Sleep Your Way To The Top

Working 9 to 5, or something similar? Find yourself sluggish about midday? Maybe you need a few more winks. Just an hour’s nap can make all the difference in your chances for success in your daily endeavors.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that napping an hour can dramatically restore and boost your brain power. Amazingly, they found a nap can actually make you smarter.

Apparently that brain sitting atop your shoulders needs sleep to clear its short-term memory storage so new information may be absorbed.

It’s something akin to when you download too many digital photos to an old PC; it just slows processing to a crawl.

“Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap,” says Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and lead investigator.

Based on the study, college students who pull “all nighters” cramming for finals aren’t doing themselves any big favors. The findings indicate this practice decreases the ability to learn by nearly 40 percent.

In the study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups — nap and no-nap. Both groups were given rigorous learning tasks at noon to stress the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Results in both groups were similar.

At 2 p.m., the first group napped for 90 minutes while the no-nap group stayed awake. At 6 p.m., both groups were subjected to a new series of learning exercises. Those who napped performed markedly better and actually improved their ability to learn.

“It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder,” Walker says.

In addition to boosting your brain power, one study showed that napping can reduce the risk of a fatal heart attack by 37 percent.

From My Notepad

As a young reporter, I once covered an elderly small-city mayor who could go 18 hours in a fast-forward schedule that would have hobbled a man half his age.

I asked him what his secret was to working from very early morning through late night, with few breaks in between.

His simple answer: “Cat naps.”

This mayor would take a half hour nap in the late morning and one in the late afternoon, spacing his downtime in such a way that he could cover administrative functions during the day and public meetings at night.

He always appeared refreshed, sharp, and his energy levels were astounding (btw: this public official lived to be nearly 100).

Some tips for an effective, refreshing afternoon nap:

• Best naptime is 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. when you experience a natural dip in energy.

• Get comfortable. If you have a couch or comfy chair, use them, says Salary.com. Otherwise, stash a yoga mat and pillow behind your desk.

• Draw the shades and wear a sleep mask to stimulate melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone, advises Body Ecology.

• Your body temperature may fall during sleep, so cover yourself with a light blanket.

• Set an alarm to make sure you don't oversleep.

Walker and his team plan to investigate whether the reduction of sleep experienced by people as they get older is related to the documented decrease in our ability to learn as we age.

Finding that link may be helpful in understanding such neurodegenerative conditions as Alzheimer’s disease, Walker says.

Ken Cocuzzo