Is it better to nap for 20 or 30 minutes?
In general, the best nap length for adults is about 20 minutes and no longer than 30 minutes. Sleeping for 20 minutes allows the napper to get a bit of light sleep to boost alertness without entering into deep sleep. Waking up from deep sleep can cause grogginess and actually worsen sleepiness.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has recommended that children aged 6–12 years should regularly sleep 9–12 hours per 24 hours and teenagers aged 13–18 years should sleep 8–10 hours per 24 hours.
One Harvard study published last year showed that a 45-minute nap improves learning and memory. Napping reduces stress and lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke, diabetes, and excessive weight gain. Getting even the briefest nap is better than nothing.
Keep naps short.
Aim to nap for only 10 to 20 minutes. The longer you nap, the more likely you are to feel groggy afterward.
“A power nap is a nap that's short — less than 30 minutes long,” says Safia Khan, MD, a specialist in sleep disorders and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine and the department of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Limiting your naps to 10 to 20 minutes can leave you feeling more alert and refreshed. More than that, especially longer than 30 minutes, is likely to leave you feeling sluggish, groggy, and more tired than before you closed your eyes.
The body releases the sleep hormone melatonin later at night in teens than in kids and adults. This resets the body's internal sleep clock so that teens fall asleep later at night and wake up later in the morning. Most teens just aren't sleepy enough for bed before 11 p.m.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov advise that healthy adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. Babies, young children, and teens need even more sleep to enable their growth and development. People over 65 should also get 7 to 8 hours per night.
It's the regularity that's essential. So while teens should not be sleeping all day, a later bed time and later wake time are fine, as long as they sleep between 8.5 to 9.5 hours a day.
Sleep for no longer than 30 minutes: The ideal nap duration is around 20 minutes and should be no longer than 30 minutes. This helps prevent the body from reaching the deeper stages of sleep, and it keeps a person from waking up feeling groggy.
Is a 60 minute nap OK?
Taking a 60-minute nap has its benefits, but also has a downside. This nap allows for better cognitive memory processing, because some slow-wave sleep helps with remembering facts, places, and faces. However, waking up during slow-wave sleep causes grogginess upon waking.
A short nap of 20 to 30 minutes can improve mood, sharpen focus, and reduce fatigue. If you nap for longer than 30 minutes, you may find yourself feeling more groggy and fatigued. However, naps should not replace the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
What's a NASA Nap? After years of research, NASA scientists found that power naps were able to boost their pilots' performance by 34% and improve alertness by up to 54%. The team at NASA determined that an optimal power-nap time should be anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes.
There's no medical definition for a power nap, Dr. Gurevich says. But in general, the term refers to short naps ranging from about 10 to 30 minutes. A power nap that lasts 20 to 30 minutes is usually ideal.
It's the body's way of recharging and healing. For some people, it's also a great escape. Dreaming is fun, and sleep is a way to get away from problems in the real world. Sleep enthusiasts know that a good snooze is a great cure for things like stress, anxiety, and a bad mood.
If you nap in the morning, the sleep consists primarily of light NREM (and possibly REM) sleep. In contrast, napping later in the evening, as your sleep drive increases, will comprise more deep sleep. This, in turn, may disrupt your ability to fall asleep at night. Therefore, napping late in the day is discouraged.
Can You Sleep Standing Up? Sleeping while standing is even more difficult for humans than sleeping sitting up due to the loss of muscle tone that occurs during REM sleep. However, this practice has been observed in certain situations, such as soldiers on nighttime sentry duty.
- Relax your entire face, including the muscles inside your mouth.
- Drop your shoulders to release the tension and let your hands drop to the side of your body.
- Exhale, relaxing your chest.
- Relax your legs, thighs, and calves.
- Clear your mind for 10 seconds by imagining a relaxing scene.
According to a study published Monday in Hypertension, a journal from the American Heart Association, napping on a regular basis was associated with a 12% higher risk of developing high blood pressure, and a 24% higher risk of having an ischemic stroke.
Naps increase energy, improve reaction time and reduce daytime sleepiness. They lower stress and help to regulate mood, reducing anxiety and depression and inducing relaxation. They enhance creativity, increase productivity, boost problem-solving abilities and improve many cognitive abilities.
Is it OK to take a 2 hour nap everyday?
A long nap, such as two hours per day, could indicate sleep deprivation or another sleep disorder, which may need a doctor's consultation.
A single night of no sleep will not stunt growth. But over the long term, a person's growth may be affected by not getting the full amount of sleep. That's because growth hormone is normally released during sleep.
Once you know that it takes roughly 30 minutes, on average, for the brain to fully awaken and reach its max functionality, you can plan to get up at least that far in advance of having to take a work call or do anything else requiring your full attention.
An ideal schedule for most teens might be something like bedtime of 11 p.m. and wake-up time of 8 a.m. However, most middle and high schools in the United States start at or before 8 a.m, forcing many teens to wake up by 6:30 a.m. or earlier, hours before their biological rhythms tell them they are ready and hours ...
Americans get the least amount asleep around age 40, researchers found in a new study. Medical College of Georgia (MCG) investigators used data from a nationally representative sample of 11,279 participants aged 6 and older, each of whom wore a device on their nondominant wrist that measured movement and gauged sleep.
Older adults need about the same amount of sleep as all adults—7 to 9 hours each night. But, older people tend to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier than they did when they were younger.
Boredom, depression, chronic pain and/or nutritional deficiencies can be some of the underlying causes that account for excessive daytime sleeping. Medications can also be a problem.
10 To 20 Minutes
This is arguably the most effective nap length (unless you have an hour and a half to spare, of course). Ten- to 20-minute naps will help you perk up with little to no grogginess, so you can rally throughout the afternoon and don't have to worry about crashing later.
However, research has shown that a 1-hour nap has many more restorative effects than a 30-minute nap, including a much greater improvement in cognitive functioning. The key to taking a longer nap is to get a sense of how long your sleep cycles are and try to awaken at the end of a sleep cycle.
The 5-minute nap produced few benefits in comparison with the no-nap control. The 10-minute nap produced immediate improvements in all outcome measures (including sleep latency, subjective sleepiness, fatigue, vigor, and cognitive performance), with some of these benefits maintained for as long as 155 minutes.
What is a military nap?
According to Willink, here's how to do the Navy SEAL power nap: Lie on the ground and elevate your feet above your heart. TikTokers add that resting them on a couch or another raised surface works well. Nap for 8 to 12 minutes (Willink says the lower end of that range is ideal for him).
| Age | # of Naps | Length of Each Nap |
|---|---|---|
| 7-8 Months | 2-3 Naps | 1-2 hours |
| 9-12 Months | 2 Naps | 1-2 hours |
| 13-17 Months | 1-2 Naps | 1-3 hours |
| 18 Months-3 Years | 1 Nap | 1.5-2.5 hours |
"You can get incredible benefits from 15 to 20 minutes of napping," she says. "You reset the system and get a burst of alertness and increased motor performance. That's what most people really need to stave off sleepiness and get an energy boost."
A brief 15-minutes nap can enhance your psychom*otor skills and boost your work performance. Taking a nap can also help you prevent burnout and mental fatigue. Napping can increase your alertness and improve your physical performance, too.
Short naps that typically last about 15 to 30 minutes and longer naps of about 90 minutes can both be effective at promoting wakefulness, though experts most often recommend shorter naps. Research has found that a short nap consisting of light sleep can immediately reduce drowsiness after waking.
Afternoon nap is a traditional practice commonly seen in populations of Mediterranean, Latin American, and Chinese countries. In Chinese society, it is widely accepted that afternoon nap, as a complementary sleep, is a healthy activity and is especially good for older adults who need longer sleeping time.
What is Inemuri? In Japan, inemuri literally translates to dozing or nodding off, but in this case, it can also mean “sleeping while present.” It's a culturally accepted power nap that you can take in the middle of the workday in Japan.
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Weekly average duration of sleep among people in Japan from 1976 to 2021 (in minutes)
Results. When tested 30 min after learning, cramming and napping led to significantly better memory than taking a break. After a week, napping maintained this significant advantage, but cramming did not.
A nap was found to improve memory scores on a test in one study, suggesting that a quick sleep could help to refresh your mind and consolidate all that learning. Keep it short though; any more than 20-30 minutes and you could find it difficult to fall asleep later on.
What happens if you sleep too much?
Too much sleep on a regular basis can increase the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and death according to several studies done over the years. Too much is defined as greater than nine hours. The most common cause is not getting enough sleep the night before, or cumulatively during the week.
You may be too exhausted even to manage your daily affairs. In most cases, there's a reason for the fatigue. It might be allergic rhinitis, anemia, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic kidney disease, liver disease, lung disease (COPD), a bacterial or viral infection, or some other health condition.
When it comes to sleep, can you have too much of a good thing? It's true a good night's sleep is essential for health. But oversleeping has been linked to a host of medical problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and increased risk of death.
A power nap that lasts 20 to 30 minutes is usually ideal. It's long enough to give you all the benefits of sleep without leaving you feeling groggy when you wake up.
Ideally, you should try to get more than 90 minutes of sleep. Sleeping between 90 and 110 minutes gives your body time to complete one full sleep cycle and can minimize grogginess when you wake. But any sleep is better than not at all — even if it's a 20-minute nap.
A short nap of 20 to 30 minutes can improve mood, sharpen focus, and reduce fatigue. If you nap for longer than 30 minutes, you may find yourself feeling more groggy and fatigued. However, naps should not replace the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
10-20 minute naps are also referred to as power naps. These short naps allow you to wake up feeling refreshed, energized, and alert.
Sleeping for 60 minutes includes the deepest type of sleep, slow-wave sleep. Because of this, the one-hour nap is ideal for helping an individual better remember faces, names, and facts. However, a sleep cycle will not be completed in only 60 minutes, so you may not be very alert for some time after waking up.
What is the optimal length of time for a nap? Naps can be short (15 to 30 minutes) or longer; both short and long naps can increase alertness and be useful. Take into account that sleep becomes deeper the longer you sleep, reaching the deepest level (slow-wave sleep) in about 1 hour.
“Napping for just 20 minutes may provide ample benefits, including improved alertness, mood, and vigilance,” says Aarthi Ram, MD, a sleep neurologist at Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital. It may even help you learn more efficiently.
Do naps make up for lost sleep?
Try an afternoon nap: While napping isn't a replacement for lost sleep, it can help you feel more rested during the day. Naps may be particularly helpful for shift workers or people who can't maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Even a short power nap can refresh the rest of your day.
Power naps intend to restore alertness, performance, and learning ability. A nap may also reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep or reverse the damage of sleep deprivation.
Sleep experts have found that daytime naps can improve many things: increase alertness, boost creativity, reduce stress, improve perception, stamina, motor skills and accuracy, enhance your sex life, aid in weight loss, reduce the risk of heart attack, brighten your mood and boost memory.
Naps for adults should be no more than an hour and probably best kept to the 15- to 20-minute range. Anything beyond that – especially considering the time of day – could have consequences. We caught up with sleep medicine specialist Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer, DO, MS, for more insight on how long your nap should be.
