Our bodies need sleep for many reasons, learning might be one of them.

Most of us have heard the expression, “When you snooze, you lose!” Translated loosely, when a person does not pay attention or do something quickly, another person will do it instead and reap the rewards for taking advantage of the situation.

However, does that person nap when he or she loses the opportunity? Not really. No sleeping is involved when referring to resting in that connotation. Napping or sleeping for short periods does have some benefits, though.

Snoozing

https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/napping-sleep-brain-memory/2021/01/26/id/1007239/ Sleeping during the day can be good or bad. The length of the nap is critical. Chinese researchers reported in the journal General Psychiatry that a short rest is associated with being smarter. Locational awareness, verbal fluency, and short-term memory improved after a mid-day snooze.

Healthy Brain

https://amerisleep.com/blog/sleep-impacts-brain-health/ Our bodies need seven to nine hours of sleep to maintain good health. Sleeping allows our bodies to perform many operations not done when you are awake. The brain needs time to recuperate, just like our muscles and organs, especially the liver.

Giving your brain ample time to catch up, make minor repairs, and prepare for the next day keeps you mentally healthy. Stay awake for forty or more hours, and the results are apparent. I stayed awake for 166 hours straight when I worked two jobs and went to college full time.

My regular employment plus commuting to college and a Christmas job happened, and I did my best to take advantage of the extra income. I slept for 22 hours when I finally crashed. However, I remember sitting in class and wondering how I got there with no memory of driving or the location of which parking lot I left my car.

There are occasions or demands that we must meet that involve limited or no sleep. Hopefully, they are not often. Our bodies and our brains need a minimum of seven hours of sleep nightly.

Learning by Snoozing

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/07-08/naps Many studies show that a mid-day nap from a few minutes to an hour to 90 minutes can be beneficial to your health and ability to learn. People who slept for an hour or so showed remarkable improvement in visual texture-distinguishing tasks. A nap’s value was equal to or better than eight hours of sleep and then performing the same functions.

Verbal word-recall improved with short catnaps. Item memory and other mental tests showed similar results. Rather than pull an ‘all-nighter’ in preparation for finals or some other important test, it might behoove you to schedule several sixty or ninety-minute naps during the two or three days leading up to the event.

Conclusion

Recent testing in China on older adults demonstrated better verbal fluency, problem-solving ability, and attention span for those regularly taking an afternoon nap compared to a control group that did not.

I average a short rest of six to twelve minutes every other day most weeks. I listen to my body. I have a minor feeling of fatigue and lay down with my phone’s timer set for around ten minutes. Almost every time, I awaken before the alarm beeps, and I am a new person, mentally refreshed and ready to charge the ramparts of life again.

I see similar results from taking that ten or so minutes and reading. I get my mind away from my work-a-day world and escape for a brief respite. A few moments later, I reconnect with reality and begin afresh.

A quick warning! Please do not allow your afternoon naps to exceed more than 90 minutes because it will interfere with your regular sleep cycles.

Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – RedOLaughlin.com

 

 

2 Responses

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *