In the summer of my final year in high school, I worked at the local Brown Shoe Factory. At noon, the whistle blew, giving all 400 workers an hour of lunch. Living about five blocks from the big building, I went home to join my parents for the midday meal.
After a sandwich, it was nap time. Afternoon siestas have been a tradition in my family for as long as I can recall.
Down the hallway from the kitchen was our family room. Located on the northwest corner of the house, it had room-darkening curtains, soft yellow carpeting, a hard rock maple three-cushioned couch, and one recliner—perfect for a quick 30-minute catnap.
Even Tigger, our orange tabby cat, would join us.
I have photographic proof. My father was on the couch, and my mother’s assigned position was on the carpet, with a crocheted afghan covering her, just in front of the sofa. Stretched out next to Mom was Tigger.
That left the recliner for me.
Today, living just two miles from the office, I prefer to take my afternoon nap in a La-Z-Boy recliner.
With over thirty years of practice, I can drive home, eat a quick lunch, and then recline for a 30-minute siesta. No alarm is needed to wake me from the perfect snooze. Unfortunately, work sometimes gets in the way, but I can get up to three naps weekly.
It turns out that a short nap in the early afternoon can be a good thing.
According to the Mayo Clinic, napping offers various benefits for healthy adults, including relaxation, less tiredness, more alertness, better mood, improved performance, quicker reaction time and better memory.
In 2002, when the New England Patriots met the St. Louis Rams in New Orleans for the Super Bowl, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady took a 15-minute nap before the big game.
Brady explained, “We had to warm up on the field and then we have 50 minutes before we went back out. So, I took my pads off and I was like, you know, I’m just gonna lay down and rest and I literally took a 15-minute nap before the game.”
That was Brady’s first Super Bowl. Wish he had not taken a nap. Maybe they would not have beaten the Rams 20-17.
A nap could also be the key to creativity.
“Indeed, there is anecdotal evidence that some brilliant ideas came to some great scientists in their sleep,” Andrei Medvedev, an assistant professor in the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging at Georgetown University, says. The creator of the Periodic Table of Elements, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, claimed he figured out how to arrange it in his sleep.
A short siesta has been shown to increase productivity. Naps may protect brain circuits from overuse and help you consolidate newly learned information, according to Robert Stickgold, PhD, and director of Harvard’s Center for Sleep and Cognition.
A 15-minute nap can help you feel more alert and is good for your heart.
Researchers from the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland studied the relationship between napping frequency/average nap time and the risk of fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular disease (CVD).
They concluded that taking a short nap once or twice a week— like me — resulted in a 48 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure compared to those who did not take naps.
“Subjects who nap once or twice per week have a lower risk of incident CVD events, while no association was found for more frequent napping or napping duration,” the researchers wrote.
“Our best guess is that a daytime nap just releases stress from insufficient sleep,” Nadine Häusler, an internist at the University Hospital of Lausanne and the study’s lead author, told NBC News.
The National Sleep Foundation reports that 20 minutes “is all you need to get the benefits of napping, such as improved alertness, enhanced performance, and a better mood.”
The Mayo Clinic points out that napping is not for everyone. “Napping at the wrong time of day or napping for too long can backfire.”
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“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.” — Barbara Jordan
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