Most of us believe that sleep is essential for function and focus.
Recent findings suggest that even afternoon naps can improve the quality of brain function throughout the day.
Robert Stickgold, PhD conducted a study through the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
His experiment required 99 college students to inspect and memorize a maze presented to them on a computer screen.
Next, the students were asked to navigate a 3-D version of the maze on the computer. At this point, half of the participants took an hour and a half nap, while the others watched videos.
After the students navigated through the maze a second time, it became evident that nappers were much more successful than students who had stayed awake.
What’s more, nappers who dreamed of the maze performed ten times better then nappers who did not dream.
It is interesting to note, that nappers who dreamed of the maze, had originally done poorly. Some are thinking that possible we dream about situations that are more difficult for us.
Sleep is so important, yet many people not only do not have the luxury of an afternoon nap, they also suffer from sleep disorders.
Sleep disorders are often caused by a combination of things and could be greatly improved if we looked at them from a Mind Body perspective.
To learn more about sleep disorders, check out our Mind/Body Courses.
In the meantime, leave a comment. How do sleep disorders affect your patients and how do you treat them?
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Yes its true.My daughter says she can stay up
longer and concentrate better when she has a
short nap in the afternoon.
Thanks for the validation of my preference for a short nap during the day. I, too, would like to see studies that compare naps with different activities than videos. Videos, for me, can be rather draining because they have a certain focus and thus do not allow my mind to freely roam. It is in the roaming that I relax and often gain insights that are of benefit. Though I prefer naps, are there less taxing activities than videos that can offer benefits more similar to naps? These would be helpful for people who cannot or will not nap.
My thoughts were the same as Mr. Warren – I’d like to see naps compared to non-video watching activities.
I never took naps as a young man because I felt so groggy and off for the rest of the day, like I had been drugged or something, and always felt as if the rest of the day was wasted.
Visiting a mentor in med school, he one day mentioned his daily 12-minute naps, and I mentioned what I stated above. He told me it was because I was sleeping too long and interrupting deep sleep. I am not sure where he got the 12 minutes from, though to be fair I have seen several different time increments cited for N1…. Only because I respected him so much did I try it, and the results were amazing to me. I now take a 12-15 nap every day to start my lunch hour.
Thanks for this post.
This happens to me every sinlge time! The days I have stuff planned, LK skips his naps, and won’t do it. The days I give up, he naps, and i have no idea .
Ernest Rossi wrote about something very similar — that periodically throughout the day, we need 20 minutes of nap or meditation or idle for our brain to achieve optimum functioning. Apparently, Milton Erickson was well aware of this and built it into his hypnotic techniques and suggestions.
In general the research supports the consolidation effect of sleep and especially dreaming. However, the comparison group here watched videos. I suspect that this activity compared to almost any other non video watching activity would result in a performance deficit. It would be interesting to compare napping to some more bio/brain friendly activity like reading, writing, walking, etc. My hypothesis would be that the advantage of naps would be reduced.
Yes , I agree with the intersting findings on volunteers doing better/ performing well if they had a nap afternoon, as against those who remained awake. I have found it refreshing to me even if I take just 10-20 minutes rest and try to relax after lunch before I take the afternoon work. Rest to brain after whatever small lunch/ snakes we may take mid-day , gives tremendous rejuvination to the brain cells and afternoon performances become much better with quality thinking and action. I am a very educationist as well as an executive doing variety of works in my office and patient care, research or educational interaction with students.
More research could be done on this field on mid-day lunch/nap for 30 minutes, one hour or nil, in different work situation and to establish more validated data on afternoon performances in workers/ and also in knowledge workers.
It also helps lead a healthy life with longevity.
Professor Ramesh C deka , Director AIIMS, New Delhi, India
What a joy to find soenome else who thinks this way.
many of us remember from grad school that if you were pulling an “allnighter”, it was better to take intermittent brief naps than work continuously.
I have known the benefits and importance of a nap since I was a child. My father lived to be 84 in the high stressed world of gold and stock investing in Hong Kong. He took a daily nap of 20 minutes after lunch before he returned to the Gold and Silver Exchange. I also practice napping whenever my schedule allows and have been recommending it to friends and clients.
Alice Tobin,Eden Energy Medicine practitioner