Power Naps Can Make Up for Sleepless Nights
Power Naps Can Make Up for Sleepless Nights – New research shows that short power naps do help in reversing the damaging effects of insufficient sleep.
We all know that lack of sleep can damage the body and mind by disrupting hormonal balance, impairing judgment, and making us more vulnerable to disease. To study the hormonal response to loss of sleep, researchers at Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité in Paris, worked with 11 healthy men between the ages of 25 and 32.
Researchers allowed the subjects two hours of sleep in the first experiment, and then analyzed their urine and saliva. They found a 2.5-fold increase in the stress hormone norepinephrine, which is involved in the fight-or-flight response, increasing heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar upon the perception of danger. Their levels of interleukin-6, which helps the immune system, had also dropped. The levels normalized after they made up for lost sleep.
Researchers conducted another experiment in which the two-hour sleep limit was repeated, but the men were given the chance to take two 30-minute naps the following day.They saw no changes in the participants levels of norepinephrine or interleukin-6, proving that naps can help make up for lost sleep and reverse any damaging health effects.
Category: News
