Is taking a nap good for your health?

Taking a nap means making up for sleep. Many people wake up, complete certain tasks, and then go back to bed to take a nap. Taking a nap has both advantages and disadvantages for people. The advantage is that it can replenish sleep, restore physical strength, and prevent diseases. The disadvantage is that it disrupts the regular work and rest schedule and causes people to become slow to react. Therefore, if you want to take a nap, you must see whether your conditions are suitable.

1. Benefits

Replenish sleep and restore physical strength For people who work night shifts or stay up all night, a nap is very necessary. It can also be used to replenish sleep and restore physical strength, so a nap is good for health.

Suppress excitement and prevent disease. For some people, after waking up in the morning, the brain is not immediately in a normal excited state, but transitions from an inhibited state to an excited state. At this time, the higher centers of the brain will send a signal to re-enter light sleep, that is, to take a nap again. At this time, if you take a nap (not too long), when you wake up, the brain nerve activity will be readjusted, and some brain nerves that were in an inhibited state will start to become active or excited, eventually making the person completely awake. If you don't take a nap, you may feel dizzy, have a swollen and painful head, unstable blood pressure, and it may also induce cerebrovascular diseases.

2. Disadvantages

Taking a nap after morning exercise is not good for the health of the elderly.

Taking a nap may disrupt your daily routine and disrupt the brain's biological clock, causing you to "sleep poorly during the day and unable to fall asleep at night."

Taking a nap can cause slow reaction, poor memory, and susceptibility to illness.

It will cause a series of physiological reactions in the body. Serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, is a neuroinhibitor that shields the brain from cognitive stress and makes the body feel relaxed. It is usually secreted more during sleep, making us feel comfortable while sleeping. But serotonin is also a strong vasoconstrictor and stimulator of smooth muscle contraction. Sleeping too long causes excessive serotonin to work, causing blood vessels to contract excessively, pulling nerve endings, and thus causing headaches and preventing further sleep. This is why sleeping too much causes headaches.

3. Notes

When you have no symptoms of insomnia, do not take a nap, because doing so will not only disrupt your sleeping pattern, but also sleep for a long time, destroy the rhythm of heart activity and rest, and eventually make the heart contract weak and the whole body weak, forcing you to lie down, creating a vicious circle. If the sleep center is in an excited state for a long time, and other centers are suppressed for too long, their function of recovering activity will be slowed down accordingly, and people will often feel drowsy and listless.

Taking naps for a long time can lead to symptoms such as lack of energy and dizziness, which will affect people's daily life and endanger health. To reduce the harm caused by napping, people should try to improve their sleep quality.