The psychologist from the University of California Sara Mednick has classified naps according to the needs that each person needs to cover. Ten to twenty minutes is ideal to clear your mind and get back to work quickly . With an hour you enter the slow wave sleep, which helps to remember facts, places and faces. An hour and a half constitutes a complete cycle of REM sleep and is recommended to improve creativity and emotional memory.
These are some of the advantages of a nap:
1. It acts as a cardiovascular insurance
To protect the heart, the nap has to be a little long, specifically 45 minutes. It takes this long for blood pressure to drop after a stressful day, according to Allegheny College of Pennsylvania, in the US Researchers verified it in 2011 with the help of 85 university students, of whom half slept after eating and the other half does not. The conclusion was unequivocal: sleep decreased stress and heart rate after an episode of psychological stress. The cardioprotective effect is so evident that, in the opinion of specialists, people with this habit are almost 40% less likely to suffer a heart attack .
2. Equivalent to a night’s sleep
Says Sara Mednick, from the University of California, in the USA And the nap does not have to be very long: thirty minutes is enough. The researcher studies its consequences on metabolism and cognitive abilities, and argues that this type of rest reduces the desire to eat, favors creativity, improves perception and enhances memory, learning and even sexual life. Best of all, the treatment has no side effects, except the feeling of drowsiness if it lasts a long time.
3. Shorten reaction times
Sleep medicine pioneer William Dement often explains that NASA scientists became enthusiastic about napping when they measured its effects on airmen who had to fly long distances across the Pacific. Interrupting their activity to nap for twenty-six minutes during the crossing had surprising effects: the pilots only had 34 micro-dreams of between three and ten seconds in length and their reaction time improved. On the other hand, those who did not rest registered 120 micro-dreams, and what is worse, twenty-two of them when the plane descended to land.
4. It makes us more productive
Which is better, dragging out the fatigue during the evening workday or interrupting it for ten minutes to tune up the brain ? The neurophysiologist at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid Antonio Pedrera points out that one of the proven effects of napping is the improvement in productivity. It happens if it is done after lunch and also at night: “For people who work the night shift, a break of only fifteen minutes in the middle of it allows them to continue at full capacity afterwards.” The brains do not need any more time to get in tune: “It is a quick reset like the one a computer does when we turn it off and on again.”
5. Essential to grow
Dr. María Sainz, head of the Preventive Medicine Service of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid, is clear that napping “is a practice that will continue to exist because it responds to a physiological need.” If I had to prescribe naps as a compulsory treatment to someone, I have no doubt that it would be two groups: babies and adolescents. Their development depends, to a large extent, on the number of hours they sleep . “Up to eighteen or twenty years is essential, because the body is in full progression and growth hormone is only released when you rest,” he explains. Babies do it for twelve to sixteen hours until they are three years old. They do not need to insist, but adolescents tend to sleep less than the eight or nine hours they should, and taking a nap would make up for what they rob them of sleep at night.
6. Nod to clear
Leon Lack, a professor of psychology at Flinders University in Australia, says there is a surefire way to get your mind going after your meal: ten minutes of sleep . A quick break is more effective than a half-hour break, he found in a group of 24 volunteers who were subjected to mental agility tasks after the break. The acuity of those who slept little was immediately evident and during a period of two and a half hours, he explains in his research, while those who rested thirty minutes were dragged by what specialists know as sleep inertia. In other words, they were slow to wake up.
7. Improves mood
“You only have to see a sleepy baby’s tantrum to realize the effects of a nap: it is a great antidote to irritability and an optimal therapy to improve mood,” says Dr. Sainz. Practiced since childhood, it constitutes an emotional vaccine. Research from the University of Colorado, in the US, points out that little ones who skip naps have a higher risk of suffering from mood disorders later on. The scientists found that three-year-olds who were deprived of it had a 34% decrease in positive emotional responses.
