Power Napping - John Flinn

                                                                  
Power Napping

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John Flinn

San Francisco Examiner, 1994

John F. Kennedy used to love a quick one in the afternoon. Whenever he could, he’d slip out of the Oval Office for half an hour of bliss.

If loose talk floating around Washington is to be believed, [Bill Clinton] also has begun ducking out of mid-afternoon policy sessions to wrinkle the White House sheets.

Naps. We’re talking about afternoon naps here.

And the leaders of the Free World aren’t the only ones doing it. Corporate ladder-climbers as well as overworked mothers increasingly are discovering the restorative powers of 40 winks, sleep experts say.

Don’t look at it as a sign that we’re turning into a nation of drooling old codgers, say the experts. Look at it as a sign we’re finally getting in touch with the body’s natural rhythms. Feel free to use the term “circadian cycle” if it makes you feel better. There’s no shame in this. It involves actual science.

“There’s an old notion that you nap when you’re a child and when you’re old, but not in between,” said David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “We now know that’s not true.”

Dinges and others have found overwhelming physiological evidence that the human body is designed for two sessions of sleep during each 24 hour  “circadian cycle”: a longer one at night and a shorter one in the middle of the afternoon.

Young adults, with resilient bodies accustomed to forgiving all manner of abuse, are better able to ignore their need for midday sleep. But as they approach their mid-30’s, Dinges said, the call for a siesta becomes more insistent.

“As we age there is evidence that it gets harder and harder to cheat these symptoms,” Dinges said. “We’re more sensitive to their effects on our level of functioning.”

Breakfast meetings, early morning shuttles to Los Angeles, dinner meetings, evening MBA classes, the demands of raising children – all these are robbing [baby boomers] of the nighttime sleep they need. This, Dinges believes, makes an afternoon nap even more crucial.

Just ask Paul and Kirsten Vals. He’s 35 and director of strategic alliances at Next Inc.; she’s 31 and a senior associate at the Copithorne & Bellows public relations agency. They’re both Silicon Valley go-getters during the week and unapologetic nappers on the weekend.

“It’s power napping,” Kirsten said. “It’s almost like an energy milkshake.”

Since the birth of their daughter 2 years ago, Kirsten said, her need for catnaps has been overwhelming. Her schedule won’t always allow it, but she tries to get three or four a month. Husband Paul said he supplements his weekend naps with shut-eye grabbed while flying to and from business meetings.

“I feel deprived when I don’t get one,” she said. “Before it was a treat. Now I feel if I don’t get one I’ll have to go to bed early at night or get so cranky I’ll snap at my husband.”

Researchers don’t know why humans need afternoon sleep. But a wide range of studies, from brain wave recordings to sleep diaries to prolonged islolation in underground caves have all pointed to the same conclusion.

Alertness and mood, the studies show, tend to crash 12 hours after the midpoint of one’s nighttime sleep. In other words, if you sleep from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., you’ll start yawning around 3 p.m. Myth to the contrary, a big, starchy lunch has little to do with it.

“The younger you are, the less likely this dip in alertness will be overwhelming,” said Dr. Alexander Clerk, director of the sleep clinic at the Stanford University Medical Center. “The older you get, the stronger that afternoon dip is.”

Napping on the job conjures up images of Homer Simpson and Dagwood Bumpstead, But Dr. William Dement, a Stanford University sleep researcher, calls napping “a heroic act.”

Dement and others are trying to focus attention on what they call a “national sleep deficit.” Each decade Americans tend to give up about 20 minutes of sleep per night – which means [baby boomers] are getting about an hour less sleep than their parents did. The national nightly average is now about 7.5 hours, according to one survey.

A national commission led by Dement last year cited on-the-job sleeplessness as a factor contributing to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.

But what are the chances of corporate America adopting the afternoon siesta? Nada, roughly. Blame it on the industrial revolution. One of the first things a nation does in moving from an agrarian to an industrial economy is to do away with the siesta – and there’s not much chance of going back, Dinges said.