Daytime sleep: benefits and possible harm

If a per­son can live with­out food for weeks, with­out water — days, then with­out sleep, patho­log­i­cal process­es in the body devel­op much faster. Is nap­ping help­ful?

Daytime sleep and interesting facts about it

Nature has decreed that dur­ing the day all mam­mals sleep for short peri­ods. A per­son is also arranged, but over time, such a rou­tine had to be aban­doned due to cer­tain cir­cum­stances. The most favor­able time for sleep was con­sid­ered from 2 am to 4 am and from 13:00 to 15:00 in the day­time.

With reg­u­lar day­time sleep, a per­son sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the chances of get­ting coro­nary heart dis­ease. If you man­age to take a nap twice a week, then you can talk about reduc­ing the risk of get­ting sick by 12%, and if you increase it to three times, then up to one third. In a ham­mock, a per­son falls asleep much faster, a slight sway­ing pro­motes relax­ation.

Headache after sleeping during the daytime

Many refuse day­time sleep, because after that they have a severe headache. What is the rea­son for this and is it pos­si­ble to avoid such con­se­quences?

The rea­sons for which it occurs are divid­ed into non-patho­log­i­cal and patho­log­i­cal. The first include the fol­low­ing:

• Incor­rect pos­ture dur­ing sleep, in which the ves­sels in the head and neck are com­pressed. For exam­ple, on the side, while the tem­ple fits snug­ly against the pil­low;
• Poor air cir­cu­la­tion, lack of oxy­gen. This prob­lem is espe­cial­ly com­mon in win­ter, when the air in the room is dry and stale. It is bet­ter to open the win­dow at the time of sleep, and if it is cold, ven­ti­late before falling asleep;
• If sleep occurs in a posi­tion in which the head is low, this leads to desta­bi­liza­tion of intracra­nial pres­sure. The blood flow slows down and this caus­es a headache;

Patho­log­i­cal prob­lems are:

• Apnea, in which a per­son snores while sleep­ing and briefly holds his breath for about 10 sec­onds. This is some­times enough for the brain to expe­ri­ence a lack of oxy­gen and a headache to occur;
• Prob­lems with the vas­cu­lar sys­tem also affect the qual­i­ty of sleep, for exam­ple, with veg­e­to­vas­cu­lar dys­to­nia;
• Depres­sive states and con­stant stress can pro­voke a headache;
• Chron­ic dis­eases: desta­bi­liza­tion of blood pres­sure, migraine, arrhyth­mia.

How to avoid an unpleas­ant state after sleep? First of all, prop­er­ly orga­nize the bed. There should be a com­fort­able pil­low (every­thing is indi­vid­ual here), a good mat­tress. With a chron­ic lack of sleep, a short day­time rest will not help restore strength, it is bet­ter not to stay awake at night to the detri­ment of health.

Eat right, do not overeat, do not abuse day­time sleep and sleep no more than an hour. If the prob­lem has been both­er­ing you for a long time, then you need to con­sult a neu­rol­o­gist to deter­mine the caus­es of this con­di­tion.

Stud­ies have been car­ried out, thanks to which it was pos­si­ble to find out whether day­time sleep is ben­e­fi­cial. Most of the sub­jects pos­i­tive­ly assessed their con­di­tion, and the exper­i­ment was con­duct­ed among var­i­ous seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion and peo­ple of dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions.

At the same time, there were those who felt worse after sleep, and on the basis of gen­er­al data it turned out that the dura­tion of sleep should not exceed 20 min­utes to an hour in time. This is due to the fact that the phase of deep sleep will not have time to start or will end with­in an hour. The max­i­mum is 2 hours of sleep dur­ing the day­time, since after a long rest, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal indi­ca­tors dete­ri­o­rate sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and men­tal abil­i­ties also decrease.

For each of us, the dura­tion of sleep is indi­vid­ual, and it is impor­tant to inde­pen­dent­ly deter­mine the opti­mal peri­od that would have the best effect on over­all well-being.

What is the best way to overcome weakness and drowsiness?

Sleep is divid­ed into types, and each of them has its own pos­i­tive effect.

If weak­ness and drowsi­ness attacks dur­ing the work­ing day, it is dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate, and there is no time for prop­er rest, that is, there is a way out. This method has been test­ed by many, and its effec­tive­ness has been con­firmed. A short sleep for five min­utes will eas­i­ly dis­perse drowsi­ness;

It takes twen­ty min­utes in time, and in this short peri­od it is able to increase atten­tive­ness, motor func­tions are restored, a per­son will be more endur­ing. This is the opti­mal time, since the ben­e­fits of such a dream are high­er than from any manip­u­la­tions and exper­i­ments with drinks and exer­cis­es;

• Con­tin­u­ous.

All small chil­dren should def­i­nite­ly sleep dur­ing the day, as this affects the for­ma­tion of the immune sys­tem, strength­ens the body as a whole. It is also impor­tant for peo­ple to sleep dur­ing ill­ness, as weak­ness and drowsi­ness almost always indi­cate pathol­o­gy. At the same time, we help the body to quick­ly cope with the dis­ease, it has the strength to recov­er, and recov­ery will come much faster. Dur­ing this peri­od, a per­son goes through fast and deep phas­es of sleep.

The benefits of sleep

If you approach this task cor­rect­ly, then the qual­i­ty of life will improve sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Dur­ing day­time sleep, there is a kind of reboot, brain activ­i­ty is updat­ed, after that you think bet­ter, and the sim­plest and most effec­tive solu­tions come to mind. No won­der they say that the morn­ing is wis­er than the evening, this can also be attrib­uted to rest in the day­time.

To increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of life, many busi­ness lead­ers in Japan prac­tice day­time sleep, and, as prac­tice has shown, this reduces stress, improves mem­o­ry and atten­tion, and per­cep­tion of prob­lems.

Not to men­tion the pre­ven­tive effect. Rest allows you to avoid seri­ous prob­lems with the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, it is like­ly to increase cre­ativ­i­ty, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty.

Lose weight while sleeping

Despite the fact that this method seems too sim­ple, accord­ing to doc­tors, it can real­ly reduce weight, and the point here is the gen­er­al state of the body dur­ing sleep. As a rule, excess weight is a mal­func­tion in the work of meta­bol­ic process­es or the arrow is creep­ing up due to hor­mon­al fail­ure. With a sys­tem­at­ic sleep dis­tur­bance at night, it is not sur­pris­ing that extra pounds appear “out of nowhere”, this can also pro­voke the onset of dia­betes.

The way out in this case is day­time sleep, as this is a great alter­na­tive to night­time rest. Dur­ing this peri­od, the lev­el of cor­ti­sol decreas­es, and it is this hor­mone that is respon­si­ble for the fact that sub­cu­ta­neous fat is deposit­ed in store­rooms.

A per­son feels more cheer­ful, he has a desire to move, work, and this always con­tributes to weight loss.

A prop­er­ly orga­nized sleep sched­ule will help to avoid weak­ness and drowsi­ness dur­ing the day. It is bet­ter to try to go to bed at the same time, do not watch TV for a long time before going to bed, sleep at least 7 hours.

It is bet­ter to fall asleep with obvi­ous signs of drowsi­ness, and they should not be con­fused with fatigue. It is also harm­ful to sharply rebuild for a cer­tain time, it is bet­ter to grad­u­al­ly slow down for fif­teen min­utes, grad­u­al­ly real­iz­ing which sched­ule is most accept­able.