Take a Nap-Change your Life

23 May 2007

TAKE A NAP! CHANGE YOUR LIFE is the groundbreaking work of Dr. Sara C. Mednick, a researcher at the Salk Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the world’s leading authority on the nap. Her research proves that fitting a nap into your everyday schedule increases alertness, boosts creativity, and reduces stress. A daily nap may also reduce the risk of a heart attack, aid in weight loss, and improve memory.

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and former president Bill Clinton are just two well-known nappers who would agree with scientists that a midday snooze is both natural and helpful. Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Napoleon Bonaparte and Albert Einstein are some of civilization’s most brilliant minds who also heeded their bodies’ call for a nap. Today, most of us cannot fit a 90-minute nap into our daily schedule. However, using cutting-edge research into sleep’s effects on the brain and body, we can now design the perfect nap for us, whether we’re young or old, students or mothers, nine to-fivers or shift workers.

Dr. Mednick’s nap research began six years ago when she was a graduate student at Harvard. She survived her busy days with shots of espresso and splashes of cold water on her face. But a nap on a ratty old couch in the Department of Psychology one afternoon changed her ways—and the subject of her doctoral thesis. Her graduate work, which was reported in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience, and her subsequent research on the positive effects of napping, led to a grant with the Department of Defense, research collaboration at major universities, and consultation work at private businesses, among many other opportunities.

TAKE A NAP! CHANGE YOUR LIFE. is the scientifically-proven program based on Dr. Mednick’s ground-breaking research. With advice on when to nap; how long to sleep; and how not to wake up groggy, the book also includes tips on creating the right nap environment, a 16-step technique for falling asleep, and a six-week napping workbook. The book also features an accessible “Nap Wheel,” showing readers precisely when they should nap for desired results (the optimal time to take a nap rich in REM sleep, which inspires creativity and heightens perception, or a different nap with more Stage 2 sleep, increasing alertness and motor skills).

The other health benefits of napping include:

• Preserving youthful looks. Adding a nap improves skin and tissue regeneration.

• Revitalizing libido. Sleep deprivation dampens sex drive and sexual function. Napping reverses those effects.

• Contributing to weight loss. Studies reveal that sleepy people reach for highfat, sugar-rich foods more than people who are rested. Napping also produces more of the growth hormone that reduces body fat.

• Reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Fatigue contributes to hypertension, heart attack, arrhythmia and other cardiovascular disorders, even in otherwise physically-fit subjects.

Dr. James B. Maas, author of The New York Times bestseller Power Sleep, sums up Dr. Mednick’s research this way: “Dr. Sara Mednick’s groundbreaking research provides compelling evidence that a midday snooze provides psychological and cognitive benefits. If you want to be fully alert, energetic and in a good mood all day long, Take a Nap.” The simplest solution to the ever-present problem of sleep deprivation is free, nontoxic, and has no dangerous side effects. Isn’t it time for napping to gain the respect it deserves?