Everyone loves a good nap. I love a nap at any time of the day. However, are these naps hurting my sleep schedule?
Harvard Medical Journal breaks it down for us. There is a part of our brain in the hypothalamus that controls a lot about our daily schedule, it is called the circadian-rythm. The circadian rhythm is strong and weak at different times of the day, the most popular time adults’ crave sleep is between 2am and 4am with another dip between 1 and 3 pm.Harvard points to a 2008 study that tests the best way to get rid of mid-day sleepiness.
Sarah Mednick compared the benefits of caffeine, naps and placebo on memory in her 2008 study. She compared caffeine with napping and the placebo with three memory processes. These processes were the declarative verbal memory, procedural motor skills and perceptual learning. In the verbal task, recall and recognition if words were tested after a 7 hour break with a nap or a drug. A different word list was administered after interfering and memory was tested after a 20 min break period. The non-declarative test were taught before the intervention and then retested after. Naps improved recognition of words relative to caffeine and placebo. Caffeine, however, impaired motor learning. Napping produced robust perceptual learning compared with placebo; however, naps and caffeine were not significantly different. Mednick found that napping worked best for all processes.
Another study was conducted in 2006 studying the affect of a post lunch nap. After a thirty minute nap, the males’s alertness, short term memory, intra-aural temperature, heart rate, choice of reaction time, grip strength, and times of sprints were recorded. The nap improved all of these things besides grip strength and reaction times.
This makes me question why we ever stopped taking naps in the first place. In preschool nap time was required (and taken for granted) so why not now? I think that if we all take a 30-45 minute nap a day our overall performance would improve. There would be two groups: nap takers and non-nap takers. The nap takers’ school performance would be measured over the semester in comparison to the non-nap takers. It would be an interesting experiment to show people the benefits behind napping, it’s not just waisting time.
I enjoyed this blog post because I, like many, love a good nap. I think this blog post contributes to a much bigger question on how we have developed daily schedules throughout history. It’s automatically assumed that we sleep when it’s dark and work when it’s light. Maybe if we combined scientific studies done on things such as the best times to sleep, the most productive times of the day, and the best amount of time to sleep/work, we could develop a schedule that caters to the needs of humans better than the generic schedule that people have been following for centuries. There have been so many arguments on why school should start later and how people of specific ages should be getting a certain amount of sleep, but no one has created a large enough influence to impact schedule on a continental of global level.
This is a very interesting blog post. After a nap I feel rejuvenated and ready to work. I found additional information about naps on this website. I think you should look at it! It talks about the different lengths of naps and the benefits to the different lengths. For example, it said that “napping for approximately 30 to 60 minutes — is good for decision-making skills, such as memorizing vocabulary or recalling directions.”
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/the-secret-and-surprising-power-of-naps
This is really interesting! When I was young during nap time I always wanted to stay up and not go to sleep. Now I crave the time that I can go into my bed and take even just a cat nap! I always wondered why they didn’t have nap time in college because after I take a nap I always feel more alert and it is easier to remember the things that I learned in class that day! The school board should really take this into consideration!
Really interesting post! I really like how you related naps to more psychological terms and dug deeper into the real science behind naps and why they are so beneficial. However, I think you seemed to skip the fact that correlation does not prove causation, in that because of increasing sleep or naps, we are guaranteed a better all around healthier life. There are MANY confounding variables that could get in the way and contradict the benefits we receive from naps… such as diet, exercise, balance. Some research even finds naps to be extremely UNBENEFICIAL because it doesn’t allow us to sleep at night and interferes with activity during the day. I think it depends on how long you nap and if it is a legitimate needed nap or not.
This post is very informative and useful. I agree that a study like you recommend would be very useful if it was done well with a large enough and random enough sample. It would also be interesting to find out the ideal length of a nap. A similar cognition test could be done but with comparing different lengths of naps. The scientists may find that one length is ideal, or they may find that it simply depends on the person.