Is It Ok To Nap?

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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To meet your lover in your dreams, you must stay awake all day. He or she is worth the effort. If you're tired when the night comes, you will sleep. Indeed, to make sure you're tired, you should exercise. Perhaps go for a vigorous walk, work out in the gym, play sport. This should give you a good reason to drop off to sleep when the time comes around. This is how it's all supposed to work. You set yourself into a routine. Wake at this time, do this during the day, go to bed at the same time every night. New habits bring sleep. And those same experts will shake their heads in despair if you so much as suggest the idea of a nap during the day. Whoa! No way, Jose (he was a sleep expert from California who made a big name for himself selling herbal remedies out of the back of his RV). Any break in this routine will be the death of sleep when the due time comes around. How can you be tired enough to sleep if you put your head down during the afternoon?

Well, let's ask the Brits how they get on. Although, with their socialized medicine and death camps, perhaps they don't know so much. Anyway, two famous people have spoken out ...
... about sleep. This old guy called Winston Churchill was up there with Roosevelt when it came to winning WWII (Stalin was in there too but we don't like to talk about him). But as Prime Minister of Britain he rarely went to sleep in the modern sense. Whenever he felt tired, he put his head down for a power nap. He found he woke refreshed and able to fight the war. Staying with the Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher was well-known for only sleeping four hours a night. She's also known for little government and cutting back on the public sector. No one went to sleep in case they lost their jobs. So, if you put any credit in role models, here you have two powerful people who never worried about sleep and got to run their country.

The moral of this should be there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to sleeping. Everybody should find a pattern that gives them the best level of performance and, if it keeps them happy and successful, they never worry if they are not like everyone else. For the rest who would rather go with the crowd, there's Ambien to knock you out at night. All you need do is decide which 7 or 8 hours you want taken out of your waking hours, swallow the pills and lie down. Ambien is that predictable in the results it delivers. Just one other thought. If you are naturally a short sleeper, forcing yourself to go long can leave you feeling tired and lethargic. It's one of these strange results. You should also watch out for rebound insomnia if you stop taking Ambien. Just as you recharged your batteries by getting in some extra sleep, you can find you have to put in some awake hours to get back to your normal cycle of sleep. It's all about finding the right balance for yourself — often better done without relying on a drug.