4570 - Naps

Lots of info on naps from AARP...

There is new evidence that napping may be good for overall heart health, but only if you limit your snoozing to a couple of times a week.

A study out of the University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland, found that napping once or twice a week lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease incidents such as heart attack or stroke by 48 percent. No such associations were found for those who napped more than twice a week, however.

Researchers collected data over five years from nearly 3,500 people between the ages of 35 and 75 living in Switzerland who had no history of cardiovascular disease. Of those, 58 percent reported no napping, and 19 percent fell into the optimum range of dozing off one to two times a week.

Tips for a Better Night's Sleep

The National Institute on Aging recommends older adults sleep seven to nine hours a night and that they follow these tips for their best rest.

• Adhere to a regular sleep schedule, turning in and getting up at roughly the same times each day.
• Avoid napping in the late afternoon or evening.
• Develop a bedtime routine to cue your brain to ready for sleep.
• Try not to watch television or to use your computer, cellphone or tablet in the bedroom.
• Keep your bedroom at a comfortable temperature, not too hot or cold.
• Exercise at regular times each day, and do so more than three hours before bedtime.
• Avoid eating large meals close to bedtime.
• Stay away from caffeine late in the day.
• Remember that alcohol won't help you sleep.

While the number of naps a week played a key role in the results, the duration of participants’ naps — which ranged from reported five-minute snoozes to one-hour-plus slumbers — did not appear to influence the findings.

Noting in the study that their work represents “the first population-based cohort study investigating the effect of nap frequency and daily nap duration over a week on fatal and non-fatal CVD [cardiovascular disease] events,” the study authors also cited two earlier Greek studies that found nappers have lower coronary mortality and a lower risk of coronary heart disease. They pointed out, too, some seemingly contrary research, such as three cohort studies in the U.S., Japan, and Germany that showed an increased risk of cardiac events or cardiovascular disease mortality with napping.

Their focus on napping frequency, the researchers note, “may help explain the discrepant findings surrounding naps and cardiovascular events.”

In an editorial published alongside the study, Yue Leng, an epidemiologist studying sleep behavior at the University of California, San Francisco, said the data offer “some reassurance that the answer is probably more than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no', and that we have much more to learn about napping."

As Leng puts it, “What is the timing, duration, and frequency of the naps? Do we count in a 5 min ‘dozing-off’ as a nap? What is the best way to measure naps? Until we get to the answers to some of these questions, the implications of napping cannot be fully addressed."

Anatomy of the Perfect Nap

While an afternoon siesta has never been a mainstay of our productivity-obsessed culture, there's reason to believe that napping can be more useful than slothful. Research shows that a short snooze can boost brain power, improve your memory as well as your mood (including your ability to shake off daily frustrations), and make you more alert. NASA scientists discovered that a 26-minute nap improved pilot performance by a whopping 34 percent — and companies such as Google, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, and Ben & Jerry’s not only allow but actually encourage employees to take snooze breaks.

Napping can also help bridge the divide between feeling wonderfully rested and seriously dragging if you're one of the 36 percent of Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 who are not getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night. “As we get older, it can become harder to get enough quality sleep at night,” says Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. “Naps can be a good way to reduce fatigue and boost brain performance. They usually can't replace lost sleep at night, though they can help you get through the day,” he says.

Naps can also help to compensate for dips in our natural wake-and-sleep patterns, which can vary by individual.

“Our circadian rhythm cycles throughout the day,” says David Plante, M.D., medical director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And while hormones triggered by sunrise make us feel more alert in the morning and start to tail off around bedtime, “most of us also experience a small dip in our level of alertness in the early afternoon, which may cause a bout of drowsiness,” he says. Sometimes, a quick snooze can be just the thing for handling that fuzzy feeling.

That said, experts note that there are better and worse ways to maximize daytime sleep. For one thing, the ideal nap is best timed between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. If you lie down later than that, it will interfere with your nighttime sleep. “It's like having a snack too close to dinner time,” says Grandner, who notes that shorter is also better. Ideally, a nap should be between 10 and 30 minutes. Extend it past that, and you will enter into a deeper (or slow-wave) stage of sleep and may wake up feeling groggy.

To get the most out of such quick-hit sleep, “Look for a place that’s cool, dark and quiet, so that the brief period of sleep is as solid and uninterrupted as possible,” says Indira Gurubhagavatula, M.D., a sleep medicine specialist at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. To avoid “sleep inertia” — that is, sleeping too long and waking up groggy — she recommends timing your nap with an alarm.

And if you can down a cup of coffee right before — yes, before — your siesta, all the better. A Japanese study found that doing so can amplify the benefits of a nap, helping you feel more alert and refreshed when you wake up. “Caffeine usually takes about a half-hour to really kick in — which, coincidentally, is about how long your nap should be,” Grandner says.