 In
the past few months, UCSD’s Sara Mednick’s revolutionary
research has
garnered her interviews with newspapers, magazines, and radio and
TV stations around the country. But her work doesn’t involve
a cure for cancer, diabetes or the common cold. Instead, her recommendation
to improve physical and mental well-being, as well as our energy
and productivity is . . . take a nap.
Mednick is a new adjunct faculty member in the School of Medicine’s
Department of Psychiatry. Her recent book, Take a Nap! Change Your
Life, is a wake-up call to America, which she calls “a nation
of the walking tired.” Her research shows that fitting a
nap into one’s everyday schedule increases alertness, boosts
creativity and reduces stress.
“Studies show that a daily nap may also reduce the risk
of a heart attack, aid in weight loss and improve memory,” says
Mednick, who was first awakened to the powers of napping as an
exhausted graduate student at Harvard. Napping became the subject
of her doctoral thesis, and her graduate work was reported in Nature Neuroscience.
“A lot of people’s productivity deteriorates during
the day,” says Mednick, who believes that many business people
could benefit from a 20-minute nap in the afternoon. “It
is good for learning, memory and creativity,” she says, and
she foresees the day when “nap breaks” might be as
common as coffee breaks in the office.
Mednick’s latest research compares the benefits of napping
to the use of caffeine, utilizing standardized memory tests. Participants
are shown a word list in the morning. At 1 p.m., subjects either
have a nap or take a pill (placebo or 200 mg of caffeine). In the
afternoon, they are retested on the morning list of words and also
on a new set of words. “Recall and recognition of the ‘old’ words,
and the ability to recognize new words, actually worsen after caffeine,” she
reports.
Other current research looks at how new pharmaceutical agents,
such as prescription sleeping pills, affect the five different
stages of sleep—and Mednick concludes that napping might
be a better cure for insomnia than sleeping pills. “It sounds
contradictory, but taking a brief nap during the day may actually
help you sleep better at night,” she says. “Plus, sleep
is free and has no dangerous side effects.”
Besides improving memory, Mednick claims that napping helps people
make better decisions, improves mood and perception, helps preserve
youthful looks, and can even improve one’s sex life.
It might also make people feel better to know that napping isn’t
a sign of laziness. “Napping is a sign of taking control
of your life,” Mednick says.
For more information go to: www.saramednick.com.  — Debra Kain
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