Permission to nap during the day granted, seeing as it helps your brain
You can now let go of that notion that napping during the day makes you a lazy person...
It has long been said that kids taking naps helps with their overall development and helps them with stabilising their moods.
But for some reason, naps fall away when kids turn a certain age and parents just give up trying to get their children to nap during the day.
We have come to understand that the reason for many parents giving up is because they feel if their kids nap during the day, then they will not sleep through the night.
It is this line of thought that has created a somewhat negative stereotype around napping.
But over the years, we have learnt that naps are actually good for you. Not just for your state of mind and overall mood, but also for your brain health.
"Regularly finding time for a little snooze is good for our brain and helps keep it bigger for longer, say University College London researchers." (BBC)
Daytime naps are difficult to attain with people's work routines. However, scientists recommend having daytime naps that are less than half an hour.
"The team showed nappers' brains were 15 cubic centimetres (0.9 cubic inches) larger - equivalent to delaying ageing by between three and six years." (BBC)
But with companies like Google encouraging daytime napping, we can firmly say that this is something that more companies should jump on board with.
MORE FROM JACARANDA FM
As a society, we need to move away from the notion that sleeping during the day makes people lazy.
It seems the greatest leaders and most successful people attest to daytime napping. The benefits are obvious, all you have to do is try it out and see how it can work for you.
"We are suggesting that everybody could potentially experience some benefit from napping," Dr Victoria Garfield said. She described the findings as "quite novel and quite exciting". (BBC)
The brain is said to decrease in size naturally as we progress in age, so if napping could help us with this, why not give it a try?
In association with naps and diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers have said that this needs more work before determining the benefits of naps.
Image Courtesy of iStock/brizmaker