Power naps, full cycle sleeping, and the nappucino: How to optimize your mid-day rest

How napping impacts your sleep schedule and quality. We hear from Sleep Expert Andrew Holmes.

If you’re thinking of using some of your extra down time this long weekend to get a little bit of shuteye, why not get the most bang for your buck?

Andrew Holmes, founder of Sleep Efficiency, joined CTV’s Your Morning Ottawa on Tuesday to share a few tips and tricks to get the most out of your nap.

“They’re a great tool to have in your toolbox,” Holmes said. “They can afford a variety of different symptomatic improvements, but there’s a couple nuances, right?”

Who, when and where?

According to Holmes, naps are a great for those leading a busy life and those who have commitments that eat into their regular sleep schedules.

“The busy professionals, maybe parents that are kind of running around after the little ones — they’re not getting quality sleep at night. Some students who are studying for exams, you know, busy social life,” he said.

Those who struggle to fall asleep at night, should avoid napping completely, Holmes says.

As for the when, Holmes says the optimal time for a nap is early afternoon.

“Maybe one to two o’clock, nothing past that. Otherwise, what might be happening is you’re going to impact your ability to fall asleep that night,” he said.

If you’re wondering where to settle down for a rest, Holmes suggests seeking out a cool, dark and quiet area.

“If you have the ability to get into bed, of course, or the couch, or a recliner,” he said.

The power of the power nap

The power nap is a 10-to-30-minute rest, and Holmes says it is a “great tool” to recharge energy stores.

“This is the one that most people can kind of get away with, just based on the duration,” he said. “This is going to improve memory, focus, it’s going to boost energy, it can help reduce stress, and this is kind of the nap that most people would be able to kind of fit into their workday.”

The key to a successful power nap is duration, Holmes says.

“How many people have actually woken up feeling worse after their nap?” he said. “If you go over the 30 minutes, you’re going to actually create something called sleep inertia, which is a sleep drunkenness and grogginess. It’s like purgatory; you don’t want to be there. So, 30 minutes max.”

The full cycle nap

If a quick 30-minute power nap won’t get the job done, Holmes recommends extending your sleep to 90-minutes for a full cycle nap, where you enter into each different sleep stage.

“You get to that deep sleep, which affords the physical restoration, you get to your dream sleep, your REM, rapid eye movement, which affords the cognitive restoration, memory consolidation; it can help with emotional regulation,” he said.

“So, 30 minutes or 90 is kind of those two spots that you want to be in — you don’t want to be in between there.”

When calculating the length of a nap, Holmes says the amount of time it takes to fall asleep, should be considered.

“What we’re talking about here is the total sleep time, we call it TST,” he said. “So, 90 minutes is truly 90 minutes. Don’t factor in the time that it takes, because that’s not actually sleep.”

What is the nappuccino?

If you’re looking for a bit of a boost coming out of your nap, maybe the nappuccino is right for you. The idea, Holmes explains, is to drink a coffee or a shot of espresso right before laying down for a rest.

“Your ability to fall asleep really quickly is going to be paramount here. So, when you wake up, you actually have the caffeine hit, you’re benefiting from what that caffeine is going to do, and an alerting factor,” he said.

“Caffeine suppresses adenosine, which makes us feel sleepy, so you get the benefits of the nap, plus the caffeine that’s going to kick in as an accelerant.”

As Holmes explains, the nappuccino is all about timing.

“So, knock back your espresso, obviously being able to fall asleep quickly, caffeine is going to take 20 minutes to kick in. When you wake up, you’re going to get the benefits of the naps and the coffee,” he said.

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