Sleep is necessary to recharge energy. Some people feel brand new after resting for eight hours, while others would love to nap all day. Now, what happens if you sleep too much?
If you are one of those who love to sleep and take advantage of any opportunity to fall asleep, researchers from the Universities of Murcia and Massachusetts reveal that this may be due to your genes.
What happens if you sleep too much?
“Napping is controversial,” says Hassan Saeed Dashti, a researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Genomics in Medicine and a co-author of the research.
The same study explains that naps are not exclusive to humans:
“They are short episodes of daytime sleep that are evolutionarily conserved in various diurnal species, ranging from flies to mammals”
Some cultures are acquiring the nap habit, as other studies relate it to increased productivity, but the aforementioned researchers compare:
“In some countries where naps have always been part of their culture, such as Spain, the habit is being lost; in others, like the United States, there are companies that are promoting it as a method to improve productivity. “
Naps aren’t for everyone
Unfortunately, regardless of the benefits attributed to naps, some people are unable to sleep during the day. After conducting a Genome Association Study (GWAS), it was identified that 123 regions in the human genome are associated with being able to fall asleep during the day.
Therefore, ease of napping — regardless of the time — could be the result of your genetic inheritance. The research also points out that there are other factors that influence a person to fall asleep easily during the day. For example, not having had enough rest the night before.
For their part, Mayo Clinic experts explain that some people simply can’t take naps because they don’t feel comfortable sleeping somewhere other than their bed or because sleeping during the day makes their nighttime sleep out of control.
These are just some of the factors that influence people to decide whether or not they want to take a nap. Remember that getting some sleep in the afternoon can help you improve your performance, relax, and even reduce fatigue. Hopefully, you are one of the lucky ones who manage to fall asleep during the day.
What should you do?
While the idea is to get as much sleep as possible at night, naps are the new viable plan B. It doesn’t have to be a three-hour nap; on the contrary, a short nap can improve your alertness. An eight-minute nap in the middle of the day has been proven to help boost alertness and cognitive function.
Make sure to limit your nap to less than half an hour. The good news is that the effects of the nap will last you about three hours, long enough to keep you energized for the other half of the day.
Better memory
From 45 to 90 minutes, you enter stages 3 and 4 of sleep, which improves memory by 20%, and the emotions stored in the memory become more balanced, which will cause you to be calmer. You must give yourself fifteen minutes after a nap to wake up properly.
Creativity
After 90 minutes, you enter stage 5 deep sleep (REM) that encourages and develops creativity and problem-solving performance.
You can take advantage of this stage; Before your nap, think and number some points that you want to achieve in your work project, for example. In this way, your brain will bring out potential information that may be useful to you during this stage.
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