aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Get enough sleep. If not, nap!

Doug’s napping now. I slept in and made up for the lost hour. When I got up I watched a report on sleep on CBS Sunday Morning.

Adults need 7–9 hours of sleep. In 1960 we got 8-and-a-half hours of sleep a night; today we get six hours and forty minutes.

We always hear that naps are a good idea. I’m not a big napper, but I am very glad to get this key piece of information on the science of how long to nap:

Researchers have found, though, that there’s a science to naps.

20 to 40 minutes is enough to revitalize you. But after forty minutes, you fall into a deeper sleep. Waking up during that period could actually leave you feeling MORE groggy.

A two-hour nap will allow you to doze through a complete sleep cycle - so that you feel REALLY refreshed.

My take-away is nap 20 to 40 minutes or the full two hours but nothing in between. Maybe the reason I’ve failed at napping is I’ve tried an hour!

And for you parents and teachers, there’s this, “it turns out that teenagers’ body clocks naturally turn them into night-owls, making it difficult for them to get out of bed early.”

So that sleepy-headed kid is doing as God intended. And maybe we ought to do like the Kentucky school in the report and stop blaming the kids and instead start rethinking the school day clock!