Does Napping Help More Than Just Relaxing?

In her book “Take a Nap Change your Life”, Sara C. Mednick, Ph. D says that napping is the scientific plan to make you smarter, healthier and more productive. Themedguru.com looks into how napping can help...

The Archives of Internal Medicine, published a report on February 12, 2007 in which the researchers from the Greek European Prospective Investigation into Cancerdefine and Nutrition (EPIC) found that people who take regular naps have less heart attacks.

Why do we need to Nap?
Sometimes Lack of sleep and sometimes over fatigue has different effects on a human mind. A tired brain can affect a person’s performance, motivation level and vigilance as well. This can result in a variety of problems like:

• Slowing down reflexes and reaction time. Even a person’s judgment can be affected and incorrect, a very dangerous problem when driving or working.
• Sometimes when the brain is over worked or very tired, the vision becomes unfocussed and blurred.
• The brain becomes slow in processing information as it gets tired.
• A person with an overworked or tired brain would lack motivation, which would ultimately affect the performance.
• A person would become snappy, aggressive and moody in his/her behavior.

How does Napping help?

a. Researchers studied two different groups of people, one who slept in the afternoon and other, which did not. The group that slept in the afternoon demonstrated a conspicuous improvement in their performance by that evening. This research shows that even a twenty-minute nap can help in rejuvenating the mind.

b. A quick nap can also help one in improving ones memory. It is sometimes seen that after a long session at work or college the mind does not grasp the next intake of information. If a small nap is introduced between the two sessions, the brain recollects the first session as well as the one it is subjected to next.

c. Napping also improves alertness. Scientists have proved that sleeping around 20 minutes in the afternoon improves the alertness of a person more than adding 20 more minutes sleep in the morning.

d. A study of 23,681 men without any history of heart diseases divided into two groups, one who take an afternoon nap and one who don’t, found that the risk of heart disease actually reduced by 37 percent with a nap. It has been seen that in countries like Spain where afternoon siestas are popular, heart disease rates are actually lower than other countries.

Some other Facts

Some experts are completely against taking a nap at anytime of the day. They argue that sleep at anytime except at night can make a person lethargic and inactive. They feel that sleep inertia might cause a loss of productive time. Sleep inertia is the feeling of inactiveness that stays after we wake up in the morning till we take that morning coffee or tea or a shower. Sleeping in the afternoon will get that sleep inertia back which in turn affects productivity. For some people, sleeping in the afternoon may cause a decrease in the amount of sleep at night as well.

Even though a few slowing down effects are possible, napping is certainly something that can be utilized during too busy days or during lack of nighttime sleep. And as research suggests it is not for the worse either…

So take a nap or two to relax you tired mind and come out fresh.