The benefits of daytime sleep. How much sleep do you need to wake up

According to some somnologists, nature has not provided a person with spare sleep resources, such as fat deposits in case of hunger. Because depriving yourself of a night's rest without good reason is an unnatural state. Not a single living organism, except humans, practices such bullying. A dream is not a credit bank, from where you can periodically take valuables and then reimburse them "in one fell swoop." Unfortunately, a regular lack of sleep cannot be compensated for by midday naps.

“Dinner is over - only the devil does not sleep,” says Eastern wisdom. Siesta in hot countries also testifies to the benefits of an afternoon nap. But, contrary to popular belief, somnologists argue that daytime rest for an adult is harmful. It is especially bad to get enough sleep in the morning for older people. The results of the studies have revealed a relationship between midday naps and a high risk of stroke in pensioners. Also, some doctors have noticed the involvement of early sleep in VVD, diabetes.

Daytime sleep in its components does not differ from nighttime - the phase order is the same. The difference is present in the time duration of the stages: there are fewer deep stages, and more surface ones. Experts confirm that if you fall asleep during the day during reduced activity, then waking up is fraught with headaches, discomfort in the heart area and a feeling of drowsiness in the rest of the day.

Daytime sleep in children: meaning and norms by age

Can you sleep during the day? For young children, sleep during daylight hours is vital. A one-month-old baby sleeps almost around the clock, interrupted in order to eat. As they grow older, the sleep of a one-year-old child is divided into two stages: daytime and nighttime. Subsequently, the need for additional systematic rest disappears. The norms of daily rest for children, at different age stages, are most clearly presented in this table:

Dr. Komarovsky advises organizing daytime sleep for kids in the fresh air.

Daytime rest for adults

Is it good for adults to sleep during the day? There is no scientific evidence for the benefits of daytime rest for health and longevity. A folk sign warns: you can’t fall asleep during sunset. Superstition has a rational explanation - late sleep knocks down the biological rhythms, providing nocturnal insomnia.

In mature years, the need to go to bed during the day indicates frequent lack of sleep, various nighttime ailments. Emotional exhaustion as a result of exposure to stressful situations also contributes to drowsiness in the first half of the day. In the presence of prolonged insomnia, daytime sleep is strictly contraindicated.

People who need to sleep during the day

All doctors agree that the benefits of daytime sleep are undeniable in the presence of serious diseases (narcolepsy, epilepsy or idiopathic hypersomnia). Regular rest in this case is significant: it acts therapeutically, maintains an acceptable level of vigor and performance of the patient.

Daily time-out brings certain benefits to people who work in shifts. The most "advanced" companies do not skimp on the creation of special lounges for their employees, where you can recuperate in a short time.

During pregnancy, there is often increased sleepiness in the morning and during the day. In the initial stages, such symptoms are normal and do not require restrictions. In the later stages, excessive fatigue of a woman can be the result of a number of pathologies, so medical treatment is necessary. If there are no provoking diseases, daytime fatigue disappears after childbirth.

On the harmful effects

Is daytime sleep good? It has been repeatedly proven that too much afternoon sleep is harmful and provokes the development of chronic insomnia. Most adults complain of back pain, constant weakness, dizziness and nausea instead of alertness after extra rest.

Therefore, if there is an unexpected desire to go to bed during the daytime, a consultation with a somnologist is required. In most cases, the results of polysomnography indicate a relationship between the need for daytime rest and disruptions in nighttime sleep. Normalization of this process eliminates drowsiness and its consequences.

Sleep rules for adults

Sometimes a single daytime sleep is necessary and has a positive effect on the body. It is only necessary to take into account some features. For example, if a man or woman felt an attack of drowsiness while driving a car, they are advised to turn to the side of the road and fall asleep with the “Stirlitz sleep”. Plots of jokes on this topic tell about the agent's superpower: to switch off for a short time period and wake up exactly 20 minutes later. Where did these numbers come from? The fact is that after the specified time there is a transition from the surface phase to the deep one. If you wake a person later, he will come to his senses for a long time. This condition is known as "drowsy intoxication". In the case of transport management, the most suitable option with quick mobilization.

A few words about rest at work

In Japan and China, the practice of daytime sleep in the workplace has become widespread. The Internet is full of photos of workaholics napping right at their desks.

Innovation is said to increase the productivity of every worker. The real benefit or harm of such daytime sleep can only be assumed, since this country occupies a leading position in the death rates of people due to a busy work schedule.

However, for those for whom a day's rest is a necessary condition, due to work circumstances, sleep experts recommend adhering to several rules:

Before the end of the work shift, the lighting should be changed to a more gentle one.
It is required to pay increased attention to the place of rest: the exclusion of external irritants, the use of earplugs and sleep masks.
20 minutes of daytime sleep is the optimal goal. In any case, daytime rest for more than 1 hour is not recommended.

The market for "sleepy" accessories is ready to provide a wide selection of pillows for daytime rest. Such models never cease to amaze with their original design. There are options for relaxing at the office desk, providing "pockets" for the convenience of hands. Some items can be worn over the head, with only a slit for the nose to allow breathing. How practical funny things are, and what kind of dreams you have at work - it's hard to determine without the appropriate application experience.

Lose weight through daytime sleep

Chronic sleep deprivation has a depressing effect on the part of the brain that controls appetite. Sleepless nights lead to weight gain as a result of the active production of "hungry hormone".

It is important to know! Increased ghrelin synthesis gives an insomniac sufferer an uncontrollable craving for food. At the same time, the processes responsible for the feeling of fullness are extremely inhibited.

Full sleep acts in the opposite way: during deep sleep, the breakdown of fats occurs. Therefore, if you get enough sleep during the week, you can significantly “pump up”. As in any business, you need to be able to sleep and lose weight skillfully.

It is only necessary to consider useful tips:

Advice! A comfortable bed, comfortable underwear, enough oxygen in the bedroom also contribute to a good sleep, and hence a great figure.

Ways to beat midday sleepiness

If drowsiness caught you by surprise in the midst of labor exploits, a “horse” dose of coffee or energy drinks are not the best options to cheer up. There are many ways to defeat lethargy and regain courage:

When working at a computer for a long time, it is useful to look at a distant tree outside the window every 20 minutes.
Try not to overeat during your lunch break. The first, second and compote will surely lead to sleepy bliss. Eat iron capsules or natural products! Spinach, beans, buckwheat, lentils will perfectly relieve fatigue and help you stay awake for a long time.
Drink lots of water! Ayurveda considers it not only a source of life, but also a carrier of useful substances in the body. Even the slightest lack of fluid leads to a decrease in overall tone.
Get out in the sun more. The hypothalamus is the part of the brain that is responsible for circadian rhythms. Bright light effectively activates it.
Make yourself run around the floors or dance! Let someone twist a finger at the temple, but a drowsy feeling - like a hand will remove.
Breathe deeply (smoke breaks do not count) - and you will feel sleepy.
Chew gum - it helps concentration.
Listen to music - the more diverse the repertoire, the more cheerful and better the mood!

If none of the above helped, you can try "Stirlitz's dream". The main thing is to find a quieter place and not catch the eye of the boss.

Conclusion

Sometimes the bed has magnetic properties - and pulls to itself the whole day. To succumb or not to this temptation, everyone decides for himself. As it turns out, regular “indulgences” in the form of an hour of therapeutic daytime sleep have bad consequences. Moreover, with age, the likelihood of damage to health increases. Therefore, it is better to gather all the will into a fist, insert matches between the eyelids - but live to see the night.

The habit of taking a nap for an hour after dinner is not uncommon. Undoubtedly, sleep helps to renew strength, improve mood, increase attention and efficiency. However, the answer to the question about the usefulness of daytime sleep is not as clear as it might seem at first. There are studies that show that daytime rest can negatively affect well-being if it is not observed for a certain duration.

Do you need to sleep during the day?

Many scientists believe that daytime sleep has a positive effect on human health. It improves memory, reaction, assimilation of information. Other wellness highlights include:

energy recovery;
improvement of physical and mental abilities;
increased attention and perception;
reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.

If you haven't been well enough rested at night, a nap during the day will relieve you of drowsiness and cheer you up. The optimal time for sleep is the period from 14 to 15 hours. Sleeping late in the evening can lead to the fact that then you will not be able to fall asleep for a long time.

Almost everything has its pros and cons. Scientists believe that if your night's rest was strong and long, then daytime sleep is not needed and even unnecessary. It can worsen your condition, leading to fatigue, lethargy, and even insomnia.

An interesting experiment with a group of aircraft pilots. During the day, they were allowed to sleep for 45 minutes, after which the scientists looked at the well-being of the experimental subjects. The result of the test showed that after such a dream, people felt the same as with lack of sleep: the reaction rate is reduced, and the mood is depressed. It was concluded that the duration of sleep has a great influence on well-being after daytime sleep.

It turned out that the ideal duration of daytime sleep is either no more than 20 minutes, or no less than an hour. At the same time, it is also undesirable to exceed two hours. Scientists believe that sleep phases are the cause of this phenomenon. The deep sleep phase begins just 20 minutes after falling asleep and lasts approximately 40 minutes. As with nocturnal sleep, when awakening during the deep phase of sleep, a person feels overwhelmed, and his mental abilities are reduced. There is a possibility of headaches.

How to organize daytime sleep?

Often adults have a problem: where and when to sleep during the day? After all, work does not always give us such an opportunity.

First, set aside part of your lunch time for sleep. It may be only 10 minutes, but they will give energy no less than a cup of coffee. Such a short break will positively affect your performance.

Second, find the right place. Some offices have lounges with cozy sofas. If this is not provided for at your work, use the car interior or purchase a funny “ostrich” pillow: it will allow you to relax right at the workplace.

Thirdly, create optimal conditions for relaxation. Use a sleep mask to protect your eyes from light and earplugs to block out noise.

To make the awakening even better, before going to bed, you can drink a cup of tea: tonic substances will act on the body in just 20 minutes and you will wake up.

Benefits of naps for kids

If for adults daytime sleep is useful, then for children it is necessary. The lack of daytime sleep in a one-year-old child negatively affects his mental development. The norm of daytime sleep at this age is at least three hours. By the age of two, the need for daytime rest gradually decreases to one hour.

At the same time, scientists recommend not to create complete darkness and silence in the room where the child sleeps. He must distinguish daytime sleep from night sleep. If the child refuses to sleep, do not force him, but put him to bed early in the evening.

Sound and healthy sleep is extremely important for the physical and mental well-being of the body. With regular insufficient sleep, a person invariably feels the consequences. If your night's sleep has been disturbed, try to make up for the need for rest during the day. Lack of sleep manifests itself in the form of fatigue, lethargy, depression and bad mood.

Is it possible to sleep during the day

Those who have the opportunity to sleep during the day are incredibly lucky. It is not only pleasant, but also very healthy. If you have the opportunity to relax during the day, but do not like to do this, try to introduce rest into the daily routine, or better, sleep after dinner. It has been observed that even a short nap in the afternoon is very useful - especially for those who get up early. If you don't believe this, let's take a closer look.

I welcome everyone! We already have a lot of topics about sleep, today there will be an interesting topic, about daytime sleep - is it useful to sleep during the day, the conclusions of specialists from Germany, the secret of short sleep and much more interesting.

When do you want to sleep during the day?

Other famous day nappers are Albert Einstein, Johannes Brahms.

How does daytime sleep affect the state of the body?

Daytime sleep prevents "burnout". In the modern world, people run, run without stopping, striving to achieve their goals. And in this run without a break, a person is subject to stress, exhaustion of physical and mental strength, and disappointment. Daytime sleep restores the body, reduces stress, makes it possible to rethink the situation.

In a drowsy state, our contact with reality is broken, and with the subconscious, the closest: we can visit new ideas, come up with solutions to difficult situations, we can see dreams-visions. If you wake up a person in this state, then he is unlikely to understand that he was sleeping.

The transitional state between wakefulness and sleep gives complete relaxation to the whole organism: soul, brain, body (if, of course, you are comfortably located).

Salvador Dali, a Spanish artist, was very fond of moments of daytime relaxation. The story describes his siesta in this way: sitting comfortably in an armchair, Salvador took a spoon in his hand, and put a metal tray on the floor.

When he fell asleep, the fingers of his hand unclenched, and the spoon fell with a crash onto the tray. The artist woke up from the noise. Those moments that he spent between deep sleep and activity were enough for him to get a burst of energy.

Many patients begin to worry about the information that these gadgets give out. For example, in one young, healthy person, according to the gadget, only half of the sleep was deep, and the other half was superficial. Here it should be noted again that we do not know what this gadget calls superficial sleep. Besides, it's normal not to sleep deeply all night. Usually twenty to twenty-five percent of our sleep duration is dream sleep. Deep slow-wave sleep lasts another twenty to twenty-five percent. In older people, its duration is reduced, and it may disappear completely. But the remaining fifty percent can occupy more superficial stages - they last quite a long time. If the user does not have an understanding of the processes behind these numbers, then he may decide that they are not up to par, and begin to worry about this.

But what is the norm? It only means that most people sleep like this. This is how norms are built in medicine and biology. If you are different from them, it is not at all necessary that you are ill with something - maybe you just did not fall into this percentage. To develop norms, you need to conduct a lot of research with each gadget.

Can we somehow prolong the phases of deep sleep, which, as is commonly believed, bring more benefits to the body?

In fact, we do not know much - we have an idea that deep slow-wave sleep restores the body better, that REM sleep is also necessary. But we don't know how important the first and second stages of superficial drowsiness are. And perhaps what we call superficial sleep has its own very important functions - related, for example, to memory. In addition, sleep has some architecture - we constantly move from one stage to another during the night. Perhaps it is not so much the duration of these stages that is of particular importance, but the transitions themselves - how frequent they are, how long and so on. Therefore, it is very difficult to talk about exactly how to change sleep.

On the other hand, there have always been attempts to make your sleep more efficient - and the first sleeping pills appeared precisely as a tool for optimal regulation of your sleep: to fall asleep at the right time and sleep without waking up. But all sleeping pills change the structure of sleep and lead to the fact that there is more superficial sleep. Even the most modern sleeping pills adversely affect the structure of sleep. Now they are actively trying - both abroad and in our country - a variety of physical effects that should deepen sleep. These may be tactile and audio signals of a certain frequency, which should lead to more slow-wave sleep. But we must not forget that we can influence our sleep much easier - by what we do while awake. Physical and mental activity during the daytime makes sleep deeper and helps you fall asleep more easily. Conversely, when we are nervous and experiencing some exciting events immediately before sleep, it becomes harder to fall asleep, and sleep can become more superficial.

What hours of the day are good for sleep

There is such a thing as light pollution. Let's say if you take a picture of the earth from space so that you can see the lights of the city, then where there are the most lights, the least people sleep. Let's say in the city of New York. Scientists made a map of the distribution of areas of concentration of tumor diseases and superimposed it on a map of light pollution, the results were simply stunning. The cards were almost absolutely identical... Yes... that's how things are, you have to finish your work at night, it's too harmful, it's better not to sleep and work during the day.

Second experiment.

Scientists took 16 students and for some time 8 of them led a daytime lifestyle, and the other 8 were nocturnal. Both groups felt great, but the diagnostic data showed that 8 students who led a nocturnal lifestyle changed a little. They could not untie tasks as quickly at night as daylight could do. That is, it has been proven that at night the brain works more slowly, regardless of whether you are used to sleeping at night or not.

Well, that's it, even if you don't know or don't feel it, your brain works slower at night, plus there is an increased chance of getting various diseases and a reduced standard of living.

P.s. Working at night has the other side of the coin - sleeping during the day, it turns out to be useful, I discovered this when I was already finishing writing this article, so stay tuned! I will write about the benefits of daytime sleep ... somehow off topic of the blog ... Let's do it ... if they ask me to write in the comments about daytime sleep, I will write, but if not, I will not

I hope the article taught you something new and made you think like me. To receive the same interesting and informative articles, subscribe to RSS blog or any other way convenient for you (see below). By the way, a section will be opened soon, which will be available only to RSS subscribers, so write off to subscribe so as not to miss it. Those who are not subscribed are unlikely to know when the section will be created

Many people say "I'm going to bed" meaning they're going to lie down. At the same time, lying in bed for a couple of hours, they watch TV shows, or play electronic games. Make it a rule that when you go to bed, you should first calculate the time spent in bed and spent on other things that you used to do in bed. The resulting total time is called net sleep time.

A person rests when he sleeps. A proper rest is impossible without a night's sleep, but sometimes for better well-being and restoration of working capacity it is necessary to take a nap during the daytime. Although sleep scientists admit: daytime sleep is an exclusively individual matter.

When life defines sleep

The need for daytime sleep depends on many factors:

biorhythms;
physiological conditions;
professional responsibilities;
the degree of satisfaction of the need for night sleep, etc.

People are divided into "owls" and "larks". Early risers get up early, and it is normal for them to sleep during the day. Most owls do not like to sleep during the day: they really wake up closer to noon.

The physiological characteristics of a person are such that the weakened, the sick sleep more, it is useful for them to sleep during the day. Pregnant women love to take a nap in the middle of the day. Daytime sleep is facilitated by physical fatigue and mental overwork. This also applies to certain types of professions that require a lot of stress during the day.

Not everyone and not always can sleep at night as much as necessary. It is a common thing to get up very early to come to work that is far from home. In this case, hours lost at night must be compensated during the day.

Age is also an important factor: the older the person, the less his total need for rest. The habit of sleeping during the day or doing without it is formed in childhood.

Take care of sleep from a young age

The fact that an afternoon nap is necessary is taught in early childhood. So, in kindergarten, children must be put to bed at noon, and an hour and a half is allotted for rest. Quiet time is an essential attribute of children's holiday camps and other school and preschool institutions. Even then it is clear that not everyone is equally easy to fall asleep during the day. Some fall asleep quickly and easily, and wake up just as easily, while others spin for a long time, look at the ceiling, and when they finally fall asleep, it’s already time to get up for lunch.

There are several reasons for this: active, lively children with a sanguine temperament have time to play and run enough by quiet time, and therefore sleep without hind legs. Phlegmatic children, who perceive the world philosophically, calmly lie down and calmly fall asleep. Worse daytime sleep comes to melancholic and choleric. By the way, this applies not only to children - adults who have retained the type of temperament carry through the years their attitude to the embraces of Morpheus.

Another reason may be the lack of a day regimen as such in a child at home. It is not without reason that pediatricians recommend that mothers who are going to take their child to kindergarten for the first time try to put the baby on the rails of an orderly daily routine in advance: meals by the hour, early rise, early bedding and an obligatory afternoon nap.

The older the child gets, the more time he spends awake. But if daytime sleep has become a habit, it should remain. You just need to adjust the time that is allotted for this.

Don't think down the minutes

Having matured, people often remember with nostalgia about the sweet kindergarten past, when at work at lunchtime they feel sleepy. To be fair, in some places in Russia they have already begun to adopt the useful habit of Western employers to provide workers with the opportunity to take a nap in the middle of the day.

Such "sleep breaks" have long been a common thing in Europe, especially in southern countries. The traditional siesta gives a person the opportunity to survive the midday heat with minimal loss of vitality, especially since the worker at this time feels a breakdown, and, consequently, efficiency drops.

A dream came to court during the day in Japan and Southeast Asia, where people work for wear and tear and the rhythm of the working day is very intense. Even the industry of office sleep has appeared: in order to have a good sleep at the workplace, they produce special pillows, earplugs and other accessories.

Sleep breaks can be calculated not only in minutes, but even in seconds. The main thing is to use them skillfully and know what benefits they can bring. Depending on how much time to sleep, differ:

microsleep;
minison;
good dream;
lazy dream.

The duration of the microsleep is up to five minutes. It is effective if irresistible drowsiness sets in. The minisleep lasts longer, up to 20 minutes. This time is enough so that after waking up the ability to concentrate attention increases, the productivity of physical labor increases.

The most useful daytime sleep is up to forty minutes, because. helps relieve muscle fatigue during physical labor and get rid of unnecessary information for office intellectuals. In common parlance, this process is called "throw everything bad out of your head." The result is increased endurance, good long-term memory, accelerated reaction.

If you sleep during the day, as in a kindergarten, from forty minutes to an hour and a half, then you will wake up rested and refreshed. The secret to improving well-being lies in the fact that during lazy sleep, bone and muscle tissue is regenerated. True, it takes a little longer to switch to the working day after such a day's rest.

There is also the so-called nanosleep, which lasts less than a minute. It can hardly be called a planned event; the term “pass out” is more suitable for such a dream. It occurs spontaneously when a person can no longer fight fatigue and lack of sleep. If such a nanosleep comprehended you, it means that it is time to change something in the work schedule and daily routine.

A normal, not overtired adult is unlikely to be able to sleep during the day for more than an hour and a half. And how useful it is to sleep during the day for an adult - everyone decides for himself.

Who and when to sleep well during the day

Physiologists and somnologists no longer break spears in discussions about what daytime sleep is, benefit or harm, because there are many nuances in each case. So, for people aged 25 to 55, midday sleep reduces the likelihood that they will have diseases of the cardiovascular system. And the same sleep in older people increases the possibility of a stroke.

The benefit of daytime sleep is that in a short period the body can restore its strength:

increased efficiency;
consciousness is cleared;
mood improves;
the tone is restored.

Daytime sleep is useful in the off-season, in autumn and spring, when the human body is weakened due to hypovitaminosis and chronic lack of sunlight: if at this time of the year you do not sleep the right amount of time during the day, the body's immune forces weaken.

Women need not only to ensure themselves at least 20 minutes of daytime sleep, but also to “furnish” it with maximum comfort. Those representatives of the weaker sex who honor the siesta always have a much better complexion than those who only dine at lunchtime. Those who stock up on convenient means of office sleep are spared unnecessary wrinkles, wrinkling, circles under the eyes. Their skin radiates freshness.

By the way, you need to listen to your body. If you think that it is useful to sleep during the day, but sleep doesn’t come to you, then it’s not so necessary to fall asleep. Better read a book. But if the body needs a midday rest and it hints at it with all its might, it’s better not to resist, but to do everything to make a short sleep comfortable:

take a pose in which the muscles are relaxed;
protect yourself from noise and bright light as much as possible.

Interestingly, for a productive rest and a guaranteed awakening in 20-25 minutes, it is enough to drink a cup of warm strong tea or coffee before closing your eyelids. At first, a warm drink will induce drowsiness and help you fall asleep quickly. And after 20 minutes, the tonic effect will turn on.

Who is bad for siesta

Under some circumstances, it may be harmful to sleep during the day. Most often this applies to those cases when a person suffers from a violation of the normal sleep schedule. With insomnia, trying to compensate for nighttime sleep disturbances at the expense of daytime is a bad decision. It's like eating a cake before dinner if you lose your appetite. It's better to get through the day and go to bed early in the evening. If you try, you can learn to fall asleep safely in the evening, and sleep until the morning.

It is undesirable to sleep during the day immediately after a meal, especially if the food is dense: although a person is drawn to lie down, such a dream will be difficult. In addition, it is harmful because the consumed calories will immediately be deposited where you least want to see - the buttocks, stomach, sides. It is better to sit for an hour after dinner, and if even after that it is unbearable, then sleep.

Daytime sleep can be harmful to diabetics: during such sleep, blood sugar levels increase, since changes in biorhythms lead to metabolic disorders.

With hypertension, it is also better not to sleep during the day. The harm in this case lies in the fact that blood pressure can rise sharply, there are also pressure surges.

You can't sleep at sunset. Drowsiness after 4 p.m. grossly disrupts any biorhythms, causes a headache after waking up. A person will feel not rested, but, on the contrary, tired, irritated, lethargic. It is highly likely that after such a sunset dream, night sleep will be disturbed. This is bad for performance.

The head will hurt after waking up and in the case when a person suffers from increased intracranial and intraocular pressure.

A person who wants to get rid of excess weight is simply obliged to learn how to sleep correctly during the daytime.

The most “difficult” type of body fat is subcutaneous. The accumulation of this fat occurs when levels of a hormone called cortisol rise. The value of daytime sleep lies in the fact that it reduces the level of cortisol, but the effect can be neutralized if you lie down on the couch immediately after a heavy meal. The best daytime rest for those who want to lose weight is 20 minutes of maximum relaxation, as far as the situation allows, after which they wake up and lightly snack on cereal with tea and a spoonful of honey.

At home, you can sleep a little longer, up to 40 minutes, and the menu does not have to be so ascetic: you can afford rice with vegetables, steamed fish with a slice of rye bread and fresh herbs. If you don’t feel like eating immediately after waking up, then postpone dinner until the time when you are hungry. But it is best to eat at the same time.

What else to pay attention to

If you do not sleep well at night, and daytime rest does not bring relief, you need to see a doctor. This may be a symptom of overwork or the initial sign of a mental or neurological illness. This condition is typical for stress.

With a chronic violation of night sleep, you need to try to return yourself to a normal physiological channel, keeping from daytime naps. Attempts to compensate for lack of sleep during the daytime will lead to the final chronicization of insomnia.

If you really want to sleep during the day, but you are not sure of waking up at the right time, do not be afraid to set an alarm clock at your workplace.

Daytime sleep is the most accessible form of good rest for adults in the middle of the working day. If you sleep at lunchtime, the body will have the opportunity to restore its strength. The same applies to children, they need an afternoon rest.

PHOTO Getty Images

Sometimes in the middle of the day the eyes get stuck together. We begin to nod off, but we struggle with sleep with all our might, even if there is an opportunity to lie down: after all, you need to sleep at night. At least that's how it is in our culture.

nature's demand

But the Chinese can afford to take a nap right at the workplace. Daytime sleep is a common thing for residents of many countries, from India to Spain. And perhaps they are closer to their nature in this sense. Jim Horne, director of the Institute for Sleep Research at Loughborough University (UK), believes that humans are evolutionarily programmed to sleep short during the day and long at night. “There is growing scientific evidence that naps, even very short ones, improve cognitive function,” continues Jonathan Friedman, director of the Texas Brain Institute. “Perhaps, over time, we will learn to consciously use it in order to make our brain work more productively.”

Better learn new things

“Daytime naps sort of clear short-term memory storage, after which the brain is again ready to receive and store new information,” says University of California psychologist Matthew Walker. Under his leadership, a study was conducted in which 39 healthy young people participated. They were divided into 2 groups: some had to take a nap during the day, while others were awake throughout the day. During the experiment, they had to complete tasks that required memorization of a large amount of information.

Daytime sleep affects the functioning of a part of the brain that plays an important role in moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory.

They received their first task at noon, then at 2 pm, participants from the first group went to bed for an hour and a half, and at 6 pm both groups received another task. It turned out that those who slept during the day, coped with the evening task better than those who were awake. Moreover, this group performed better in the evening than during the day.

Matthew Walker believes that daytime sleep affects the hippocampus, an area of the brain that plays an important role in moving information from short-term memory to long-term memory. Walker likens it to an overflowing email inbox that can no longer receive new letters. Daytime sleep clears our “mailbox” for about an hour, after which we are again able to perceive new portions of information.

Andrey Medvedev, Associate Professor at Georgetown University, has shown that during naps, the activity of the right hemisphere, which is responsible for creativity, is significantly higher than that of the left. This happens to both lefties and righties. The right hemisphere takes on the role of "cleaner", sorting and storing information. Thus, a short daytime sleep helps us to better remember the information received.

How to "correctly" take a nap

Here's what a sleepwalker at the Salk Institute for Biological Research in California, author of Sleep During the Day, Changes Your Life! 1 Sara C. Mednick.

Be consistent. Choose the time that suits you for daytime sleep (optimally - from 13 to 15 hours) and stick to this regimen.

Don't sleep long. Set an alarm for a maximum of 30 minutes. If you sleep longer, you will feel overwhelmed.

Sleep in the dark. Close the curtains or put on a sleep mask to fall asleep faster.

Take cover. Even if the room is warm, just in case, put a blanket nearby to cover when you get cold. After all, during sleep, the body temperature drops.

For more details see lifehack.org

1 S. Mednick Take a Nap! Change Your Life" (Workman Publishing Company, 2006).