I am married to a veteran napper. For as long as I can remember, my husband Tom is truly gifted at taking an afternoon nap (usually at 3 PM on the dot) and waking up 60 minutes later refreshed and ready to go. His naps are sometimes shorter but rarely longer. He can go to sleep immediately upon settling in for his nap and wake up without any alarm.
I also remember my grandfather taking a short nap after lunch. He would actually go to his bedroom and “stretch out” (his words) for just a short while. I don’t ever remember my grandmother napping though she would occasionally, sitting in her rocking chair in the living room, “rest her eyes.”
For years I resisted napping. I was too busy to nap. I had too much to do to nap. Or simply, I was at work and napping is usually frowned upon in the 9 to 5 work world. At least it is in the United States. Siesta is not an ingrained part of our over-achieving culture. My children will tell you though that they have caught me on more than one occasion “resting my eyes” and then denying that I was asleep. (Hmm…I am pretty sure I was indeed asleep).
Since retiring, I have found that I, too, enjoy an afternoon nap on occasion. But unless I set an alarm (which I have been known to ignore) I might sleep longer than I really want to sleep. Interestingly, I have not found that an afternoon nap interrupts my nightly sleep.
More and more health experts are now extolling the benefit of napping. Many scientists believe that we need sleep—whether a long stretch at one time or a nap—to clear away the “cellular trash” that accumulates. Our brain waves slow down when we sleep and this slow down apparently benefits our overall health.
One of the most interesting articles about napping recently appeared in The NYTimes in an article about how many animals nap. We have certainly seen our family pets take a nap break.
They seem to welcome any opportunity to close their eyes and drift into a state of relaxation.
Carl Zimmer in his November 30 article in The NY Times shares some interesting sleep data about a variety of animals.
Brown bats sleep for 20 hours each day.
Giraffes sleep only two hours on average.
Sloths in a zoo will sleep 16 hours each day but in the wild limit themselves to about 10 hours of sleep each day.
Seals, unlike us humans, can shut down one side of their brain and while it naps, use the other side of their brain to continue swimming and going about their daily business.
But my favorite napping data involves chinstrap penguins who live just north of Antarctica. Zimmer writes:
Penguins are champion power nappers. Over the course of a single day, they fall asleep thousands of times, each bout a few seconds long, a new study has found.
These short burst of sleep are known as microsleep. Even though penguins do not sleep at all when they are in the ocean, they have mastered these multiple bursts of microsleep when on land, especially when caring for their young. I think any parent of a baby or young children can see the benefit.
There is a lot of research about the great benefits of napping. Jade Wu, a sleep researcher and psychologist at Duke University says a nap is “like a performance-enhancing drug without the drug part.” She believes that napping can help us “think more clearly, react more quickly, boost [our] mood and improve [our] memory.” She suggests 20 minutes as an ideal nap length but it seems that each of us has to discover that on our own.
And about that siesta. Siesta is a Spanish word for napping. A siesta was usually taken after lunch. The average Spanish work day was historically divided into two parts with a lovely two-hour break in the middle for lunch and rest. Sadly, the majority of people in Spain today do not have that block of time in their day to enjoy a leisurely lunch and a siesta following.
We all might be better if we follow the advice of wise PEANUTS cartoonist Charles M. Schulz:
Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.
Happy napping!
I do love my afternoon nap. Just what I need to recharge. I do not like to nap in a bed as then I usually nap to long. I like my stressless chair for 30 minutes to an hour..
I find that if I nap I wake up more tired, so I just retire to my bed room for an hour and read. Kate, on the other hand has to have her nap. She sets an alarm, but without her hearing aids doesn’t hear it, so I have to keep track, otherwise she would sleep for hours. Our brother Henry can nap like Tom.