Napping is probably a piece of God’s secret that is shared to the humble earth people. Thus, there’s so much benefits you could get from 20 – 30 minutes napping a day for your health as well as for your life. What you usually do in that afternoon /short time? Daydreaming? Snacking unhealthy foods just to spend time? Gossiping with your co-workers that will do nothing for your life but increase stress? However, don’t miss understand the function of napping as a make up of the little sleep you have at the night before. A good night sleep and napping are two different things but closely intertwined. If you don’t have a good night sleep and then the function of napping will be bias. Meanwhile, here is the health benefits of naps.
Related:
1. Alertness Booster
Napping is a natural alertness booster. During the day at work, after lunch time is like the laziest time in your life and to deal with it, most people will need a booster and for those who don’t know, caffeine is the only solution. Well, napping is much better solution than caffeine. Just take a nap for 20 minutes (the same time you need to get up from your chair and go to the nearest coffee shop) and you will get your alertness back.
2. Improves Motor Performance
You need energy to perform especially you who are working in a field. It is not a crime to take a short nap between the work or during the lunch break because when you wake up, you will feel fully energized and your motor performance will be significantly improved. The magic is you will feel as fresh as you are in the morning.
3. Enhances Attention
After a busy morning that has drained your energy, you will start to feel a bit tired and it will affect your attention as well. To make sure you have your attention focus on the subject for the rest of the day, a short napping will get your head back to the game. Yup, just as short as 20 minutes of napping you could be focus again to whatever jobs waiting for you after lunch break.
4. Better Problem Solving
Tiredness will affect your brain as well since brain is the source of everything. If it is tired, even a simple decision making could be hard. However, if you are in a fresh condition, your judgement will be better and you could solve problem in a better way as well.
5. Loosen the Tension
Stress and pressure at work could make your body tensed, your vessel stiff and your brain feels like about to explode. To deal with all of those problems you just need to take a short nap and magically all of those tensions will be loosened rightly after you wake up. Try it yourself if it is hard for you to believe.
6. Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease
The main reasons behind heart problems or heart diseases are when heart is forced to work too hard. Heart will work too hard when there is disturbance in the blood vessels that inhibit the distribution of oxygen through hemoglobin to all body cells. As mentioned in the previous point, taking a short nap could loosened up the stiff vessels and make them more flexible.
Related:
7. A Mood Booster
Surely you have experienced the lack of sleep and surely you know the feeling as well which is not so good. It’s like you have no mood to do almost everything. If you are in the current state while there are so much jobs to be done and then you need a mood booster. The shortcut to the mood booster is as simple as taking a short nap. However, don’t use an excuse to take a nap in order to make up the lack of sleep you have the night before because the result would not be the same. A good night sleep is important and a short nap will give you the mood booster you need to finish the day.
Related:
8. Restores the Energy
Surely each of you has the busiest day, lets say, Monday is your busiest day that will drain your energy even before you reach the lunch break. What you should do to get more energy so you could finish the day? The answer is simple, napping. It is true that napping could restore your energy. You must be surprised, even your smartphone needs hours to be fully charged but you just need not more than 20 minutes to restore your energy back.
9. Improves Your Memory
Do you know that your brain needs energy to memorize? It is actually a common knowledge that if you’re tired, your brain will work even slower. A recent study conducted by a German neuropsychologist stated that napping could improve memory five times better. So, napping anyway.
Related:
10. Good for Diet
Those who are currently in diet program prefer to avoid napping because according to them napping has big contribution to the weight they’ve gained. That’s totally wrong because the function of napping is quite the opposite. The lack of sleep will decrease the production of hormone leptin and instead increase the production of hormone gherkin. The function of hormone leptin is to tells you that you’re satiated and the lack of it will make you never feel satiated while the increased of hormone gherkin which has function to encourage you to eat more is just making the condition worse.
Related:
11. Handles Anxiety
Anxiety could be suffered by anyone and the causes could be vary but lack of sleep, low blood pressure and tired body are common causes. Napping is the only solution that could deal with those three common causes. Napping will restore the energy you’ve lost because of the lack of sleep and in the process will balance the blood pressure and make your body more relax.
Related: Health Benefits of White Wine – Health Benefits of Drinking Whisky
12. Lowers Blood Pressure
Believe it or not but napping could do a wonder in lowering blood pressure. It is because during napping, your body will instantly relax and your blood vessels will be more flexible, so the pressure could be loosen up. During those process, the level will be balanced just by taking a nap as short as 20 minutes.
Related: Symptoms of Low Blood Pressure – High Blood Pressure Treatments
13. Recovers from Stress
You don’t need to worry about stress anymore though when you just arrived to the office this morning, your boss made you angry, your co workers made you cover up their jobs and you just spilled up your favorite morning coffee to your favorite suits. Why? Because you could just take a short nap and you will feel in the mood to do everything including facing your boss, finishing up the jobs that not even yours and you still have energy to go to the dry clean, all without stress.
Related:
14. Be More Accurate
The more hours has passed, you will move a bit slower and even your brain works less accurate. It is normal because even body and brain has limitation. The problem is you have an important meeting after lunch. Well, you don’t need to worry because during lunch break (usually around 1 hour), you could eat your lunch and napping in 20 minutes. You will be energized anymore and your brain will work optimally.
15. Less Cranky
Stress could make you cranky, too much pressure from your job could make you cranky, too much stuffs in your head could make you cranky just taking a nap could make you less cranky because napping could release your stress, could lower the pressure of your job because you could do it with better and fresher mind and napping also able to loosen some tensions from your head.
16. Good for Blood Vessel
Stiff blood vessel could be dangerous because it will force your heart to work harder. Some chronic diseases like heart attack and strokes could strike you anytime but since napping could relax and loosen up your vessel and make it a bit flexible, so napping anyway.
Related: Health Benefits of Blood Donation Regularly
17. Better Emotion Control
Emotion problems occur when you’re stress or tired. When you’re stress or tired is difficult even to control your emotion. If it happens to you instead of continue working is better to snooze a little bit and freshen up yourself. Once you wake up, you will find your emotion is under controlled again.
18. Essential for the T Production in Men
For men the production of T hormone is very prominent because it affects their sexual life as well as their lifestyle. Lack of sleep will disturb the production of chemicals that has important role in producing the T hormone and napping could restore that problems.
19. Better Self-Control
It is not easy to always have yourself under control. It seems, there is always something that will make you cranky and angry. Well, it means you need a little picnic or a little nap just to refresh yourself. Even computer needs to be refreshed, you cannot just right clicking yourself to refresh but napping could do the magic.
20. Longer Endurance
As mentioned in some previous points, napping could restore your energy and affect your endurance during a workout as well. Usually, people don’t have enough time to do the workout in the morning, they will prefer to do it after work time. Napping will give you more energy so you could have longer endurance during the workout.
21. Prevents Dementia and Alzheimer
Alzheimer and dementia is closely related to the accumulation of plaque called B-Amyloid. The lack of sleep could lead the deposit of those plaques. That’s why napping could prevent the accumulation of those plaques and prevent diseases like dementia and Alzheimer.
Related: Prevent Alzheimer and Dementia – Symptoms of Dementia
22. Better Complexion
Napping will give your skin more time to repair itself besides a good night sleep. Stress could affect your skin complexion as well and make you look older than you’re supposed to look based on your age.
23. Make You More Relax
Stress at work sometimes unavoidable. You cannot control your boss anger even if you’ve done the best with your job. However, whenever you feel stressful, just take sometimes to take a nap and you will become relax again.
Related: Benefits of Physical Activity for Mental Health
24. Lesser the Errors You Make
People tend to be more sluggish after lunch break. It is actually nothing to do with what you eat during lunch but because you have drained your energy in the morning. Take a nap will recharge your body so you could be fresh again and lesser the possibility making mistakes or errors. Most people will prefer to force themselves to work when there are so much jobs to do and take a rest after they finish everything. Well, it is actually a wrong move because you cannot focus well on the jobs, instead you will spend more time to recheck and do the jobs all over again because of so much errors that you made. It is better to take a nap first and then continue the work for excellent result.
25. Be More Energetic
Lunch break could be the laziest time in your life because most of you have forced yourself to work in the morning and there is no more energy left for you for the rest of the day. Why don’t you take a nap? Napping will restore your energy and make you more energetic.
26. Improves Productivity
Do you feel tired, stress and sluggish? Don’t worry, just take a short nap and then you will be more energetic again. Your energy will be restored, your mood will be recharged and your brain will be refreshed.
Related:
27. Improves Sensory Perception
Why don’t you try to have a lunch after napping? You will find the different that even the steak you eat every day could taste better, the coffee you sip everyday will give you more caffeine booster. It is because when your brain is refreshed, your sensory perception is also improved.
28. Creativity Booster
You don’t need to be genius in order to make a good idea because napping could boost your creativity as well. It is because your brain will be in its best condition and your mind is in clearer state so you could give a better judgement.
Related:
29. Reverses the Effect of Getting Lesser Sleep
Do you know how much health problems caused by the lack of sleep? Chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular problem, stress, immunity problem, sexual issue, anxiety problem, anemia, dementia, Alzheimer, short term memory problem and many more. Just take a nap not more than 20 minutes a day could give you the reverse effect of lack of sleep. In other words, napping could reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, immunity problem, stress, anxiety problem even prevent dementia and Alzheimer. Napping is simply awesome.
Related:
30. Saves Your Money
Some of you might be wondering what is the connection of napping with saving your money. When it comes of mood and energy booster, people prefer to sip a cup of caffeine. Well, caffeine might be effective solution but not good for your health in long term besides coffee could be very expensive. Besides that how much time you should spend in a line just for a cup of your favorite coffee? Probably more than just the time you should spend for a nap but the effect is as effective as caffeine and napping is free.
Then, taking nap is basically good yet you need to prioritize your daily activity too. Afterwards, that’s all the lists of health benefits of naps that may help you.
1. Feel Disoriented
Well, don’t worry about feeling a bit disoriented or groggy after taking a nap because it is only happening if you are taking it in longer than 30 minutes. So, time management is important here. Ask your friends to wake you up in exact time or just simply put an alarm to make sure you are napping not more than 30 minutes.
2. Sleep Problem at Night
Some people decided to never take a nap because they afraid to have problem with their sleep. It is true that a bad napping management could lead to insomnia, that’s why you shouldn’t take a nap in the late afternoon or too long (more than 30 minutes). If you take a nap in an appropriate time and period, you don’t need to worry about having problem sleeping at night at all.
Napping Tips
In summary, napping is awesome and it could make you awesome as well. Surely, there is no a better thing you could do to spend your free time between work but taking a short nap. Well, perhaps you will lose the time to socialize with your co workers and if it matters, you could plan your naps, instead of taking a nap everyday, you could schedule your nap to the days when you need it the most. However, making napping as your daily habit is also highly recommended if you want to have a better and healthier lifestyle. Happy napping!