How To Nap Like A Pro (No More "Sleep Hangovers"!)

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Napping can be great for the health, and evidence-based benefits include:

  • Increased alertness

  • Helps with learning

  • Improved memory

  • Boost to immunity

  • Enhance athletic performance

• However, we can mistime it and end up feeling far more tired than before

  • Timing is about more than just “nap for x minutes”, so see today’s main feature, for how to time naps like a pro!

• Today’s sponsor Apollo is offering 10almonds subscribers a discount on wearable tech to improve relaxation, focus, and quality of sleep too!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

3 Daily Habits for Less Pain & Stiffness (for 50+)

Specialist over-50's physiotherapist Will Harlow reveals 3 non-obvious daily habits that over-fifties can use for less pain and stiffness throughout life.

In this short video, he explains how these 3 habits target key areas of the body and can prevent problems if done every day:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

⏰ MAIN FEATURE

How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist

There’s a lot of science to say that napping can bring us health benefits—but mistiming it can just make us more tired. So, how to get some refreshing shut-eye, without ending up with a case of the midday melatonin blues?

First, why do we want to nap?

Well, maybe we’re just tired, but there are specific benefits even if we’re not. For example:

• Increased alertness

• Helps with learning

• Improved memory

• Boost to immunity

• Enhance athletic performance

What can go wrong?

There are two main things that can go wrong, physiologically speaking:

1. We can overdo it, and not sleep well at night

2. We can awake groggy and confused and tired

The first is self-explanatory—it messes with the circadian rhythm. For this reason, we should not sleep more than 90 minutes during the day. If that seems like a lot, and maybe you’ve heard that we shouldn’t sleep more than half an hour, there is science here, so read on…

The second is a matter of sleep cycles. Our brain naturally organizes our sleep into multiples of 20-minute segments, with a slight break of a few minutes between each. Consequently, naps should be:

• 25ish minutes

• 40–45 minutes

• 90ish minutes

If you wake up mid-cycle—for example, because your alarm went off, or someone disturbed you, or even because you needed to pee, you will be groggy, disoriented, and exhausted.

For this reason, a nap of one hour (a common choice, since people like “round” numbers) is a recipe for disaster, and will only work if you take 15 minutes to fall asleep. In which case, it’d really be a nap of 45 minutes, made up of two 20-minute sleep cycles.

Some interruptions are better/worse than others

If you’re in light or REM sleep, a disruption will leave you not very refreshed, but not wiped out either. And as a bonus, if you’re interrupted during a REM cycle, you’re more likely to remember your dreams.

If you’re in deep sleep, a disruption will leave you with what feels like an incredible hangover, minus the headache, and you’ll be far more tired than you were before you started the nap.

The best way to nap

Taking these factors into account, one of the “safest” ways to nap is to set your alarm for the top end of the time-bracket above the one you actually want to nap for (e.g., if you want to nap for 25ish minutes, set your alarm for 45).

Unless you’re very sleep-deprived, you’ll probably wake up briefly after 20–25 minutes of sleep. This may seem like nearer 30 minutes, if it took you some minutes to fall asleep!

If you don’t wake up then, or otherwise fail to get up, your alarm will catch you later at what will hopefully be between your next sleep cycles, or at the very least not right in the middle of one.

When you wake up from a nap before your alarm, get up. This is not the time for “5 more minutes” because “5 more minutes” will never, ever, be refreshing.

Rest well!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Discover Tranquility: Apollo's Wearable Trains Your Body to De-Stress

At 10almonds, we’ve talked before about the usefulness of wearables for good health maintenance. So what does this one do?

Developed by experts at Apollo combining neuroscience and physiology, it uses touch therapy with soothing vibrations to calm your nerves, melt away stress, and promote better sleep, relaxation, and focus.

Tested by thousands, users experience:

• 40% less stress

• increased focus by up to 25%, and

• an additional 30 minutes of sleep per night

Click here to claim your $40 discount on an Apollo wearable today, and experience the difference for yourself!

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• A daily multivitamin may help your memory, but only if you're in this age group

• BMI under fire as AMA calls for new approach to address weight

• A study found racial and ethnic differences in the suicide prevention care in emergency departments

• UA researcher develops new method to monitor frailty symptoms

• Mayo Clinic Minute: reducing the risks of sexually transmitted infections

• Pain not perceived in the same way in people with Alzheimer's Disease

• New category of depression identified (with implications for treatment) 

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Eat It! The Most Sustainable Diet and Workout Ever Made: Burn Fat, Get Strong, and Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Guilt Free - by Jordan Syatt and Michael Vacanti

One of the biggest challenges we often face when undertaking diet and exercise regimes, is the “regime” part. Day one is inspiring, day two is exciting... Day seventeen when one has a headache and some kitchen appliance just broke and one's preferred exercise gear is in the wash... Not so much.

Authors Jordan Syatt and Michael Vacanti, therefore, have taken it upon themselves to bring sustainability to us.

Their main premise is simplicity, but simplicity that works. For example:

• Having a daily calorie limit, but being ok with guesstimating

• Weighing regularly, but not worrying about fluctuations (just trends!)

• Eating what you like, but prioritizing some foods over others

• Focusing on resistance training, but accessible exercises that work the whole body, instead of "and then 3 sets of 12 reps of these in 6-4-2 progression to exhaustion of the anterior sternocleidomastoid muscle"

The writing style is simple and clear too, without skimping on the science where science helps explain why something works a certain way.

Bottom line: this one's for anyone who would like a strong healthy body, without doing the equivalent of a degree in anatomy and physiology along the way.

Click here to check out "Eat it!" on Amazon and simplify your diet and exercise plans for great, sustainable progress!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

The 10almonds Team