Father’s day is coming and we don’t know what to give. Here we have the “ONE SIESTA” solution, you are sure to be delighted to accept.
We all have many material things and sometimes we just need a little while to enjoy the company of our children. In addition, the siesta has great health benefits, here we show you some:
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These are some of the advantages of a nap:
1. It acts as a cardiovascular insurance
To protect the heart, the nap has to be a little long, approximately 45 minutes. It takes this time for your blood pressure to drop after a stressful day. The cardioprotective effect is so evident that, in the opinion of specialists, people with this habit are almost 40% less likely to suffer a heart attack.
2. Equivalent to a night’s sleep
The nap does not have to be very long: thirty minutes is enough. Its consequences on metabolism and cognitive abilities have been studied, and it is observed that this type of rest reduces the desire to eat, favors creativity, improves perception and enhances memory, learning and even sexual life. Best of all, the treatment has no side effects, except feeling drowsy if it takes too long.
3. Shortens reaction times
Sleep medicine pioneer William Dement often explains that NASA scientists became enthusiastic about napping when they measured its effects on airmen who had to fly long distances across the Pacific. Interrupting their activity to nap for twenty-six minutes during the crossing had surprising effects: the pilots only had 34 micro-dreams of between three and ten seconds in length and their reaction time improved. On the other hand, those who did not rest registered 120 micro-dreams, and what is worse, twenty-two of them when the plane descended to land.
4. It makes us more productive
Which is better, dragging out the fatigue during the evening workday or interrupting it for ten minutes to tune up the brain? The neurophysiologist at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid Antonio Pedrera points out that one of the proven effects of napping is the improvement in productivity. It happens if it is done after lunch and also at night: “For people who work the night shift, a break of only fifteen minutes in the middle of it allows them to continue at full capacity afterwards.” The brains do not need more time to get in tune: “It is a quick reset like the one a computer does when we turn it off and on again.”
5. Essential to grow
Dr. María Sainz, head of the Preventive Medicine Service at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid, is clear that napping “is a practice that will continue to exist because it responds to a physiological need.” If she had to prescribe naps as a compulsory treatment to someone, she does not doubt that it would be two groups: babies and adolescents . Their development depends, to a large extent, on the number of hours they sleep. “Until the age of eighteen or twenty it is essential, because the body is in full progression and growth hormone is only released when you rest,” she explains. Babies do it between twelve and sixteen hours up to three years. They do not need to insist, but adolescents usually sleep less than the eight or nine hours they should, and taking a nap would make up for what they rob them of sleep at night.
6. Head to clear
Researchers say there is a surefire way to get your mind to work after a meal: ten minutes of sleep. A quick break is more effective than a half-hour break, she found in a group of twenty-four volunteers whom she subjected to mental agility tasks after the break. The acuity of those who slept little was immediately evident and over a period of two and a half hours, she explains in her research, while those who rested thirty minutes were dragged by what specialists know as sleep inertia . In other words: they were slow to wake up.
7. Improves mood
You only have to see a sleepy baby’s tantrum to realize the effects of a nap: it is a magnificent antidote to irritability and an optimal therapy to improve mood. Practiced since childhood, it constitutes an emotional vaccine, it has been seen that little ones who skip naps have a greater risk of suffering from mood disorders later on. The scientists found that three-year-old children who were deprived of it had a decrease in 34% in positive emotional responses.
