Many people drink coffee after lunch to fight off afternoon drowsiness. However, the best way to drive away drowsiness and clear your foggy mind is to take a short nap of less than 30 minutes, called a “power nap.”
According to experts, taking a short nap during the day allows your brain to rest, making you more alert. It also helps fight off drowsiness.
“We know that sleep is an easy and useful way to quickly improve attention, focus, productivity, creativity, and mood. It’s like holding a golden dice,” says James Mars, a professor at Cornell University in the United States who has studied sleep for 48 years.
According to medical media outlet MedicalXpress, Professor Mars, author of ‘Sleep for Success!’, says that almost everyone experiences a drop in energy in the afternoon. This is a natural phenomenon according to the body’s circadian rhythm, where sleepiness occurs once every 24 hours at night and once between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
People usually go through several sleep cycles at night, each lasting about 90 minutes, and each cycle consists of five stages, from light sleep to deep sleep. One sleep cycle is a continuous state of deep sleep, non-REM sleep (sleep with little eye movement and little dreaming, divided into four stages, with stages 3 and 4 being slow-wave sleep corresponding to deep sleep) followed by a brief period of light sleep, REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep, shallow sleep similar to being awake).
Naps follow this same cycle, which is why Professor Mars doesn’t recommend naps of more than an hour. When you wake up from a deep sleep, it can take up to an hour to return to normal, due to a phenomenon called “sleep inertia.”
Short naps involve only stage 2 sleep, which is particularly helpful for wakefulness and memory, says Dr. Sarah Mednick, a sleep researcher at the University of California, Irvine.
“A nap is like switching into a low-power mode for a little while to allow your body to recover,” Dr. Mednick explains.
According to her research, which she co-authored in her book Take a Nap! Change Your Life, napping was found to be more effective than caffeine or a placebo in improving cognitive function. Coffee consumed in the afternoon was the least effective of the three.
“We found in our experiments that placebos worked better than caffeine, so if you tell yourself that you’ve had caffeine, you’ll perform better than if you actually had caffeine,” Dr. Mednick said.
To make the most of your short nap, find a quiet, dark, cool space and set an alarm to go off in 15 to 20 minutes. Even if you don’t feel like you’re sleeping, you can still reap the benefits of a nap, says Dr. Mednick. People don’t feel asleep until they reach stage 3, the deepest sleep stage, or “slow-wave sleep.” “When you’re in stage 2 sleep, your brain is still alert to the world around you,” he says. “That doesn’t mean you can’t get the benefits of sleep.”
Experts explain that napping doesn’t interfere with your nighttime sleep, as long as you don’t nap too late. They also advise aiming for a nap about six to seven hours after waking up in the morning, and trying to go to bed at the same time every day.
Professor Jeong Gi-yeong of the Department of Neurology at Seoul National University Hospital, who is also the president of the Korean Sleep Research Society, also expressed the same opinion on a TV program in January of this year, saying, “A short nap has a powerful effect on recovering from fatigue,” and “About 20 minutes is effective. If it exceeds 30 minutes, it is actually difficult for the body to recover.”
However, Professor Mars advises that people who have trouble falling asleep at night should avoid napping during the day. He especially cautions older people, who tend to sleep too long during the day.
Reporter Park Hae-sik, Donga.com [email protected]
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2024-08-26 13:32:22