What Are Naps And Are They Beneficial?

Have you ever seen someone nod off for a brief moment? This is known as micro sleep. You may have experienced this yourself, on a train, on your journey home or at work after lunch. Micro sleep or micro naps refer to short periods of sleep, usually lasting as little as 15 seconds, according to the Sleep Foundation. Micro naps cause feelings of drowsiness, which can be fixed by taking a proper nap. However, are humans built for taking naps? Read on to find out.

What Are The Benefits Of Napping?

Picture this scenario: It is only lunch time, but your eyes are getting heavy and starting to close. You start to wonder whether a nap would help or whether it would derail your day. However, long naps in the afternoon and the evening are like snacking before going to bed; neither beneficial nor recommended. This means that the timing of naps is vastly important.

Feeling a drop in afternoon alertness from one to four PM is normal, so perhaps short afternoon nap times like we see in cultures that take a siesta is the way to go.

Dr Matthew Walker, a sleep specialist, claims there are five benefits of napping, including: improving your mood, increasing your energy, repairing a sleep deficit and aiding memory consolidation and cognition. They can also help you understand your sleep cycle.

The Stages Of A Nap

According to Sara C. Mednick, a sleep researcher at the University of California, there are three main stages of sleep during naptime.

Stage One: As you fall asleep, you enter Stage One in the first two to five minutes of sleep.

Stage Two: This stage lasts for about 30 minutes: the body temperature drops, muscles relax and your breathing and heart rate become more regular. Neurons start to fire in unison creating waves of activity that sweep across the cortex, punctuated by rapid bursts of neural activity called sleep spindles.

Stage Three: lasts 20-30 minutes and is where your deepest sleep occurs. You then enter REM sleep, and this lasts around ten to 20 minutes in a nap. During REM the brain becomes more active and the end of REM signals completion of the sleep cycle.

So, Will A Nap Make You Feel Better?

This depends on what stages of sleep the nap includes. Sara C. Mednick delves deeper into the topic and discusses the duration of naps and what that means for you.

A 30-minute nap consists mainly of stage two sleep which is associated with long-term potentiation. The process is thought to strengthen synapses between neurons that are essential for learning.

Whereas 20–30-minute naps stop short of stage three's deep sleep, making it easy to wake up from, 30–60-minute naps have the benefits of stage two sleep and takes you to stage three’s deeper sleep. During this time, multiple brain areas work together to transfer information from short-term memory storage to long-term memory storage and this is the most difficult stage to wake up from.

60–90-minute naps enter the REM stage, where the prefrontal cortex largely responsible for inhibition and cognitive control becomes less active. Meanwhile, the amygdala and cingulate cortex regions associated with emotion and motivation are highly active.

Researchers have posited that a combination of these things leads to bizarre dreams during REM sleep, as the decrease in inhibition and cognitive control lead to wild associations. Thanks to activity in the amygdala and cingulate cortex, these associations can be between emotionally charged topics and some researchers think this stage might help us make innovative connections between ideas upon waking.

Time Of Day Matters

So, if you nap later, you may rob yourself of the sleep pressure needed to go to sleep at night.

• Morning naps are dominated by REM and are easier to wake up from than stage three naps even though they are longer.
• Midday naps have equal parts of REM and deep sleep.
• Evening naps lead to a deeper sleep.

Nappers VS Non-Nappers

We are evenly split between nappers and non-nappers. Nappers consistently show cognitive benefits from napping, while non-nappers may not. Researchers think this could be because nappers are able to stay in a lighter sleep and move through sleep stages more easily. Meanwhile, non-nappers may experience more deep sleep while napping makes them weak and unstable afterwards.

Napping In Comfort

The environment, aura and what you sleep on make a difference to your naptime, such as fairy lights, gentle music, mood lighting, soft sheets, comfy pillows, and a mattress you can melt into.

Look no further than a TEMPUR® pillow, TEMPUR® mattress and TEMPUR® luxury sheets for a rejuvenating nap. They are here to put you at ease and help you snooze at any time of day, so why not surround yourself with the TEMPUR® collection?

So, will a nap help you feel better? There is only one way to find out. Share your experiences with TEMPUR® today.