Costco Connection - June 2011

Midday naps can refuel your brain

Make time for siesta

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By Rita Colorito

SET ASIDE YOUR notion of siestas—those long midday naps—as the lazy person’s excuse to slumber. Numerous recent studies show that shut-eye lasting up to 90 minutes not only helps build and boost brain power, it also might prevent serious disease.

Contrary to the notion that naps are needed only if you haven’t slept well the night before, a 90-minute nap—even for those who’ve had a good night’s sleep—clears the brain’s short-term memory storage, which becomes cluttered and sluggish after being awake for several hours, and makes room for new information, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. Previous UC Berkeley sleep research found naps of 60 to 90 minutes that include rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep help increase receptiveness to positive emotions, beneficial for mental health. Taking regular midday naps also reduced the risk of death from heart disease in men, according to a joint study by Harvard University and the University of Athens in Greece.

“The cardinal rule of sleep is that you have to get enough of it,” says Dr. John Wilson, a neurologist and co-director of the Sleep Lab at Loyola University’s Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Maywood, Illinois. Lunchtime naps make sense not only for sleep-deprived individuals, he says, but for anyone who wants to function at optimal mental capacity.

“Most people think of sleep as something
that is passive, like recharging your battery. But
it isn’t. It’s actually much more active than that,”
says Wilson. “Your brainwaves have more
structure when you are asleep than when you
are awake. It’s kind of like defragmenting your
hard drive, only it’s much more important.”
Siestas can be a beneficial addition to
anyone’s sleep repertoire, says Dr. Sara
Mednick, sleep researcher and assistant pro-
fessor of psychiatry at UC San Diego. She
breaks down siestas into two sleep categories.

Freelance journalist Rita Colorito writes frequently on health and wellness.

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