- By Bunny Anderson -
If you are only going to read one paragraph of this article, let me summarize the “napping truth.” Science has now proven that the quality and quantity of life is improved enormously when you regularly nap.
At a recent convention in San Diego of the AAAS (American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science), the following facts regarding a daily siesta were found:
- Nappers are less likely to die of heart disease
- Nappers have fewer problems with short-term memory
- Nappers have better motor performance
- Nappers are better prepared to learn
They asked a group of 39 people to participate in learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6:00pm. They were to recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. One group remained awake and one took monitored naps of 100 minutes. The surprising results were that the napping group did better in the evening than at noon and the awake group did worse. Result: sleep cleared the brain’s short-term memory and made way for new information.
To get technical, electroencephalograms have shown that memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep. The ideal nap is 90-100 minutes, divided as follows: 30 minutes of light sleep, then 60+ minutes of REM (rapid-eye-movement) which involves memory downloads. The benefits to memory of a nap are so great that they can equal the benefits of an entire night’s sleep.
The grogginess that results for some nappers is termed “sleep inertia.” They found those people often chose not to nap in the first place causing brain cells to fire at a slow rhythm causing blood flow to decrease.
Maybe the Europeans have had the right idea for centuries. Sleeping in the noonday sun isn’t for lazy bones after all. What aerobics can do for the body, a nap can do for the brain!