Have you ever taken what seemed like a delicious nap at the time, only to wake up feeling…off? Did you find yourself tossing and turning at your regular bedtime later on, wondering if the nap was to blame?
You’re not the only one — and you’re right, that afternoon slumber could be the culprit.
“Napping is a double-edged sword,” Talar Moukhtarian, an assistant professor in Mental Health at the UK’s Warwick Medical School, recently wrote in The Conversation.
“Done right, it’s a powerful way to recharge the brain, improve concentration and support mental and physical health. Done wrong, it can leave you groggy, disoriented and struggling to fall asleep later.”
The difference rests in two essentials: timing and duration.
You know how sometimes you’re on fire in the morning and start to feel a yawn coming later in the afternoon?
That’s not because your workday is slowing down or because you had a big lunch — or, at least, not only.
“Most people experience a natural dip in alertness in the early afternoon, typically between 1 pm and 4 pm,” she wrote.
“Our internal body clock, or circadian rhythm, creates cycles of wakefulness and tiredness throughout the day. The early afternoon lull is part of this rhythm, which is why so many people feel drowsy at that time.”
That’s also why that early afternoon window is the ideal sweet spot for a nap.
“Studies suggest that a short nap during this period — ideally followed by bright light exposure — can help counteract fatigue, boost alertness and improve cognitive function without interfering with nighttime sleep,” she wrote.
These so-called power naps can give your brain a break and leave you feeling recharged — however, it is crucial to keep these to under half an hour to avoid the sleep inertia that stems from wrenching yourself out of a stage of deep sleep.
“Once a nap extends beyond 30 minutes, the brain transitions into slow-wave sleep, making it much harder to wake up,” Moukhtarian explains. “Studies show that waking from deep sleep can leave people feeling sluggish for up to an hour.”
“A short nap of up to about 20 minutes taken during the siesta period of the day (1 to 3 pm) can be helpful to improve cognition and wakefulness,” Dr. Thomas Michael Kilkenny, the director of the Institute of Sleep Medicine at Northwell Staten Island University Hospital, previously told The Post.
“Anything longer can trigger sleep inertia, the brain’s desire to continue sleeping.”
Another important reason to not delay napping for later in the day is because it may make it harder for you to fall asleep at your usual bedtime by interfering with your sleep drive.
“We have a sleep drive, which is like your hunger for sleep. You build up your hunger for sleep just by being awake,” behavioral sleep medicine specialist Dr. Jade Wu told CNBC.
“So if you’re awake for long enough, you’re saving up sleep drive points throughout the day, almost like a piggy bank. And hopefully by bedtime, you’ve saved up enough.”
That means taking a nap late in the day expecting to be sleepy at your normal time is kind of like having a big lunch at 5 pm thinking you’ll be hungry at 7 — while it depends, for most of us, that would not be the case.
In general, experts say naps might not be for everyone — age and other lifestyle factors influence why they’re a productivity hack for some and a sore spot for others.
But, if you play your cards right, you might just find yourself on the road to nappiness.
