Don't have time to nap? New studies show catching a few z's during the day is good for your health and your mind.
College student Sarah Raifsnider says napping improves her grade point average, "If I know I have to study for a test, I'll usually nap for 20 minutes before and then I'm ready to restart my day. Round two of my day."
The school's all for it. In fact, the University of California San Diego recently held its first ever 'nap-in'. "It was a success among students and staff and faculty. I found a bunch of what you might say closet nappers," says UCSD researcher Jerry Phelps.
He says for a country that's sleep deprived, we give nappers a bad rap - that you're lazy or sleeping on the job. Now school officials want to change that. Author and researcher Sara Mednick says it would be a good change, "We have a new study actually that shows that we compared naps to caffeine on three different kinds of memory tests. And we find that naps made people perform better and caffeine made people perform much worse even in placebo."
She says while a 20-minute nap can rejuvenate you, a 90-minute nap can also improve memory and motor skills, "You also show increases in creativity. We have a new study looking at people who are able to, people with REM sleep are more able to use in a creative way information that they've seen earlier to solve creative problems."
Then again, you may not have to sleep at all to get some useful shuteye, "In some cases, we're showing that sleep is actually active process that's helping your brain learn. And in other cases, it appears that it's not necessarily sleep but it's the lack of doing something. So even a case like meditation or sitting quietly can be as helpful," says Mednick.
She says students can boost their memory for historical dates with a 20-minute nap. But if you have to remember larger historical concepts that are more complex, it may require a 90 minute snooze.
