To Nap Or Not To Nap: A Psychologist's Take On 'The Nap Paradox'

Do naps improve your health or ruin your sleep cycle?

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | August 8, 2023

The cult of productivity that dictates our lifestyle today can make rest and leisure feel like rewards instead of essentials. Too many of us are plagued by guilt when we take time to decompress — and one such guilt-ridden activity is taking the notorious midday nap.

Napping became a serious source of debate during the pandemic when most of us had to work remotely and, therefore, found ourselves catching the occasional shut-eye session during working hours — a luxury most of us were not acquainted with previously.

While many swear by the sense of recovery they feel after taking a short nap during the day, others shun the practice, citing it as one of the many unhealthy reasons behind an erratic and untimely sleep cycle. A 2017 study published in Sleep Medicine attempted to put an end to this debate by exploring what the authors called "The Nap Paradox."

Napping, according to the authors, has been associated with both positive and negative effects on one's well-being and physical health. So how does one go about napping without guilt and concerns about their health?

Let's begin with a rundown of its benefits.

The Subtle Neurological Magic Of Daytime Naps

There has been extensive research on sleep and the incorporation of naps in one's daily schedule. A major portion of it has produced pro-nap results, especially for people who are confined to a tight sleep schedule that does not allow for complete rest (like adolescents and working parents).

Here are some positives that have been associated with taking a 30-60 minute midday nap, according to the 2017 review:

  1. Napping Undoes the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation. Normally, as time spent awake increases, so does sleepiness. Along with a parallel decline in cognitive and memory-recording faculties. Research has shown that a midday nap can help with the recovery of both, giving your productivity and energy levels a second wind.
  2. Napping enhances subsequent learning. When one is sleep deprived, encoding (or learning) is reduced as compared to the day after a full night of rest. This happens because sleep facilitates the preservation of strong neural connections that have been formed during the day and removal of the weak ones, creating more space for new learning the next day. When one does not get enough rest, the brain is not well prepared for new learning to occur.
  3. Napping promotes emotion processing. Children have been shown to exhibit better emotional regulation skills in the face of challenging stimuli (e.g., a puzzle) on the days they do not skip their midday nap as compared to when they do. In another study, young adults who did not take a nap ascribed more negative emotions to faces as compared to the cohort that took a nap between their face viewing sessions.

These findings speak to the definitive potential that naps show in the area of lifestyle and performance improvement as well as when it comes to avoiding negative health consequences like burnouts and age-related cognitive decline.

Why, then, do naps still get a bad rep?

Why Naps Might Also Be A Sign Of Trouble

According to previous research reviewed by the study, there are two important factors that might determine if your napping habit is causing you harm or helping you thrive:

  1. Nap frequency
  2. Age

There is overwhelming research linking frequent daytime napping with a number of diseases including hypertension, microvascular disease, and diabetes to name a few. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology also identifies daytime naps as a potential indicator of depression, known most popularly by the phrase "depression naps."

It is unclear, however, if it is the napping that is making people's health worse or if they are simply a by-product of another condition.

Conclusion

Taking a nap in the middle of the day should not make you feel guilty or unproductive. If anything, you are giving your brain and your body a short bout of rest to recharge and get back to 100%. However, keeping a track of how frequently you take naps and how those naps make you feel can give you important insights about your physical and mental health which can help you spot underlying problems before they turn into full-fledged emergencies.