Why do we get so rested on just 10 minutes of sleep and why do we get the opposite effect if we sleep for a longer time?
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Each sleep cycle is around 90 minutes. Think of it as like building a large office building. They build the floor, wall, roof, AC ducts, etc.
If you get a full cylce 90minutes, you’ve got a nice working functional story to work in. But if you wake up say halfway through, you are going to have half finished wires everywhere, etc.
If it’s just 10 minutes you’ve got the benefit of building the floor, but haven’t started the wall, etc, so it’s much easier to come out refreshed from a 10minute nap, since it’s just some nice flooring you’ve done which can be useful. Compared to a longer nap of 45min or so in which case you have half finished walls everywhere.
Not an answer to your post but…I read that Ben Franklin devised a process for the perfect nap length. He would sit in a comfortable chair with a bunch of coins in his hand above a tin bucket. When he fell asleep enough that his hand would let go of the coins, they would fall into the bucket and the noise would wake him, refreshed.
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My personal tip is that I plan my naps in increments of 30 minutes. That way I have found I have the lowest risk of waking up during REM sleep and a higher chance of waking up when my sleep cycle is in it’s lightest stage so that when I wake, I am not feeling completely exhausted (which happens when you wake up during especially the REM stage of your sleeping cycle). Whenever I do it in increments of 10 minutes or 15 minutes or something like that, I find myself much more tired after waking. A nap of 20 minutes or 25 you could get away with, but only if you can fall asleep fast and the nap doesn’t last longer than that.
I can’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time, without fail. I’ve napped so much outside of traditional sleep hours that my body knows nothing else now. I don’t know what a full 7 or 8 hours of sleep are like. I definitely dream, but any feeling of being refreshed doesn’t last. It’s like my body now only knows how to sleep to get me over the hump. I don’t know what to do.
When the body sleeps, waves of cerebral spinal fluid course through the brain, essentially flushing it like a toilet. I have no proof that this is true, but I’ve always felt that a Power Nap nudges you to produce one weak wave, enough to make you feel refreshed.
Drink a redbull right before your nap. On God you will wake up feeling absolutely cracked. Be safe.
I’ve always wondered what happens if it takes you 25+ mins to fall asleep though. Is it a Power Nap if you’re not actively asleep but trying to sleep?
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