To reap the benefits of napping, there are some key caveats to take into consideration.
Make Them Short
When we say napping can bring about positive health change in your day, this is invariably referring to “power napping”.
A power nap refers to a sleep that is short in duration – usually between 10 and 30 minutes. It’s something you might do at work on your lunch break, or during a Saturday afternoon before a night out.
The scientific studies outline performance benefits based on naps of less than 30 or 40 minutes. This will stop you from dropping into a deep sleep state. Once you drop into a deep sleep, you’ll need a longer, night-time kind of sleep to feel any benefit when you wake up. If you end up sleeping for an hour or two, you’ll drift into a deep sleep and likely suffer from sleep inertia, a slightly impaired state of cognitive and sensory-motor performance, when you wake up. You’ll likely feel worse than you did before you went to sleep, experiencing fatigue and grogginess.
Make sure you only nap in short bursts is key to ensure you experience all the benefits it can bring.
Prioritise a Good Night’s Sleep
The first question to ask yourself before you take a nap is “why?”. If the answer is that you consistently need to catch up after a poor night’s sleep, then you need to readdress your priorities.
The link between regularly getting good sleep and your long-term health are well established. If you’re struggling to sleep at night, suffer from insomnia or sleep apnea, but you’re taking naps every day, those naps might be hindering your ability to drop off at night. Treat a nap as a mid-afternoon burst, but never as a substitute to a good eight hours each night.
Napping Could Point to Illness
If you’re spending big chunks of your day feeling tired but evening sleep isn’t a problem, it could be a sign of a more serious health concern. Studies, like this one in the American Journal of Epidemiology linked those who nap with higher rates of mortality. This isn’t to say that napping increases your chance of an early death. It points to the fact that people suffering from illness are more likely to nap during the day due to the fatigue that comes with their complications.
Don’t Take Them to Late
Naps don’t just have an optimum length; they also have an optimum time of day. Lunchtime is the best part of the day to head off for a nap – between the hours of 12pm and 2pm. Neatly coinciding with your office lunch break, it’s the perfect time to refresh and refocus in the afternoon. Leave it till 3pm or later, and you’ll likely cause disruption to your sleep later that night.
Under the right circumstances, napping can have a hugely beneficial effect on your day. Offices across the world are starting to wake up to the benefits a nap can have on staff productivity if you give them the opportunity to have a calming snooze at lunchtime. If you get the chance to count some afternoon sheep, it could bring a boost in your performance long into the day.
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