Should you start napping, if you haven’t already?
Research shows that the health benefits are many and the effects can be cumulative.
It is important, though, not to allow your naps to last too long. If you do, they can damage rather than enhance your health and creativity.
How long is the ideal nap? It’s up to you, but in general, studies show that if you sleep for an hour or longer, that’s too long. Ideally, you close your eyes for 10-45 minutes, depending on what you need.
Follow that advice, and you’re likely to enjoy the following benefits.
Start Napping 1. You’ll Be More Creative
Research out of Georgetown University Medical Center found that when participants took a nap, the right hemisphere of their brains (considered to be the source of creative thought) was more active, communicating more with itself and with the left hemisphere.
“This is speculation,” said Andrei Medvedev, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging at Georgetown. “but the brain could be doing some helpful housecleaning, classifying data, consolidating memories. That could explain the power of napping.”
If you’re struggling with your story, sleep on it for 10-20 minutes. Your brain may have the solution by the time you wake up.
2. You’ll Have a Healthier Heart
Naps are good for your cardiovascular system. In a 2007 study on over 23,000 participants, researchers found that those who took daily naps had a 37 percent lower chance of dying from coronary disease than those who didn’t. That’s quite a difference!
Another more recent study found similar results. Scientists looked at nap frequency and the risk of non-fatal cardiovascular disease events such as heart attack, stroke, and heart failure among about 3,400 people. Each participant was between 35 and 75 years of age.
Those who napped occasionally—once to twice weekly—had nearly half the risk of heart attack/stroke/heart failure risk (48%) as those who didn’t nap at all.
Start Napping 3. You’ll Be More Productive
If you want to get more done in the day, you may think it best to keep plowing through project after project. Research shows, thoough, that you’d be better off napping for a few minutes instead.
Napping resets your body and mind. When you wake up, you’ll feel refreshed and better able to tackle your projects. In a study conducted by OnePoll, researchers examined the napping preferences of 2,000 people and found that nappers were more likely to consider themselves as productive.
Three-quarters of them also labeled themselves as career-driven, compared to 55 percent of their non-napping counterparts. Confidence was higher in the napping group too—89% of nappers claimed to be confident compared to 79% of those who didn’t nap.
Other studies have found similar results—naps help improve focus and concentration, particularly if you’ve been working on a challenging project. You can also use them as effective breaks between projects. If you’re switching from your day job to your writing, for example, a nap is a great in-between activity to help you change gears.
4. You’ll Remember More
Naps help boost memory function. In one experiment by German researchers, 24 participants were asked to memorize 15 pairs of cards showing pictures of animals and everyday objects.
Half of the group then stayed awake and the other half took a brief nap. Afterwards, both groups were then tested again on the original task.
Results showed that the sleep group performed much better, retaining on average 85 percent of the patterns, compared to 60 percent for those who had stayed awake.
Based on brain imaging data, the researchers also found that during the first few minutes of sleep, the brain transferred learned knowledge from the hippocampus to the neocortex. After 40 minutes of rest, significant chunks of memory were already downloaded and stored where they could no longer be disrupted by new information.
If you need to remember something, sleep on it!
Start Napping 5. You’ll Handle Your Emotions Better
Without enough sleep, it’s easy to feel irritable and frustrated. But it’s hard to get that recommended 7-8 hours every night. If you missed out, try taking a nap. In a study on 40 subjects, nappers had an increased tolerance for frustration and were less impulsive in their actions than those who didn’t nap.
Regular naps may also help you feel more positive. In a 2015 study of about half a million adults, researchers found that those who took naps during the day had a lower risk of depression, as well as improved daytime function.
Sometimes difficult emotions are there simply because you’re tired. Take a nap—it might help things look a little brighter.
6. You’ll Feel More Awake
It seems obvious, but naps help wake you up. In a NASA study on pilot fatigue, scientists recorded brain activity during a simulated flight to find evidence of split-second periods of “microsleep” that occur when someone dozes off.
Results showed that pilots who were allowed to take a short nap (40 to 45 minutes) improved their performance by 34 percent and their alertness by 54 percent. They also had only 34 microsleeps during the last 90 minutes of the flight. Those who didn’t take naps had 120 microsleeps.
If it’s time to write and you’re tired, take a quick nap. When you wake up, you’ll be ready to create.
Start Napping 7. You’ll Shed Stress
If you’re going through a stressful time in your life, daily naps can help. Researchers have found that they reduce levels of stress hormones in your body.
In one experiment, scientists had subjects go through two sessions of sleep testing in a lab. In the first, the subjects were limited to two hours of sleep for one night. The second group was also allowed to sleep only two hours at night, but they could take two 30-minute naps during the next day. The scientists then measured hormone levels in the urine and saliva.
After a night of limited sleep, the first group had a 2.5-fold increase in hormones linked to stress. The subjects who napped, however, showed no such increase. The sleep deprivation also affected levels of virus-fighting immune cells—they dropped after a night of restricted sleep but remained normal when subjects were allowed to nap (suggesting naps can be good for the immune system, too).
How often do you get a daytime nap?
Sources
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Dorking, Marie C. “People Who Nap Are More Productive, Study Finds.” Yahoo News – Latest News & Headlines. Last modified February 13, 2020. https://news.yahoo.com/people-nap-sleep-more-productive-104440002.html.
Endocrine Society. “Napping Reverses Health Effects of Poor Sleep.” Newswise: News for Journalists. Accessed June 1, 2020. https://www.newswise.com/articles/napping-reverses-health-effects-of-poor-sleep.
Feld, Gordon B., and Susanne Diekelmann. “Sleep smart—optimizing sleep for declarative learning and memory.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00622.
Georgetown University. “Might Lefties and Righties Benefit Differently from a Power Nap?” Georgetown University Medical Center. Last modified December 11, 2013. https://gumc.georgetown.edu/news-release/people-who-like-to-nap/#.
Goldschmied, Jennifer R., Philip Cheng, Kathryn Kemp, Lauren Caccamo, Julia Roberts, and Patricia J. Deldin. “Napping to modulate frustration and impulsivity: A pilot study.” Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015), 164-167. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.06.013.
Hood, Marlowe. “Memories Take Hold Better During Sleep: Study.” Medical Xpress – Medical Research Advances and Health News. Last modified January 24, 2011. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-memories.html.
Häusler, Nadine, Jose Haba-Rubio, Raphael Heinzer, and Pedro Marques-Vidal. “Association of napping with incident cardiovascular events in a prospective cohort study.” Heart 105, no. 23 (2019), 1793-1798. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2019-314999.
Liu, Yuning, Tingting Peng, Siqiao Zhang, and Kun Tang. “The relationship between depression, daytime napping, daytime dysfunction, and snoring in 0.5 million Chinese populations: exploring the effects of socio-economic status and age.” BMC Public Health 18, no. 1 (2018). doi:10.1186/s12889-018-5629-9.
Naska, Androniki. “Siesta in Healthy Adults and Coronary Mortality in the General Population.” Archives of Internal Medicine 167, no. 3 (2007), 296. doi:10.1001/archinte.167.3.296.
Wow, I didn’t know that naps help us so much! 😀
Pretty cool right? :O)