Pass to Take a Nap? It Is Not a Choice!

MID-TEST

Pass to Take a Nap? It Is Not a Choice!

By: St. Mufarrohah

            Busy people such as workers, pilots, university students, and people with their daily routines business usually forget to take a nap in the afternoon. We prefer to spend our midday by taking a lunch or doing other activities. However, it is a regrettable thing to pass taking a nap in the afternoon.  Mednick (2007), who is a sleep researcher at University of California Reverside, said that taking a nap for 15-20 minutes can give incredible advantages. There are some benefits that we can get from taking a nap like giving good impacts to our brain, body, and performance.

            The first, taking a nap helps our brain in process of learning. Napping is a short time of sleep which can clear the temporary information. While we are sleeping, our brain will absorb new information and clear the older ones. This process will support our brain in process of learning after we wake up. For example, when students have a lot of activities in the morning without taking a rest, they will feel tired in the afternoon after pushing the brain to work all day long. It will be different if we take a nap at break time because our brain will be ready to accept new information. This is based on Dr. Matthew Walker’s research from California University who said that the brain is like a dry sponge, ready to soak up new information.

            The second, taking a nap could prevent us from increasing stress level and decreasing immune systems for body. It is because people force their body to work whereas our body needs to take a break, working all night, for example. When we sleep, the body will complete all the steps, such as sleep cycle that is needed for hormones repair. Leukocytes play the important role to improve the immune system and it is happen while we are sleep. If we cannot complete the duration of sleep that our body needs, the leukocyte will be damaged and cannot do its job. Research showed busy workers who usually keep awake at night to do their works will not look like in good condition in the day after. By taking a nap, it can repair the mood, productivity, and stress level. In addition, the researchers from University of Sorbonne who have done an observation of 11 healthy men who just two hours of sleep at night concluded that napping can restore the bad impacts of lack of sleep, such as being depressed and weakness of immune systems.

            Third, passing to take a nap declines the physical performance. It is because the brain waves which influence our emotional and neurological condition become worst when we have very short time of sleep. If our brain waves are out of balance, we will feel tired and slow. Even, sleep loss can give some lapses, such as decreasing long-term memory. The lapses happen because the part of brain which is hippocampus could not do its job. The hippocampus will replay the event that happen at that day to neocortex which is the part of memory stored in brain while we are sleeping. The lapses itself can be identified by electro-encephaloghrapy (EEG) which is the piece of equipment that records the electrical activity of our brain. NASA showed a research about pilots and astronauts who took a nap could improve their performance 34% and alertness 54% that others who did not do that. Those researchers mentioned that napping is important for pilots or astronauts who have uncertain time flight to complete the necessary of sleeping. At least we need 8 hours of sleep every day.

            In summary, taking a nap for around 15-20 minutes in the afternoon can give best advantages. If we do more from that duration, we will involve into deep sleep which means we will hard to wake up. We can use an alarm to help us getting the best duration of napping. Studies with their researches showed some of those advantages such as helps brain in process learning, maintains our body, and improves our performance. Therefore, busy people with lack of sleep need to take a nap to get those benefits.