Mirror: Napping can be amazing and refreshing, but we run the risk of doing ourselves more harm than good.
Napping ought to be a pleasurable past-time, a reprieve from how boring and unpleasant day-to-day life can be, not to mention refreshing and good for you.
Post-nap life should be amazing, as you feel fully restored and ready to take on the world, or at least what the next few hours have in store for you.
But, uh-oh, what's this?
It seems many of us are, yes, going about our naps all wrong. The longer they are, the worse they are for you.
That icky and unpleasant feeling experience after napping for too long also has a name.
Sleep inertia
Sleep inertia is the result of waking up suddenly from a particularly deep or slow wave sleep (SWS), which is the sort of sleep experienced when you nap for longer than half an hour.
"You might experience feelings of disorientation, grogginess and tiredness, and your cognitive abilities are actually impaired during this time."
While it's a case of 'the shorter the better', there's no definitive 'perfect' nap length, because, interestingly, several factors determine how beneficial a nap is going to be.
Stephanie says, while a 10 minute nap in the afternoon can help recover cognitive performance, a recent Centre for Sleep Research study found a different result at night.
"[We] found a 10 minute nap taken in the middle of the night, to replicate what a shift worker might do, had no recovery benefits and actually made some people’s mood poorer."
It also depends on how much sleep someone has had.
Stephanie adds, "A person who is extremely sleep deprived might gain benefits from a 10 to 20 minute nap, but a person who slept properly the night before may not feel better after a nap of the same length."
Fuente: www.mirror.co.uk
