Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Naps aren't just for toddlers.

  • Turns out, even adults can benefit from some daytime downtime.

  • A power nap can improve performance in reaction time, logical reasoning, symbol recognition, and, of course, one's mood.

  • In addition, the length of a nap offers different benefits.

  • When you're asleep, parts of your brain that are inactive during waking hours begin to fire up.

  • These regions pull information and events from your day and process them.

  • The trick is keeping your naps brief enough, or long enough, so that you don't wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle and feel groggy or fatigued.

  • Great nap.

  • It really was.

  • A University of Michigan study had one group of participants take a 60-minute snooze, while a comparison group watched a nature documentary.

  • The midday nappers were better able to deal with frustration and were less impulsive than those who watched the documentary.

  • But most of us can't check out for 60 minutes in the middle of the day.

  • Enter the power nap, a quick snooze that lasts between 10 to 30 minutes.

  • Research has shown that even a 6-minute nap can improve long-term memory.

  • But, remember, napping only works during the right window; don't catch your Z's after 3 p.m., or you could disrupt your regular nighttime sleep cycle.

Naps aren't just for toddlers.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it