That is the question…Rose knows that many of us sleep around 8 hours per night, which is considered a normal sleeping pattern or monophasic sleep. On the other hand a biphasic sleeper not only sleeps during the night they also nap during the day. Siestas are considered the norm in Spain and many Latin American countries, not so much in Britain and the U.S.A.
The siesta takes advantage of what is known as the post lunch dip, a period right after lunch when you feel tired and could fall asleep easy. Siestas or “power naps” do not last longer than 30 minutes to avoid going into a deeper stage of sleep which would be hard to wake up from. A power nap revitalizes the mind and body having the same effect of an extra few hours of sleep. If you take a longer nap, around 90 minutes the body will have time to complete a full cycle of sleep and you would either be in REM or NREM stage 1 upon waking.
The best time to wake up refreshed is at the end of a sleep cycle. Sleep cycles have 7 stages and repeat over and over, so if you take a nap and experience one or two cycles wake up exactly at the end to get the most benefit. Waking up in the middle of a cycle can cause more damage than good. The average sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes although long-term biphasic sleepers have been known to reduce this time to as little as 75 minutes.
Biphasic sleep is nothing more than sleeping twice a day usually involving a 30-90 nap and 3 -4 ½ hours of core sleep. Usually the length of the nap is maintained at a single cycle; both the difference between the nap and core sleep and the length of core sleep should be fine-tuned to suit an individual.
What are the benefits to napping? Biphasic sleep can reduce the total number of hours you spend asleep, can increase the quality of sleep and can improve both clarity and frequency of dream recall. For those that work out, naps have an impact on recovery from weight lifting.
On the other hand, it may be difficult to interact with monophasic sleepers as far as taking care of business matters. Other than that the adjustment from monophasic to biphasic sleep takes about a week. You may feel like you are experiencing jetlag. Once you have made the switch to biphasic sleep try to stick to a routine. Don’t feel bad if you oversleep, you can always start over. There will be times when you have a social activity you want to attend, or a TV show you want to watch, or you had too much caffeine, just don’t be too hard on yourself as your mind and body are adjusting to your new sleeping schedule and your established routine will get easier with time.
New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. The findings propose that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. In opposition, they reported the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become. Sleep not only rights the wrong from prolonged periods of wakefulness, it moves you past where you were before you took a nap. Sleep clears the brain’s short-term memory storage and makes room for new information. Sleep Researchers have established that fact-based memories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus before being sent to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which may have more storage space. This memory refreshing process also occurs when nappers are engaged in a specific stage of sleep known as the stage 2 non-REM. Stage 2 non-REM takes place between deep sleep or NREM and the dream state REM or Rapid Eye Movement. It is known that during sleep we spend at least half our time in stage 2 non-REM.
Researchers are continuing to investigate whether the connection between the reduction of sleep and older people are related to the decrease in their ability to learn as we age. It may be a link in understanding neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. The general opinion of people who nap are lazy, have bad sleeping habits and are less productive can be further from the truth according to recent brain research.
Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy used to make a habit of taking a nap. So if employers and their associates want to remain alert and be smarter to do their work, an afternoon nap may be a lucrative solution! So what is the answer …to nap or not to nap?
Good Nap,
Rose Sheepskill
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