Sorry, I dozed off there for a second. Today, I am going to be the best friend of every college student and end the question “should I take a nap or not?” We have all consistently been here before. You decide to stay up the night before an 8:00 class, and you wake up the next day feeling tired, sluggish, whiny, pathetic and generally useless for the rest of the day.
Now the conundrum of all college students hits home. I would love to take a nap, but I really should be doing something else (homework, working out, going to class, etc.). Today, I am here to tell you that it’s okay to take that nap. In fact, many research studies have linked naps to a number of health benefits that can help people in their daily lives. In an article published by the Huffington Post, a man with a PH.D. (William Anthony if you really care) has linked naps to 6 health benefits that will help you in the long run in your daily activities.
These benefits include:
- Boosting alertness (duh)
- Napping improves learning and memory. Although it takes 90 minutes for the body to achieve REM sleep (the state where cognitive processing is linked), short naps can help maintain brain activity for the duration of the day.
- Napping increases creativity. This may help you with a nasty homework problem you are stuck on.
- Napping lifts your spirits (also duh)
- Napping boosts productivity. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it boosts your mood and makes you a more productive worker.
- And napping reduces stress. I call these panic naps (Caleb’s Dictionary: Panic Nap= when you have so much stuff to do that you procrastinated on, that you just decide to take a nap.)
So there you have it folks, just a short 20 or 30 minute nap does have it’s benefits. However, be warned, any longer and you will begin to enter deep sleep, which will result in you feeling groggy and even more tired than when you went to sleep.
Next time you’re in this situation, just think about what the man with the PH.D. said and TAKE THAT NAP!
You can thank me later.
