Be a kid again
Napping is a brief or short period of sleep, especially taken during the day time. Napping is considered to be very good for health and has many benefits. A short nap of 10-15 minutes can help to improve mood, alertness and performance. Naps do not necessarily make up for inadequate or poor quality night sleep. In today’s busy life style people hardly get time for a short nap .People nowadays appear to be becoming more and more sleep deprived due to excess work pressure and a changed life style.
Naps can be classified in the following three types.
- Planned napping:- It is also called preparatory napping. It involves taking a nap before actually feeling sleepy.
- Emergency napping:-It occurs when we are suddenly very tired and cannot continue with the activity we are engaged in.
- Habitual napping:- It is practiced when a person takes a nap at the same time every day.
Some known benefits of naps are:
- A short nap restores alertness, enhances performance and reduces mistakes and accidents. A research by NASA shows a short nap improves performance by 34%.
- Napping Also has psychological benefits. A nap can be a pleasant luxury, a mini vacation. It provides easy way to get some relaxation and rejuvenation.
- Helps to boost mood due to sleep deprived irritability.
- Helps to improve immune system affected by Sleep deprivation. Due to less sleep inflammatory molecules known as cytokines increase which affect the immune system.
- Taking a nap also helps to improve the memory and physical stamina.
Negative effects:-It can leave people with sleep inertia, especially when they rest for more than 10-20 minutes. Sleep inertia is defined as the feeling of grogginess and disorientation that can come with awakening from a deep sleep. Generally it lasts for a few minutes to half an hour. A Study indicates that napping is associated with increased risk of heart failure in people already at risk. Apart from that a quick nap is considered very well for health. So one must take some time from his/her busy schedule to take a power nap.
