Many people are used to taking a nap during the noon break.
In the past, some Western countries believed that taking a nap was a sign of laziness, but now there is a lot of evidence that taking a nap properly can relieve excessive fatigue and prevent sudden death caused by cardiovascular diseases.
A large number of articles and messages seem to tell us that we must take a good nap.
However, is taking a nap necessarily good for your health? Does not take a nap necessarily affect your health?
Why do we take a nap?
There are many reasons why adults take naps.
Most naps are compensatory and are used to compensate for lack of sleep: a nap in the afternoon is a natural tendency to relieve the negative effects of lack of sleep. Naps also have the function of compensatory recuperation and adjustment when the body is uncomfortable.
Others take a [preventive] nap: that is, they choose to take an early nap because they know in advance that they may not get enough sleep, but they still need to stay awake for a long time (for example, they need to work the night shift at night).
Others take a nap [under the influence of the environment]: environmental factors, especially hot weather, are especially easy to make people want to take a nap.
The habit of taking a nap is also affected by [circadian rhythm]: the slow circadian rhythm in the afternoon is the main physiological factor causing taking a nap, and lunch will also make us sleepy.
One example: College students’ drowsiness in the first class in the afternoon may be affected by many factors. The slow rhythm is only one reason, mainly compensatory (lack of sleep at night), but it may also be related to the environment (boring lectures).
Does not take a nap affect your health?
Not really.
Generally speaking, early risers (such as older people) benefit more from naps than late sleepers. This may also be why many elders must [nag] young people to take more naps because they benefit themselves.
But in fact, taking a nap or not is only a personal choice. As long as you feel that you have had enough rest, you don’t have to force it.
Sleep is everyone’s unique habit. It is reasonable for some people to sleep 8 hours a day, while others only need 5 hours of sleep a day. As long as one’s sleep habits can ensure one’s normal physiological needs and social activities, it is normal.
The habit of taking a nap is affected by age.
Age has a great influence on nap (as well as daytime sleep).
Newborns
The whole day’s sleep of newborn babies is a series of short sleeps. Even if you sleep all night, you still need to take a nap during the day. And this sleep phenomenon will last for many years until childhood.
The elderly
Nap will reappear in people’s old age. Objectively speaking, the elderly have more sufficient time and opportunity to take a nap, which is also related to sleep patterns that change with age.
Adolescents and young people
Due to changes in physiological sleep needs and easy lack of sleep at night, some people are used to taking a nap during the day.
Taking a nap is good or bad
Therefore, taking a nap is regarded as an effective way to supplement energy when long-term continuous work is required.
Although taking a nap for a while has great benefits, it may also bring negative results.
A 20-30 minute nap is beneficial
Naps are usually shorter than normal sleep. A short 20-minute nap can refresh people and improve their alertness. At the same time, it can also improve their efficiency, such as more concentration, faster reaction and clearer thinking. This enhancement of efficiency can usually last for 3 hours or even more than 10 hours.
If you take a nap for more than one hour, you will get more sleepy
If you fall into a nap for a long time, you may fall into sleep inertia for a few minutes after waking up.
Sleep inertia: Sometimes when people wake up, they will feel bleary-eyed, vague and unable to act immediately, and it is still obvious for a few minutes or hours.
During this period, the performance of cognitive ability and memory will be very poor, and even psychological activities and perception will be greatly affected.
- If you didn’t sleep well the night before, then the nap time will be slightly prolonged, and people will be more energetic and will not feel [more sleepy] [more sleepy]; If you had slept enough the night before and slept too long in the nap, you would be more sleepy and sleepy.
The harder it is for a person to wake up, the more inert he is to sleep.
A short nap may also be a clinical manifestation of sleep disorders.
A short nap can be an integral part of the sleep awakening system of healthy people, and may also be one of the clinical manifestations of some sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, sleep apnea, etc.
Through polysomnography monitoring and multiple nap incubation tests, it can be determined whether the daytime sleep is excessive. If the subject falls asleep within 5 minutes many times, it can be considered that this sleep state is a manifestation of pathological sleep.