Now I don’t know about you, but speaking from personal experience, I take a nap almost every day. These range from 20 minutes to a couple
hours. I have never regret this naps, although some are quickly to look down on nappers. New studies prove however, that naps could be good for ones health. According to an online college blog there are numerous reasons why college students and anyone for that matter should nap! Lets break down the reasons.
The first reason is that napping could potentially make you smarter, or at least help you improve you memory to remember more facts. A study done in California split 39 students into 
two groups. Their task was to match faces with names. At 2:00 half of the students took a 90 minute nap. At 6:00 when they were asked to remember which names went with which names, the students who napped remembered more than the students who didn’t. The science behind this is the napping clears one’s short term memory in the Hippocampus, making storage for more.
So now that we know that naps are good for you, how long is the most beneficial nap? The Boston Globe explains what each interval of sleep does to the brain. 20 minute naps, or as other some may call a “catnap” will just awake and alert an individual. 
In fact, because coffee takes around 30 minutes to kick in, many suggest drinking a cup before a quick cat nap, so you can wake up as energized as ever. More intense naps that can range anywhere from 90 minutes to a few hours can usually take one through a whole sleep cycle, which will greatly improve memory. An interesting fact though is that even if you can’t actually fall asleep, laying down for 20 minutes or even up to an hour will relax you and release an immense amount of stress.
For all those freshman out there, heres some advice: to avoid that freshman 15 either get more sleep or take more naps. The American Thoracic Society International Conference concluded that
individuals weigh less when there receive more than five hours a sleep and in reverse individuals who receive less than five hours of sleep gain more weight easily. Some scientific reasons behind this are that not sleeping interferes with the carbohydrate cycle and therefore messes up fat storage. Less sleep also decreases leptin levels, which will cause your body to feel the need for more energy. Lastly, not enough sleep can affect proteins that deal with muscle and fat proportions. Therefore more sleep equals less weight.
So the next time you’re feeling tired after your 9 am, don’t let anyone tell you napping is a bad idea. That extra 30 minutes of sleep will help you progress so much further in the day, with more alertness and a better learning capacity. While of course, the obvious healthier option is to just get a good long night of sleep. However, being a fellow college student, I know that is nearly impossible, but now you know that not only is a nap acceptable, it is also another healthy alternative. 
I think its important to realize, based on your post, that getting less sleep doesn’t magically cause you to gain weight. Rather, it encourages you to eat more food which in turn causes the weight gain because chances are if you are tired and hungry all the time you won’t be getting a lot of exercise. Anyways, great post.
I have actually heard about this before. Apparently, our bodies were designed to take short naps instead of sleep for 8 hours. Our bodies were designed to take a 4 hour sleep, followed by a nap. I always thought it was weird that the possibility of me sleeping “incorrectly” was weird.
Sources
http://www.mindfulmuscle.com/dont-need-good-night-sleep/
I could really use extra nap time so I enjoyed this blog. As a student at Penn State, I believe that getting proper sleep is essential to being successful. I struggle with getting enough sleep at night, so knowing that a nap during the day is beneficial is really nice. Ill be sure to pass this information along to my roommate who naps all the time! Heres a link from times that discusses the debate whether napping is good or bad: http://time.com/3449959/is-napping-healthy/
One of my blogs were relatively similar. I too express how valuable a nap can be. But in my post, I went on to explain that excess napping is bad. It takes up more time, and can cause the napper to feel groggy and without energy if asleep for too long. Basically it is all about the sleep cycle which you explained, and when it is broken. waking up in REM, you will feel tired. Waking up in NREM, you will be refreshed, Great post.
Definitely have to agree with Jon on this, understanding your “sleep” health is essential. When I would go and visit my doctor about my sleep issues he would ask me if I napped and how long I napped. Come to find out that i was interrupting my natural wake sleep cycle by napping for more than thirty minutes at the wrong time on the day.
It is great I cam across this post. I actually do not get to much sleep and wish I could take more naps and actually extend my hours of sleep. It was great to know how one or two hours of sleep make a difference in your health. I am definitely going to take this in consideration and will try to take more naps. I actually been considering trying this since my roommate sleeps a lot and she is always very energetic while I am very sleepy. So here is an article I found about the benefits of napping. Besides your memory there are other great ways in which sleep can maintain you healthy. Thearticle talks about how naps improve your brain capacity.
Now I know to tell my bio professor that when I can’t remember a formula, it’s because of lack of sleep lol. It just sucks that I don’t even have 20 minutes of down time to take a nap. Nonetheless sleep in general.
Myself and many other college students will learn to really appreciate this post. My last post-http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/09/16/lack-of-sleep/ -discussed the lack of sleep that college students and teens alike have to deal with. It is great news to learn that napping can be so beneficial to someone like myself who consistently gets less than six hours of sleep a night. I also like that you included the part about how if you drink coffee right before a nap it will take 30 minutes to set in and you will wake up feeling very chipper. This makes me wonder if there are any other useful tips that will improve my nap’s quality or efficiency?