Episode notes

The nap is the most contested piece of sleep advice there is. A superpower, or the thing ruining your night, and the magic length changes depending on who is telling you. Some of this is genuinely settled.

A study that compared five, ten, twenty and thirty minute naps head to head found the short ones gave alertness with no grogginess, while thirty minutes made you pay first. We cover why more sleep is not automatically more benefit, the coffee-before-a-nap trick and the driving-simulator data behind it, why a nap is not repayment for lost sleep — and an important caution for anyone with real insomnia, for whom most of this advice is reversed.

SOURCES:

Brooks & Lack — A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: which nap duration is most recuperative? Sleep, 2006;29(6):831-840

Reyner & Horne — Suppression of sleepiness in drivers: combination of caffeine with a short nap, Psychophysiology, 1997

American Academy of Sleep Medicine — clinical practice guideline, behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults

Written and fact-checked by Brent Burgess. Narration uses a synthetic voice model of his own voice.

This episode is general education and is not medical advice. Sleep problems can have serious underlying causes — talk to your doctor before changing medication, supplements, or treatment.