Daytime sleep and its impact on health: pros and cons

A post with a pic­ture is cir­cu­lat­ing on the Inter­net, the hero of which exclaims, wring­ing his hands, some­thing like “What a pity that we did not want to sleep dur­ing the day in kinder­garten! How many oppor­tu­ni­ties have been lost. Indeed, the mass of mod­ern peo­ple work­ing in offices and in pro­duc­tion can­not afford the plea­sure of day­time sleep. It is avail­able only to remote work­ers, but even those often, try­ing to earn mon­ey, are busy all day and, just like office and oth­er employ­ees, suf­fer from lack of sleep.

How­ev­er, not every­one finds day­time naps ben­e­fi­cial. Some­times those who doze off dur­ing the day can­not then fall asleep at night, in addi­tion, there is a belief about the dan­gers of sleep­ing at sun­set. On the oth­er hand, there are peo­ple who, not pay­ing atten­tion to signs, lie down calm­ly even dur­ing the day, even in the late after­noon and gain a lack of sleep at night or sim­ply fight in this way with accu­mu­lat­ed fatigue. Is nap­ping good or bad? About this — in today’s arti­cle.

The Great Power of Daytime Sleep

His­to­ri­ans believe that the tra­di­tion of a per­son sleep­ing for many hours at night came from the wealthy class, who went to bed sim­ply because there was noth­ing else to do. In the Mid­dle Ages, when there was no elec­tric­i­ty, ordi­nary peo­ple in the win­ter went to bed as soon as it got dark. But at two or three in the morn­ing they got up, got down to busi­ness again, could go to vis­it each oth­er, and then lay down again for sev­er­al hours.

Sleep time: how much to sleep during the day?

The dura­tion of day­time sleep can be dif­fer­ent — some­one will take a nap for 10 min­utes and get up refreshed, while some­one needs up to two hours to get enough sleep. But we will choose some­thing in between to start the con­ver­sa­tion — when the time of sleep dur­ing the day is 20–30 min­utes. Many peo­ple say that they feel sor­ry for spend­ing time on day­time sleep, even if it lasts only 10–15 min­utes. They do not lie down every day, but only in moments of extreme fatigue, explain­ing this by the fear of noc­tur­nal insom­nia. Oth­ers lie down all their con­scious lives after din­ner for 20–30 min­utes and, mind you, they sleep well at night.

Human sleep during the day: protecting the brain

It is shown that dur­ing sleep, among oth­er things, the pro­duc­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of cere­brospinal flu­id, which is called cere­brospinal flu­id, increas­es. That is, our brain and spinal cord are, as it were, in a pil­low of mois­ture that has cer­tain prop­er­ties. By increas­ing the cir­cu­la­tion of cere­brospinal flu­id dur­ing those 20–30 min­utes that we sleep dur­ing the day, tox­ic meta­bol­ic prod­ucts are inten­sive­ly removed from the brain.

Thus, a day­time sleep of a per­son last­ing 20–30 min­utes per­forms a cleans­ing func­tion and lit­er­al­ly “brain­wash­es”. By the way, among the excret­ed sub­stances there is also the so-called amy­loid pro­tein, from which plaques are formed in Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

Daytime sleep: stress management

Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, in the first 20 min­utes of day­time sleep, there is a peak in the pro­duc­tion of sero­tonin, a hor­mone of good mood, which not only dilates blood ves­sels and improves blood cir­cu­la­tion and brain func­tion, but also stim­u­lates the joy cen­ter. There­fore, after a day­time sleep, a per­son gets up in a cheer­ful and cheer­ful mood and looks at the world in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way, notic­ing the good in it, not the bad. So day­time sleep helps fight stress and increas­es effi­cien­cy.

Often peo­ple who sleep dur­ing the day for 20–30 min­utes say that after such a rest the moun­tains are ready to turn and, hav­ing risen from bed, they imme­di­ate­ly and even with plea­sure get down to busi­ness. In addi­tion, day­time sleep improves cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, that is, increas­es learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Inter­est­ing­ly, sci­en­tists and doc­tors rec­om­mend not going to bed dur­ing the day with­out hid­ing, and hid­ing not just with a sheet or blan­ket, but with a real blan­ket.

Sleep time dur­ing the day is dis­trib­uted for a rea­son. Experts iden­ti­fy phas­es in it: the first 10 min­utes is an ultra-short sleep, up to 20 min­utes is a pow­er­ful sleep, and up to 30 min­utes a dream is called “extend­ed pow­er”. They also cal­cu­lat­ed the ide­al dura­tion of day­time sleep — 26 min­utes. More­over, such a dream will not affect the abil­i­ty to fall asleep at night.

How to fall asleep for 20–30 minutes?

There is pre­cise sci­en­tif­ic advice on how to lie down, fall asleep and wake up in the required 26 min­utes. The very first piece of advice sounds para­dox­i­cal at first glance — it’s … drink a cup of cof­fee before bed. The fact is that caf­feine begins to act excit­ing­ly after 20 min­utes, in addi­tion, it has a diuret­ic effect, and after 20–25 min­utes you willy-nil­ly have to wake up. The sec­ond advice is to deceive the brain — to cre­ate dark­ness for it. For this, a light-tight mask is put on the eyes.

Third­ly, you must sleep lying down. Sleep­ing with fold­ed arms on a table or sleep­ing in a chair won’t do the same. Fourth, cov­er your­self with a heavy blan­ket. Not in the sense of thick and hot, but pal­pa­ble in heav­i­ness. This will give a child­ish feel­ing of com­fort and, in addi­tion, a large zone of con­tact between the blan­ket and the body reduces the activ­i­ty of the sym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem and increas­es the activ­i­ty of the parasym­pa­thet­ic, and this lat­ter is respon­si­ble in the body for fight­ing stress and for peace. All these actions in a per­son who works hard and gets tired will cer­tain­ly lead to instant falling asleep.

When is daytime sleep bad?

But what if a per­son sleeps more than 30 min­utes dur­ing the day? Doc­tors asso­ciate sleep last­ing about an hour with dis­turb­ing awak­en­ing. After half an hour, sleep enters the deep sleep phase. At this time, breath­ing and heart rate decrease, the rate of cell divi­sion begins to slow down, the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem is acti­vat­ed, the mus­cles relax, and sud­den­ly … the hour is up, and at this moment the per­son wakes up.

It takes time to re-enable all process­es, and some­times it can reach one and a half to two hours. Sim­ply put, hav­ing wok­en up in a phase of deep sleep, a per­son is not able to work and act active­ly. We are not talk­ing about any cheer­ful­ness, increased effi­cien­cy and good mood. Thus, an hour nap is one of the worst options for day­time sleep.

Sleep, which lasts an hour and a half, doc­tors have des­ig­nat­ed as “sleep with­out rest.” On the one hand, the phase of deep sleep ends by this time, but a per­son wakes up after such a dream a lit­tle dis­ori­ent­ed. The mus­cles have not yet returned to tone, are not ready to act. A per­son wants to lie still, he is, as it were, between sleep and wake­ful­ness. In this state, it is impos­si­ble to imme­di­ate­ly join the rhythm of the work­ing day.

What’s wrong with two hours of sleep? sleep hormone

And final­ly, it remains to talk about the time of sleep in the after­noon for two hours. Will you be able to get enough sleep if you devote such a rather notice­able part of the day to day­time sleep? This sleep is called “ultra-long healthy sleep.” This is already a real dream, with all the phas­es that cor­rect­ly replace each oth­er. And, if there is time, then such a dream is high­ly prefer­able. A per­son will wake up in a good mood, rest­ed, full of ener­gy and cheer­ful. It would seem that every­thing is fine, but there is a catch. What’s wrong with two hours of sleep?

The prob­lem is that it dis­rupts the rhythm of night and day sleep. The sleep hor­mone mela­tonin is pro­duced dur­ing the day in a cer­tain amount. With a 2‑hour day­time sleep, a per­son will exhaust most of the dai­ly mela­tonin, it will not be enough for the night, and when it comes time to go to bed, dif­fi­cul­ties with falling asleep will begin. A person’s night sleep will be infe­ri­or, will not bring the desired rest, and again we will dream of two hours of “sleep­ing” for half a day. These are bro­ken cir­ca­di­an rhythms. And it does­n’t bring any­thing good. You need to sleep sound­ly and for a long time at night, and dur­ing the day — if you are very tired — the revi­tal­iz­ing 26-minute sleep, which was men­tioned above, is best suit­ed.