Rethinking Sleep
Aka. Why Napping is AWESOME and Not Child's Play
Surprise! More NYT articles! This one is from the archives- that's right, I'm taking ya'll all the way back to September 22, 2012 (gasp!) when David K. Randall published an op-ed in the NY Times entitled "Rethinking Sleep". I beseech you to read the article- it is amazing-so click here, or if you missed that, click here! ...... By now you all have read the article, so now we can discuss it! Oh, by the way: I chose this article because the upcoming chapter is about sleep. I said to myself "Rachel/Racheli, let's try to be on topic for once!" I digress..
A whole lotta people are sleep deprived (42 percent of workers in the mining industry and 27 percent of financial or insurance industry workers). What do people usually respond when someone says he or she is sleep deprived? "Are you getting in your 8 hours of sleep? You need to get to sleep earlier.." Well, ladies and gents, this whole 8-hour block of sleep idea isn't quite the right way for us to be approaching sleep.
Did you know that spending 8-hour chunks during the night sleeping is a recent development? Factoid: millions of Chinese workers nap an hour after lunch and daytime napping is common from India to Spain. Yet they tell us here that napping during the day is something that kindergartners do. Whenever people say "We should have naptime during school" they are attacked by others saying, "ohmygod, we're not 5." Well, actually, folks, you don't have to be 5 to take a nap. We should all take naps! Because they're good for us! More on that later. First I need to tell you how we got to that conclusion (for those of you who didn't actually read this article).
In the 1990s a history teacher at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch spent hours investigating the history of the night (that exists? Of course it does..) and found strange references to sleep.
"A character in the "Canterbury Tales," for instance, decides to go back to bed after her "firste sleep." A doctor in England wrote that the time between "first sleep" and the "second sleep" was the best time for study and reflection."Suspicious, right? Around the same time, Thomas A. Wehr (a psychiatrist working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md) was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. What happened was, after they started getting used to it, the subjects woke up a little after midnight and stayed awake for a couple of hours before drifting back to sleep again. Sound familiar? (See block quote above.) Cool, right? These people actually began to look forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance to do some deep thinking.
When we wake up in the middle of the night we don't get excited about it. We don't say "hey- lemme think about something deep now.." We think, "oh goodness.. I'm going to be so tired tomorrow." or "I have sleeping disorders! Ahhhh. Need meds." We have so much anxiety about being asleep a certain amount of consecutive hours in the night that we ruin our chances of getting a good night's sleep. (When in reality- waking up in the middle of the night is natural.)
Randall brings in a lot more studies and examples that show why napping is beneficial. One of my favorites: employees at Google can nap at work because the company believes/ knows it may increase productivity. Can we all go work at Google, please?
"Strategic napping" is a phrase that Randall introduces at the end of the article, and I love it. I think that we shouldn't feel ashamed to take a strategic nap now and again when we feel tired. It'll give us the boost we need to be more productive the rest of the day. You feel a little tired and want to relax before you do homework? Give yourself a break by taking a nice 30 minute nap instead of watching a 30 minute TV episode- you'll be happy you did.
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This is a photo of me getting my Strategic Napping on. I am very strategic like that. I'm almost like some sort of secret agent or something.QUESTIONS: -Have you ever felt like you really wanted to take a nap in the middle of the day? Did you not take the nap because of the social stigma surrounding naps?-8 hour sleeping: what do you think of it? Good or bad? I guess we'll learn more about this during psych class, but anyways...-How much sleep do you get during the week? |
I get very little sleep. I sometimes try to get myself into the schedule of going to sleep earlier... and when I do I DEFINITELY feel better doing the day. I do have to agree with this point..
ReplyDeleteHowever, about the naps.. I'm afraid I don't agree. I sometimes fall asleep for a quick 30 minutes during the day, and when I woke up I feel horrible and can't get anything done the rest of the day. It's just bad. I wonder why I react this way -- is it perhaps from some other stimulus?
I agree with both Rachel and Jamie. I too get much less sleep than I actually need. Up until this year, I was getting an average of 8 hours of sleep a night. Now, as a junior, that average has dropped to about 6 hours. Anyone who is in class with me on Tuesdays, Thursdays, or Fridays knows that I get tired and lethargic because I have to wake up early for skating and then stay awake until 9 or 10 PM to finish all of my homework and study. In the summer, I actually went to practice sessions at the same time of morning (5:15 AM-8 AM). When I got home, I would eat breakfast, relax, take a shower, and then take a nap. I would wake up so refreshed and happy, but that was in the summer. It would be interesting to try out a strategic nap during one class of the day and see whether we are more alert and/or productive. I would certainly be in favor of that.
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