benzado

Nap Fail

rubysneakers:

Naps are the worst you guys.  I know it’s controversial, but it’s true.  They make you feel like shit.

They won’t if you limit your naps to 20 minutes.

I’m not aware of any controversy, but this is what I learned in a college psychology class taught by a sleep researcher.

The act of sleeping consists of several stages, identified by brain activity, corresponding to “deepness” of sleep. Over the course of a full night’s sleep, you will shift from higher to deeper stages of sleep, then back up and down again. Early in the night you spend more time in deep sleep; you wake naturally when you pass from stage to stage back up to consciousness. That is a full sleep cycle.

If you limit your nap to 20 minutes, you won’t have enough time to fall into a deep sleep, and should feel better when you wake. If you nap for much longer than that, you will probably wake in the middle of a deeper stage of sleep. By jumping directly from deep sleep to consciousness, your brain and body won’t have time to adjust, and you’ll feel worse than you did before the nap.

So that’s where the idea of a “power nap” comes from.