Ready for a nap?

Are you putting your health and wellbeing at risk by not getting enough sleep?  While the World Health Organization and National Sleep Foundation both stress the importance of eight hours sleep each night it seems that unfortunately two-thirds of us are unlikely to meet this minimum recommendation.   Which is a worry because not getting enough sleep can make it harder for us to be productive, remember and recall information, learn, make decisions and work well with others. Over time it can have real implications for our physical and mental health.

So as one of the world’s largest annual sleep studies involving more than 1.5 billion participants from sixty countries – known simply as “daylight savings” - concludes on Sunday 5th April it’s a good time to remind ourselves of the importance of sleep and to explore just how sensitive our bodies are to changes in sleep routines.

What are the impacts of “daylight savings” on us?

Research has found that losing one hours sleep when we move our clocks forward at the beginning of “daylight savings” coincides with a 24% increase in heart attacks. However in the few days after we move our clocks back when “daylight savings” finishes there is a 21% decrease in the number.  And a study spanning over twenty years found that we are 6% more likely to be involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident in the week following the “daylight savings” time changes.

Given that we know “sleep recovery” is key to keeping physical wellbeing on track, for those of us working from home in the middle of a pandemic, is it time to flex our daytime routines and consider taking a nap?

While many of us may scoff at the idea, regarding it as self-indulgent (or behaviour best left to our twilight years), the science actually indicates that taking time out for a short nap is likely to repay us with a number of benefits.

NASA – an organization that has long understood the occupational benefits of sleep – researched naps and they found that short naps can improve our performance on tasks by 34%, and overall alertness by more than 50%.  Taking a short nap has also been found to also improve the alertness and performance of air traffic controllers.  A study of Italian Police officers found that taking a nap immediately before working an afternoon or evening shift halved the risk of a traffic accidents.

An afternoon nap may even make us smarter, as studies have found it can boost our short term memory, increase our capacity to learn new tasks and have greater creative insight.  After a nap we’re  twice as likely to be able to solve complex problems, and process our emotions better.  It seems that taking a nap is like hitting a refresh button for our brains that clears the scratches and roadblocks in our mind, making the way for smoother and better functioning afterwards.   As Professor Matthew Walker from UC Berkeley explains, at a neurocognitive level, a nap not only rights the wrongs of prolonged wakefulness but can also move us beyond where we were before we had the nap.

Napping can also improve our physical health.  A Greek study involving 25,000 people over 6 years found that controlling for other risk factors, regular daytime nappers are up to 37% less likely to die from heart disease. This puts napping on a par with regular exercise or taking aspirin in terms of decreasing disease incidence.

However, if you’ve ever woken up after a Sunday nap feeling groggy and disorientated chances are you may doubt the benefits of day time napping. This feeling, known as sleep inertia can actually lower our performance for a short time after waking.  This tends to happen when our naps are longer than 30 minutes.  Paradoxically naps can also undermine our health if we enjoy them so much that we have more than one a day.

So, how do we design our naps to get maximum value from them?

·       Make it a practice – firstly, just consider it as part of your “sleep recovery and restoration” tool kit.  While getting enough sleep at night is critical it’s not the only way to recover. Don’t feel guilty about taking some time away from your workstation for a snooze in the afternoon as the science suggests it’ll most likely be well worth the investment for your productivity and performance.  And know that napping, like any skill takes commitment and  intentional practice to build capability.

·       Schedule power naps - Research suggests that ideally naps should be between 10 - 20 minutes long.  That’s all we need to reap the benefits of napping.  And the good news is that this can easily fit into most working days.  Schedule the time in your diary - it might be after lunch - and organise a quiet place to ensure it happens.  And if you’re not able to find a suitable place, get yourself some eye masks and headphones.  Then set your alarm, take some deep meditative breaths or use relaxation techniques if required, and enjoy.

·       Determine your needs -while generally we just need a short nap of less than 25 minutes, sometimes we may need longer.  For example, you might need to recover from a difficult or big energy-depleting situation.  If this is the case, try to get a full nap of about 90 minutes duration.  This will give your body time to go through one complete sleep cycle and give you a better chance of waking up feeling refreshed.

·       Time your naps – generally, the best time is 7 hours after we wake up from night sleep, so this means that an afternoon nap is most effective. However avoid napping after 3pm as this can make it difficult to fall asleep at night.  Try to notice when your energy levels dip, and use this as an indicator for what might suit you best.  And then also notice the effect it has on your sleep quality at night and make adjustments if you need to.

·       Try a nappinchino – research has actually found that the way to a perfect nap is to drink a cup of coffee just before we powernap.  It seems that as the caffeine takes about 25 minutes to be absorbed in our bloodstream, we’ll be likely to wake up not only feeling refreshed but fuelled with a caffeine boost of alertness and energy.

If you want to learn more, I recommend two great books Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker and The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H Pink.

What can you do to use napping as a refresh button for your brain?

Originally posted on LinkedIn April 2020