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I. M. Semara Reta Adnyana

Dr. Vera Syamsi

ENC1101U Composition I

17 December 2019

Power Naps

Do you take naps? Extraordinary benefits for a healthier body can be

obtained from a nap. During a nap, all the functions of the body's organs tend to
be sluggish, at that time the body will be rest for a while, making the body fresher
and able to function better (Mednick and Mark 23). However, there are still many
people who do not know the true benefits of napping, and choose to spend the day
with various activities. Naps are generally done as activities to rest the body from
a variety of dense activities that cause fatigue for the body. Napping also done
when someone does not have the quality or quantity of sleep at night, but naps are
not a substitute for a night sleep (Chen et al. 2875). Even so, napping can
replenish the energy and concentration that began to fade during the day. When
taking a nap, the part of the brain that is always active during activities will rest. A
good nap is about 30 to 60 minutes every day, which is beneficial for maintaining
health and fitness (“How Long Is an Ideal Nap”). Napping is not an unproductive
activity because some studies show that take naps can increase someone
productivity such as improving memory, reducing stress, and increasing
creativity.

The benefits of napping can improve memory. Routine nappers, who

napped five to seven days in a week, had sustained attention, better nonverbal
reasoning ability and spatial memory (LaPenta, “Napping and Teenage
Learning”). This can happen because the nap is like rebooting the brain. Like an
electronic device that is stuck or not responding when given a complex activity or
used for a long time, it must be rebooted or restarted to restore its function. The
brain also needs to be rebooted because during activities from waking up to
daytime, the brain's ability is quite widely used and tired. Therefore, a nap is one
way to reboot the brain, so that after a nap the brain will feel much more
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refreshed. Moreover, a maximum of 60 minutes of naps will have a more real

impact because there has been a slow wave sleep, so the brain will be better
prepared to work again. Naps taken for 60 minutes can improve the ability to
remember, whether in the form of language, people's names, or the name and
location of a place. Naps can also help to remember something that was forgotten
(Lemos et al. 22).

Naps also have benefits for reducing stress. Stress is a form of mental
fatigue. Mental fatigue experienced is usually caused by a state of occurrence of
disconnected between what is designed by the brain with what is felt by the body
(Wise 197). In addition, mental fatigue can also occur when doing something
similar for a long period of time so that the feeling of bored arises. This feeling
bored when forced will cause stress. To overcome this problem is usually resting
the body by taking a nap. Furthermore, Napoli stated that those who took naps had
lower blood pressure than those who didn’t. Sleepiness also linked with increased
blood pressure and greater levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol, so reducing the
tension caused by stress through napping is good for body.

Napping positively effects the creativity. According to Ji et al., the benefits

of napping for 30 minutes can improve cognitive and analyse abilities. A test
about effect of taking a nap was conducted on 363 early adolescents in 2019 who
were randomly selected in Jintan, China. The test compared between early
adolescents who taking a nap and who did no taking a nap. The results showed
that early adolescents who continued to activities without taking a nap had lower
scores on intelligence tests such as IQ tests compared to early adolescents who
took a nap. Furthermore, the capacity of early adolescents who taking a nap to
work and process data higher compared to early adolescents who did no taking a
nap. In addition, early adolescents who take a 30-minute nap have microsleep, a
condition where early adolescents are out of focus because of feeling sleepy, less
than early adolescents who do not take a nap (Ji et al. 545).

There is no doubt that power naps provide a good impact such as improve
memory, reduce stress and increase creativity. Napping is improving memory as it
converts short-term memory into long-term memory by making stronger
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connections between new experiences and old memories. This allows new
experiences to be integrated with existing experiences and makes them more
understandable. Naps also can reduce levels of stress hormones to be lower, so it
is useful to make someone become more relaxed and reduce stress. Furthermore,
naps can help generate creative ideas. This is because naps can increase right
brain activity, and the right brain plays a big role in the process of creativity and
imagination.
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Work Cited

Beris, Rebecca. “How Napping Changes Your Brain That Makes You More
Creative.” Lifehack, 9 Dec. 2019, https://www.lifehack.org/409580/how-
napping-changes-your-brain-that-makes-you-more-creative/. Accessed 12
Dec. 2019.

Chen, Gang, et al. "Associations between sleep duration, daytime nap duration,
and osteoporosis vary by sex, menopause, and sleep quality." The Journal of
Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 99.8 (2014): 2869-2877.

“How Long Is an Ideal Nap?” The National Sleep Foundation. 2019.

https://www.sleep.org/articles/how-long-to-nap/. Accessed 17 Dec. 2019.

Ji, Xiaopeng, Junxin Li, and Jianghong Liu. "The relationship between midday
napping and neurocognitive function in early adolescents." Behavioral sleep
medicine 17.5 (2019): 537-551.

LaPenta, Dante. “Napping and Teenage Learning.” University of Delaware Daily,

23 Apr. 2018, https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2018/april/xiaopeng-ji-napping-
neurocognitive-function/. Accessed 12 Dec. 2019.

Lemos, Nathalia, Janaina Weissheimer, and Sidarta Ribeiro. "Naps in school can
enhance the duration of declarative memories learned by
adolescents." Frontiers in systems neuroscience 8 (2014).

Mednick, Sara C., and Mark Ehrman. Take a nap!: Change your life. Workman
Publishing, 2006.

Napoli, Nicole. “A Nap a Day Keeps High Blood Pressure at Bay.” American
College of Cardiology, 7 Mar. 2019, https://www.acc.org/about-acc/press-
releases/2019/03/07/08/56/a-nap-a-day-keeps-high-blood-pressure-at-bay.
Accessed 17 Dec. 2019.

Wise, Mary J. "Naps and sleep deprivation: Why academic libraries should
consider adding nap stations to their services for students." New Review of
Academic Librarianship 24.2 (2018): 192-210.