Can a nap make up for a night’s sleep? See – 03/31/2023 – Balance

If I sleep less than the recommended 7 or 8 hours every night, will a midday nap make up for that loss?

Maybe you’ve been up late scrolling TikTok or tossing and turning with anxious thoughts. And now you wonder whether a quick nap at lunchtime will give you the much-needed energy boost for the rest of the day and potentially regain the health benefits of a full night’s sleep you may have missed.

It’s important to understand that while a midday nap will likely replenish your energy enough to get you through the day, it won’t necessarily eliminate the health risks that can come from a lack of sleep at night, says Rebecca Spencer, a sleep science researcher at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Here’s why.

The health benefits of good sleep

According to the 2020 survey data from the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), more than a third of adults in the United States do not get the recommended seven hours or more of sleep each night. And that lack of sleep, experts say, is associated with a host of increased health risks, including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and mental illness.

Not only is how long you sleep important for your health, Spencer points out, but so is the quality of that sleep, which is determined by how much time you spend in its different stages.

When we sleep through the night, we go through several “sleep cycles” of about 90 minutes each. Each is made up of four stages: the first two are considered light sleep, when muscles relax, body temperature and heart rate drop, and breathing slows down.

The third stage, known as deep sleep, is when your eyes and muscles completely relax and your body does the important work of repairing and building bones, muscles and other tissues, as well as strengthening the immune system and consolidating and processing memories.

Rapid eye movement (or REM) is the last stage of the sleep cycle. It’s not as deep as the third, but it’s when you’re most likely to dream, and it’s believed to be associated with learning, memory storage, and mood regulation.

It’s normal to have a bad night’s sleep every now and then, says Molly Atwood, a clinical psychologist and researcher in behavioral sleep medicine at Johns Hopkins University. But if you don’t consistently go through all these stages every night, she says, you could have a host of health problems.

And naps can’t make up for that, says Spencer.

Even though a few hours of sleep at night and a nap during the day can add up to six or more hours total, she says, the health benefits don’t stack in the same way. Short naps of less than 90 minutes often only include the lightest stages of sleep, Spencer points out, not the deep, restorative sleep you’re used to getting through the night.

While naps longer than 90 minutes can include some beneficial deep sleep, shorter naps are more likely to leave you groggy and possibly less alert. Some limited evidence, for example, has found that those who wake up from the deepest phase of the sleep cycle are more likely to make mistakes on math questions than those who wake up in REM sleep.

The benefits of napping

But there are some instances where short naps can be helpful, says Atwood. “When you haven’t had a good night’s sleep, napping can really help improve things like reaction time and memory if you need to work,” she adds.

If your shift takes place during the day, for example, a 20- to 30-minute nap can restore alertness without making you groggy or disturbing your sleep the next night, Atwood points out.

Naps can also be particularly important in helping to keep people alert and alert who don’t always work daytime hours, such as airline pilots, commercial drivers, doctors, or other shift workers. Likewise, they can help seniors whose sleep is interrupted by age-related changes, such as the need to use the bathroom at night, says the professional.

If you need a nap, keep it short — no more than 30 minutes — so it doesn’t interfere with your next night’s sleep, recommends Atwood. It’s best to take a nap in the afternoon, “when we have a natural drop in alertness and tend to feel sleepy,” he adds. This makes it easier to fall asleep quickly.

But if you’re chronically tired or have trouble getting through the day without a nap, Atwood says to consider getting help from a behavioral sleep specialist.

“People tend to suffer for a while, then they go to the primary care doctor and get a drug,” he says. But seeing a sleep specialist is a better long-term solution than relying on medication, she points out. These professionals, trained in sleep psychology, may be able to offer certain exercises or strategies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, to help you get some much-needed rest.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves