Daytime napping in healthy adults
does indeed lead to benefits in terms of alertness, mood and cognitive
functioning. Adults do not require shut-eye in the middle of the day—unlike
infants and toddlers—but many grown-ups nap just the same. A 2008 National Sleep
Foundation poll found that 460 out of 1,000 respondents had napped at least
twice during the previous month. Intuitively most of us think that a nap will
refresh us and make us better able to take on the challenges of the day. In
fact, research shows that healthy adults who take naps enjoy brighter moods,
faster reaction times, and better performance on tasks involving logical
reasoning, attention and memory. How much we gain from napping, though, depends
on a number of factors, including how and when we nap and for how long. A
20-minute nap appears to hit the sweet spot. Studies reveal that such brief
sojourns boost both mood and cognitive performance. Shorter, 10-minute naps are
also good for enhancing performance and cause less grogginess than longer naps
do.
Naps lasting an hour or more are
not recommended. During a longer nap, you fall into a deeper sleep, which makes
it more difficult to awaken feeling refreshed. Also, longer naps diminish the
quality of night time sleep. The best time of day to take a nap is mid-afternoon,
between 2 and 4 P.M. Given the body's natural biological clock, it is generally
easier to fall asleep during this window and to reap the full benefits of a
good rest. In one study from our sleep laboratory, we found that habitual
nappers slept more lightly than non-habitual nappers did, which may mean that
the ability to nap lightly contributes to better alertness and performance
after napping. Habitual nappers also reported feeling better than the non-habitual
nappers after the same amount of sleep. Though generally beneficial, napping
isn't for everyone. Poor sleepers who have difficulty falling and staying asleep
at night might want to avoid daytime snoozing. For everyone else, though, a
20-minute mid-afternoon nap could be the secret to feeling sharp and happy
throughout the day.
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