Aurora Comms Blog

Naps not nappies

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by PR Mum in Fun stuff, Health

I re-discovered sleep during the half term holidays, as the rotters were handed over to their grandparents during a hostage transfer at a Little Chef service station. They got to enjoy a week in the country with their much-loved grandparents and we got a week off from being parents; free to go out and sleep as we wished. In addition to the benefits of unbroken night time sleep, the Postie maintained the need for his afternoon nap, which has now been shown to boost a person’s brain power and improve their memory (obviously, I haven’t told him this!).

The study from scientists at the University of California Berkeley found that a Spanish-style siesta after lunch does more than just refresh the body and mind, it also makes it easier for the brain to store and retrieve items of short-term information needed for working or studying. The study took 39 healthy volunteers who were divided into two groups. At noon, both groups took part in a series of rigorous learning tests intended to tax a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is known to be involved in the formation of short-term memory. One of the groups was then asked to take a 90-minute nap at 2.00 pm, while the other group stayed awake. Both were then asked to take part in a subsequent set of tests at 6.00 pm to see how well they could continue learning. Those who had remained awake during the afternoon performed significantly worse in terms of learning ability at 6.00 pm than those who had taken the nap. The people who had slept not only did better, they actually improved their capacity to learn. Dr Matthew Walker, a psychologist at the University of California Berkeley commented, “It’s as though the email inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact emails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder.”

Grandpa, who is also partial to an afternoon nap, will be reassured to read that the older generation need just as much sleep as the young. A study from the University of California, San Diego, dispelled the myth that the amount of sleep we need deceases with age. Dr Sean Drummond, a psychologist at the University commented, “It’s a fallacy. The quantity of sleep that we need does not go down as we age, but the ability to sleep in one chunk gets lost.” The middle aged and elderly are more likely to suffer from an interrupted night’s sleep due to health problems – forcing them to adapt to cat napping or coping with tiredness in the day. Most people need between seven and nine hours a night.
While the Postie and Grandpa can continue to nap soundly with this knowledge, the rotters and their nappies have returned to the nest.

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