Power Nap

Here is part of an article from someone who has discovered the advantages of taking power naps.

...At 25, I wrote bar reviews and worked a 9-to-5 office job. I wasn't a morning person, so I started napping after dinner and getting up at 8 p.m. to go out. This is when the habit coalesced. I was no longer at my physiological peak, so my body wound down like a clock and I had to sack out to save my strength. What a luxurious and lavish form of laziness!

During big family events, I branched out with my endeavor and took to hitting the couch after the big meal. My family joked when I was the first to lie down, but I was staking my claim. Thanksgiving holds a unique kind of nap: The Tryptophan Coma.

The couch is a real innovation in napping technology. It's best to use a davenport for napping instead of say, a bed of spikes, a futon or a large, jagged rock. Quilts and blankets are also better than traditional bedding, shammys or newspapers.

Throw pillows and couch cushions make better head rests than standard pillows, clog shoes or avocados. If you use a regular pillow, you tend to sleep too long, and it throws your day off.

There's no designated time for a nap, but 15 minutes is a good minimum, and three hours is about as long as you can go before other people in the house begin taking vital signs.

The couch I use now is a long, blue affair with large arms at the sides. When I lie inert and watch TV like a catatonic, I rest my head on the left. When it's nap time, I downshift to the right side.

If the cat and I lie down, it's on the left with me against the back and her at the bow. I'm a heavy drooler when I sleep, so I'm glad that the cushions are stain-
resistant and that Lindsay has long hair. She makes a great sleep-bib. Lindsay's not much of a napper, but I'm bringing her around. Younger people don't have the moxie for this sport.

Cats are professionals when it comes to napping, and should be studied and dissected so that future generations can unlock better advancements in napping.

You can't take a running start into a nap, either. On days off, I take a hot bath, read a bit or do something to justify the nap. After I get home from work, I throw on jeans and a T-shirt, go into the bedroom and schedule a two-hour coma.

I'd love to expound further on the subject, but the tub and the couch are calling. If anyone in this family is destined for the gold medal in the Hour And A Half Roll Onto One Side And Change Your Mind, it's me.

I'm the Jesse Owens of napping. Just look on the back of your Wheaties box. I'm the guy with the all-day bed-head.

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If you're an employee, there's good news. Power Naps increase productivity!

New research advocates napping on the job. It argues, in so many words, that snatching a few zzzzs during the workday makes ergonomic sense as a means of boosting overall productivity and safety. And other recent research suggests napping is good for the heart.

Sara Mednick, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the Salk Institute at the University of California, and Mark Ehrman have written a book about the research into napping, and it devotes some sections to detailing how to do it to best advantage. Called, “Take a Nap! Change your Life,” it talks about studies that show sleepy workers have more accidents, are less productive and are more prone to health and morale problems. It follows that any healthy way to reduce drowsiness on the job will benefit an employer – and employee – on several fronts.

Sleep and fatigue are much studied human factors. Researchers at NASA report that a nap of 26 minutes can boost performance by as much as 34 percent. And a 2006 study from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that napping resulted in improved mood, increased alertness and reduced lapses in performance among doctors and nurses.

Describing the research on her website, Dr. Mednick said it is devoted to understanding how napping can improve human performance. Using new technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), she can pinpoint the areas of the brain that underlie these improvements.

In an interview with the Gannett News Service in an article about the book, Dr. Mednick said that not only do American workers need to take a nap, their companies should require it. She explained that employers who provide a place for a nap will reap the rewards many times over with more creative and efficient employees.

And other recent napping research is a ringing endorsement for its health benefits.

United States and Greek researchers reported in the February 12 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine that people who regularly took siestas – defined by the researchers as napping at least three times per week for an average of at least 30 minutes – had a 37-percent lower coronary mortality than those not taking siestas.

According to United Press International, which reported on the findings, lead author Androniki Naska of University of Athens Medical School and senior author Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard School of Public Health looked at 23,681 individuals living in Greece who, at the beginning of the study, had no history of coronary heart disease, stroke or cancer. They followed the study participants for an average of 6.3 years.

Siestas are common in the Mediterranean region and several Latin American countries, and those countries also tend to have low mortality rates of coronary heart disease. Attempts to link siestas and heart health scientifically, however, had produced conflicting results until the Naska-Trichopoulo study. The researchers say their is the first large prospective study of individuals who were healthy at enrollment and the first study to control for risk factors such as diet and physical activity. These research constraints helped eliminated inconsistencies.

It remains to be seen if the research can persuade employers that laziness and napping on the job are not the same.

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If you start to feel as though you're going to doze off at work, take a quick power nap to rejuvenate.

We've all had those moments: Usually sometime after lunch, we start to feel lethargic. Our limbs grow heavy and our thinking becomes fuzzy. The sounds around us grow muted, and the e-mail we're trying to read doesn't make much sense.

Then it happens -- the eyelids begin to feel like 10-pound weights and the head begins to bob.

We jerk upright as we lurch forward, hoping that no one saw us nearly fall asleep on the job. When it happens again, we grab the candy bar in our desk drawer or head for the coffee pot, looking for the jolt of caffeine needed to keep us awake and alert.

But according to sleep studies, we'd be a whole lot better off -- and so would our employers -- if we simply curled up somewhere and went to sleep for a while.

Just like when we were young and needed a nap when we became cranky, tired and unfocused, American adults need a rest period every day in order to perform their best, researchers say. But just the word "nap" is likely to stir controversy in the workplace.

"Talking about taking a nap makes people look at you like you're sleeping with the boss or selling heroin at work," says Dr. Sara C. Mednick, a researcher at the Salk Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and a nap guru. "It's like it's an unbelievably illicit experience."

Mednick says that not only do American workers need to take a nap, but their companies should require it. Studies have shown that sleepy workers have more accidents, are less productive, are more prone to health problems and have poorer morale. Companies that provide a place for workers to nap will reap the rewards many times over with more creative, happier and healthier employees who are more loyal and efficient, she says.

Still, Mednick says she knows it's very hard to convince Americans -- who believe hard work 24/7 breeds success -- that napping can have a great payoff.

"It's really a lack of foresight," she says. "People just keep working as they are, thinking that they'll have time later to deal with it. But it's like the environment, in that you have to do something now in order to affect the future in a positive way."

Mednick says that napping can "change your life," which is why she has written a book with Mark Ehrman called Take a Nap! Change your life, (Workman, $12.95) that outlines how anyone can -- and should -- incorporate napping into any lifestyle. It provides useful tips on napping, including finding the ideal nap time and duration for you. Some ideas from the book include:

You must be your own sleep therapist. That means you have to understand when, where and how you best can take a nap. Maybe it's in your car at lunch, maybe it's on a mat in a quiet room or maybe it's putting your feet on your desk. You may need to nap only five minutes, or you may require more than an hour, depending on your own body clock.

Napping takes practice. Stress might indeed keep you awake when you first try to nap, but chances are that if you practice relaxation techniques and keep at it, you will soon be able to drop off on a regular basis. Also, many people are sleeping even though they believe they are awake.

Making napping a priority. Don't think that a soda or snack will perk you up and help you get something done. In fact, snacking is just another sign that your body needs sleep. Researchers have found that learning after a nap is equal to learning after a full night's sleep. Test scores of non-nappers were found to drop throughout the day as they became more tired.

Throw out your preconceived notions of napping. Scientists have shown that you get sleepy after lunch no matter what you eat; you are groggy after a nap not because of the nap, but because you need more sleep; and the sleep you get from a nap is just as beneficial as the sleep you get at night.

"I'm not saying you should risk your job in order to take a nap, but I do think that as more of these studies about sleep come out, you're going to see more companies let employees take a nap," Mednick says. "I think it's going to start to sink in how important it is."

Anita Bruzzese is author of "45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy . . . and How to Avoid Them," (www.45things.com). Write to her c/o: Business Editor, Gannett News Service, 7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, Va. 22107. For a reply, include a SASE.

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