Students, parents, and teachers, are you getting enough sleep a day? According to studies, teenagers need at least 9-10 hours a day of sleep while adults need 7-8 hours of sleep minimum(Source 1). If you’re one who routinely loses sleep or chooses to sleep less than needed, that accumulates your sleep debt. Napping may help deal with your sleep debt, however, it doesn’t provide the essentials sleep does, disturbing your body’s sleep-wake rhythm. There is no way to redeem your sleep debt, other than taking naps, that may only help dealing with sleep debt. For those of us who can’t go to sleep earlier, naps can be beneficial by providing a strong boost in energy, mental alertness, performance, and can reduce stress, while helping deal with your sleep debt.
Napping can help with overall long term health and performance. “In 2007, a study by the Harvard …show more content…
“NASA decided to study whether astronauts should take naps. They did research with volunteers and the researchers found that napping improved memory, but not alertness. They also concluded that longer naps work better than shorter ones. Mark Rosekind, of NASA, who conducted the research stated that even a 26 minute nap boosted a pilot’s mental performance by 34%. A 45 minute nap gave roughly the same mental boost but the boost lasted more than 6 hours(Source 2).” Even with these sleep depriving careers, naps have been shown to increase mental awareness and performance, in as little as 26 minutes. “Emergency room doctors working at night also have problems sleeping. Sleep experts recommend that these health workers take short naps on the job. A team of researchers led by David F. Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that letting subjects nap for as little as 24 minutes improved their mental performance(Source 2).” Even short naps such as these can reduce the number of mistakes a tired person