once 2 p.m. rolls around, we want a nap. But we usually just opt for a coffee.
That’s because in many parts of the world, naps are seen as a product of laziness. The thinking goes, we sleep eight hours at night and then work non-stop during the day. But did you know that the solid eight-hour block of sleep is a relatively recent invention. Until the Industrial Age, most people would wake up for several hours in the middle of the night, and then supplement their “segmented” sleep with a nap in the afternoon. So maybe sleeping is a natural thing that shouldn’t be looked down upon?
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Here are five tips on taking that perfect nap:
1. Nap in the afternoon.
Most people naturally feel a dip in energy six to seven hours after they wake up — which often works out to 2 p.m. or so. This afternoon lull is the perfect time to take a quick nap. It’s also not too close to bedtime — so it won’t interfere with you falling asleep at night.
2. Find a dark, comfortable, quiet place.
You may feel tired enough to fall asleep anywhere, but sleep researchers find that these controllable factors play a huge role in how easily and quickly people can fall asleep.
3. Figure out how long to nap.
Because your brain progresses through a series of distinct stages after you fall asleep, naps of different lengths can have surprisingly different effects.
In most cases, a brief nap (30 minutes or less) is ideal because your brain never advances past the early stages of light sleep. Experiments find that these naps don’t lead to much grogginess and produce a relatively short burst of improved alertness.
During mid-range naps (45 to 90 minutes), you brain enters what’s called slow-wave sleep, and if you nap more than 90 minutes or so, you’ll enter REM sleep, during which most dreaming occurs. Both of these lead to periods of post-nap grogginess (scientists call it sleep inertia).
But interestingly, experiments have found that those longer naps lead to longer-lasting improvements in alertness for the nappers — so if you want to improve your performance for, say, a six-hour drive, taking a relatively long nap beforehand (and giving yourself time to recover after) could be the way to go.
4. Set an alarm.
This might seem obvious, but for most people it’s really hard to wake up when you intend to, and longer naps can backfire.
5. Optional: Drink some coffee first.
Quickly downing a cup of coffee (or other caffeinated beverage) and then napping for 20 minutes or less can have some surprising benefits.
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It takes around 20 minutes for caffeine to make it into your bloodstream and enter your brain. What’s more, caffeine makes you feel more energetic by displacing a chemical called adenosine, which produces a feeling of tiredness — and sleep naturally clears adenosine from your brain.
That means when you wake up after 20 minutes and the caffeine arrives, it has less adenosine to compete with, amplifying the effect of the caffeine. A few different studies have shown that people who take coffee naps are more alert and perform better on memory tests than people who drink coffee or take a nap alone.
Who else wants a siesta?
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Curated article and image from Vox.com
Relevant sources:
BBC
chnm.gmu.edu
Mayo Clinic
Harvard
Research Gate
Wikipedia
NCBI
