Why napping is good

Sleeping at night decreases sleep pressure, and then the cycle begins again the next day. Napping during the day diminishes homeostatic sleep drive, which can help us feel more awake and perform better. As a result, napping can help with:. Naps also play a special role for drivers. Driving while drowsy is dangerous for you, your passengers, and others on the road. Drowsy drivers are involved in hundreds of thousands of car crashes in the United States each year. To counter this, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends to first, get adequate amounts of sleep hours on a nightly basis.

If you start to feel sleepy while driving, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends drinking caffeine and pulling over safely for a minute nap. However, this is not a long-term solution, as naps and caffeine are known to increase alertness for only a short period of time.

Shift work is any work schedule that falls outside the hours of 7 a. Shift work is associated with increased risk for health effects and injury due to sleep loss and circadian rhythm disruptions. Planned napping improves alertness and reaction time in shift workers. In fact, some people find napping counterproductive.

Although reducing sleep pressure can combat fatigue, it can also interfere with your ability to fall asleep at bedtime. People who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night, for example, those with insomnia , may want to avoid napping. Sleep inertia sleepiness after waking from a nap can be minimized or avoided by taking shorter naps. However, you can still feel disoriented even after a short nap, so napping may be disruptive if you need to get right back to work afterward.

Children need more sleep than adults, and younger children need more sleep than older children. As a result, the role of napping changes as we age. The National Sleep Foundation published evidence-based sleep recommendations by age.

These outline the total recommended hours of sleep per day and are meant to include both nighttime sleep and daytime naps. While research shows trends in the effects of napping, every individual is different. If you have questions about your sleep patterns, speak with a doctor or sleep expert. Taking naps can help children get sufficient sleep. Researchers have studied naps in children from infancy to adolescence:. Many of the positive effects seen in children who nap are also found in young adults.

Napping in early adulthood can alleviate sleepiness and improve cognitive performance and emotion regulation. Employment and other obligations can make napping impossible.

Also, some people simply have a hard time falling asleep during the day or away from the comfort of home. In older adults, certain adverse health effects have been associated with very long, mid-day naps more than an hour in duration.

Researchers have linked long naps with an increased risk for diabetes , heart disease , and depression. This may be because long midday naps in adults is a signal that nighttime sleep is of poor quality. Further research is needed to understand the relationships between napping and these negative outcomes in older adults. Alexa Fry is a science writer with experience working for the National Cancer Institute.

She also holds a certificate in technical writing. Truong is a Stanford-trained sleep physician with board certifications in sleep and internal medicine.

She is the founder of Earlybird Health. Do you associate showering with a relaxing end to the day? Learn how showers affect your sleep, and whether hot…. Many large companies are leaning into the benefits that nap pods offer both them and their employees.

We take a…. Wondering how to wake up early? Learn strategies for improving sleep hygiene and adjusting your morning routine. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Napping kills the crankiness.

Improved Memory: When your computer crashes, you lose data. But when you crash on the couch for a while, it actually helps your memory. A nap can make it easier to recall facts learned earlier that day.

When: Mid-afternoon is best around 3 PM. Where: Find a cool, quiet place to doze. That said, many companies are starting to wise up by letting employees lie down for a break. For a short nap, keep it to 20 minutes. Note: If you still plan on supplementing your nap with a cup of coffee, drink it before you nod off.

It takes time for caffeine to activate, and it will likely kick in right as you wake up from a short snooze. Want to super-charge your afternoon? Benefits of napping in healthy adults: impact of nap length, time of day, age, and experience with napping.

Journal of Sleep Research. They examined how often and how long participants napped per week and what condition their hearts were in later on.

Over the next 5 years, researchers noted fatal and nonfatal heart-related medical events among those participants. That even accounted for people with sleep apnea or who were excessively sleepy during the day.

The researchers showed they found no association between how long those naps were and heart-related medical events. Their research builds off a meta-analysis published by the Sleep Research Society.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan — a culture where napping at work is seen as a sign of hard work — found 11 studies that showed naps and heart health appear to follow a J-shaped curve. That means the risks dip to a certain point but then shoot up later on. If so, one would surmise that napping should be healthy. Sujay Kansagra , a sleep health expert with the mattress store chain Mattress Firm and an associate professor at Duke University Medical Center in North California, says the new study on napping frequency and cardiovascular disease is an interesting one.

He recommends people nap between 20 to 30 minutes or extend the nap to 90 minutes. Nate Masterson, head of natural product development for Maple Holistics , says an important part of the new research is that it acknowledges the biggest challenge when it comes to measuring the health effects of naps is determining the underlying reason for the naps themselves. These common misconceptions about sleep can harm your health by keeping you from getting quality zzzz.

You can do a lot of prep work to make the perfect sleep environment. Snag your new favorite pair of flannel sheets to keep you warm and cozy all night long. If we combine this information with your PHI, we will treat all of that information as PHI, and will only use or disclose that information as set forth in our notice of privacy practices. You may opt-out of e-mail communications at any time by clicking on the Unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

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