Researchers found that napping 3 times a week can reduce your risk of heart disease by 37 percent. In this episode, I share the research I found on the benefits of napping and share my hacks on napping the right way to reap their true value of them.
Did you enjoy the podcast today? Please let me know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Every month I draw one lucky reviewer to have a free one-hour consultation with me. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you’re tuning in from so that you always catch the next episode.
SHOWNOTES
Nanna Nap – a short sleep taken to refresh oneself, especially during the day.
It’s in the dictionary.
noun; compounding an extremely short nap. ‘Nano’ is a suffix, from the Greek ‘nano’ meaning dwarf.
I started calling them nanna naps because my nana used to always lay down for an afternoon nap.
Researchers tracked 23,681 Greek men for six years. Those who napped three times a week had a 37 per cent reduced risk of dying from heart disease.
Effects on mental health include improved mood, decreased stress and greater psychological balance.
Power naps increase memory by almost 20 per cent during the remainder of the day and research conducted at Harvard highlights a power nap significantly improves performance on repetitive perceptual and cognitive tasks.
Professor Leon Lack from Flinders University in South Australia led a study into the effectiveness of power naps. He says it’s the length of sleep that is crucial to our post-nap performance.
“Ten to 15 minutes of sleep seems to be the optimum period in terms of improving mental operations, performance, reaction times and subjective feelings of alertness,” he says. “And that improvement in performance and alertness seems to be maintained for up to two and sometimes three hours after the nap.
Interestingly, the five-minute nap just didn’t produce the same amount of improvement, while longer naps of 25 to 30 minutes led to subjects being somewhat drowsy and less alert for up to an hour after the nap”.
Our body runs sleep cycles of about 90 minutes.
Waking up after 40 to 60 minutes will put you in phase 3-4 of the sleep cycle, also called Slow Wave Sleep (SWS). You will have the feeling of like a hangover, groggy and the complete opposite of what you are wanting to achieve with a nap.
So a nap is less than 20 mins and a sleep is more than 90
In Chinese medicine we say the way we get energy is to use energy.
You have to spend energy to get energy.
So the time you feel like I JUST NEED A NAP is the MOST IMPORTANT time that you get up and go for a walk.
You get to choose. There are studies to support short naps and to also power on through and move your body.
Napping Healthy Life Hacks
The Healthy Life Hacks I want to share with you today are:
- Make it less than 20 mins or grab a real sleep at more than 90mins
- Move your body rather than napping. Which has mostly been my system
Did you enjoy the podcast today? Please let me know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Every month I draw one lucky reviewer to have a free one-hour consultation with me. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you’re tuning in from so that you always catch the next episode.
Are you looking for more great resources? Get a free copy of my Feed Your Body ebook here and be sure to explore my blog while you are there.
