February 23, 2023 • 44 mins
Naps are great if you can manage to find the space to take them. The trick is to do it for the right amount of time. We get into all in the ins and outs of Chuck's favorite time of day.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, lingering, which makes this stuff you
should know, right, And can we quickly just say a
(00:21):
brief thank you to everyone that came out on the
first three show leg of our nine show tour. Yeah,
thank you to everybody in Seattle, to everyone in Portland, yay.
Thank you to everyone in San Francisco yeehall. And that's
the three so far. Yeah, and they went great. I
think we were both a little nervous. Could it's been
(00:43):
a while And it was like putting on an old
shirt all right with a bunch of moth holes in.
It was awesome, perfectly placed. So just one nipple sticks
out through one of the Oh wow, that's what it
felt like to me. I think going out on stage
in that year, you did so good, my friend. I
(01:04):
was very proud of you. You were funny and engaging
and doled out the information. It was just vintage Josh. Well.
I have to say that is great to hear because
I feel the same way about your performance, which you delivered. Chuck,
you did great too. Wilson. Either one of us screwed
it up. I don't think so. No. I mean, yes,
both of us screwed up plenty of times, but not
(01:26):
the whole shebang, you know what I mean. Yeah, So,
I feel like we're really kind of overselling things. I
don't want everybody to come out expecting a lot based
on what we just said for the next six shows.
But we are going to be touring some more this year,
so heads up, keep an ear out for where we're
going to be. I think we've already kind of said
mostly right. Yeah, And and big thanks to everyone for
(01:49):
as always doing their best to keep a lid on
the topic because it's it's not like the front Door
combination to Fort Knox or anything, but it's always nice,
I think, to be surprised when you show up. Yeah,
to see the look on people's faces and they're like,
oh my god, I was not expecting this. Oh my god,
that's the Pinto right, what's that? Never even heard of it? All? Right?
(02:14):
So on with the nap say, oh yeah, nap. So um,
I have to say, chuck. When I was researching this,
I got very very tired, and I still didn't nap.
As you know I am a non napper. Yeah, I mean,
I guess it's funny. We were talking about the tour
because on tour you probably just adrenaline and nerves and
all that stuff. You had some trouble sleeping and then
(02:35):
could not nap to catch up, and you know my deal,
and we'll talk about it through the episode. But I
started taking a daily nap about probably about a year ago.
I used to you know, I called it sneaking a
nap every now and then. My whole life, i'ven't enjoyed
a nap, but then I was. I started to own it,
(02:58):
and which means basically, let Emily no like, hey, I'm
gonna nap and I'm not gonna feel bad about it tonight.
And she got behind it and was like, you know what,
you do better, She said, you don't get as much
sleep as I do. You do better with with like
a forty five minute lay down in the afternoon, and like,
go for it. It's great, that's awesome. So I felt
like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't nap,
(03:21):
because it does seem like that's something that everybody should
be able to do, especially as beneficial as it is.
But After reading this article and doing research, Ed helped
us with this one, by the way, so thanks Ed.
I've come to realize like I'm just a non napper,
probably on a genetic level. Yeah, some people just don't
nap and some people do, and there doesn't mean anyone's
(03:43):
right or wrong. I am good at it. I get
a lot out of it, and you're not great at it.
And who knows if you would get anything out of it? Yeah?
I know, who knows? I mean, yeah, I don't know.
Who knows. I might just wake up even worse off
than I have been before, but I really really can
try and it just does not happen. So it's just
(04:06):
have you ever I mean I know obviously kids nap
and stuff, but like as an adult, have you ever
ever napped? Or not? Really? I'm sure I have, but
I can't remember when, if ever, and if I if
I ever, Like my my propensity is to just stay up,
keep staying up, and then go to bed at your
normal bedtime and just try to reset everything. To me,
(04:28):
taking a nap is like, oh no, everything's even more
out of whack than it was before. You know, like
if you if you've missed out on a bunch of
sleep tonight before rather than taking a nap, I just
stay awake until the next sleep time and then hopefully
that everything gets back to normal. Yeah yeah, my um.
I just remember my brother in law, the Marine Corps
(04:49):
General is has a as you would imagine a pretty
rebbed up motor sure as a human in life, just
to accomplish things. And I live with him in a
Zona for a year and I saw him take a
nap one day and I was worried. Head up to
my sister. I was like, Michelle s Cartson, Okay, I
(05:09):
was like, I think we need to call somebody. Does
he take him regularly? No, not at all. So it
was it was really disconcerting to see him not awake
and like building a new deck or a swing set,
or cleaning cleaning something curiously, especially since when you lean
closer you could hear him go, this is my rifle.
(05:34):
Oh what a great Stanley Kubrick joke. So let's let's
talk napping. We could just sit here and share napping
anecdotes for the rest of the episode. Yeah good. I
suspect most people would be turned off by a significant portion.
Would a lot of people come for the science the statistics.
The explanation me screwing up the word statistics all that
stuff combined. That's a tough word, it is. Uh yeah,
(05:57):
but we should talk a little bit about sleep. We
have a quite a few episodes on sleep, but one
just on sleep and kind of the different phases. So
if you want a full, a deep dive into that,
go check that one out. But briefly we'll go over
the stages of sleep again. Right. Yeah, I mean you
basically have to talk about napping because spoiler alert, napping
(06:20):
is a type of sleep. It's just abbreviated and there's
actually a clinical definition agreed upon definition of a funny one,
I think you should take this one. A nap is
any sleep period where a duration with a duration of
less than fifty percent of the average major sleep period
of an individual. So if you sleep eight hours a
(06:43):
night and you took a three hour and forty five
minute sleep during the afternoon, that would be considered a nap.
That's a nap and then a weird big one. It's
odd that there's a definition out there, but it makes
sense even though everyone knows what a nap is. Yeah, So, yeah,
we need to talk about sleep because we don't actually
understand why we sleep still. It's one of the great
(07:05):
fascinating things about humans, and we've talked about it plenty
of times, more than in just some of our sleep episodes.
But there's theories that your brain is clearing out like
detritus and junk, that you are consolidating memories and making
new connections between memories like remember our Sleeping on It
short stuff that we released recently. Yep, we talked a
(07:26):
lot about that. There's basically forcing your body to lay
still so that it can repair and grow and do
all sorts of stuff. And then another another theories that
we're actually saving energy, we have less we have less
energy needs or fewer energy needs because we sleep about
six to eight or six to nine hours a day. Yeah,
(07:48):
and what do you get these days sleepwise? I get, oh,
usually on the nose, eight hours, maybe nine sometimes. But
you're an early riser, so you're going to bed at tennish,
tennish ninish. Okay, all right? If the beds sounding really
like comforting of eight eight thirty, I don't care. I
(08:10):
have nothing to prove to anyone. My life is into
it too, So no, no, no, there's the older you
get the less aim you have about just saying like
I'm going to bed, everybody good exactly. Yeah, because as
as you get older, when you say it at like eight,
you like raise your fists in triumph. Right, I get
to I completed everything I needed to complete today, and
now I get to go to bed at eight thirty, right,
(08:31):
right right. I generally stay up later and still get
up kind of early. That's why the nap really helps
me out, because I feel like I get probably seven
and under every night. I go to bed at eleven
or twelve, and I usually get up around six thirty
or seven. Yeah, that's the best time to do it,
(08:53):
to get up really early. I've not been much of
a night owl for many, many years. Yeah, but the
early rising thing I really I can dig on for sure. Yeah.
I was in San Francisco actually on sort of the
big night out, which was after our Friday show when
we were completely done. Yeah, I sort of got into
it with some old friends Hodgman and some guys and
(09:14):
Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison and our buddies, and I
was up. Adam and I were the last ones up,
and I looked at my watch fully expecting it to
be maybe twelve forty five or one fifteen at the latest,
and it was like two forty five, and I was like,
oh boy, I'm in trouble that in a long time. Yeah,
I know, that's a feeling of dread when you go
(09:35):
to bed like that. And I took a legit three
hour nap the next day. Nice. Well, that's we'll get
to why that probably helped. I'm sure when you woke
up after that three hour nap you felt good. I
felt good in that I had got given my body
what it needed. But it was definitely like waking up
from real sleep like I was. I was pretty groggy.
(09:55):
And we'll again, we'll get into all that. Okay, So
we were talking about a tuck about the stages of
sleep are explaining sleep and sleep is divided into stages.
There's really two big ones, and then one of the
big ones can be subdivided. But you've got rapid eye
movement RIM sleep or REM sleep if you're in the
sleep biz, and then you've got non RIM sleep or
(10:19):
n REM, and NREM is what you can divide into
further subsections. There's stage N one, N two, and N three.
And I didn't know this chuck. But you put N one,
N two, N three followed by rim sleep. You've got
a full sleep cycle, and that you cycle through those
(10:40):
multiple times, five six times during a night's sleep. Did
you know that? You knew that because we've talked about it.
You just forgot it. I plumb forgot because yeah, it
seemed like brand new infoto me. Yeah, you go through
the complete cycle five or six times, and when you
start looking at the breakdown of the minutes, it makes
sense because N one is that first little light sleep stage.
(11:04):
It's only about five minutes per cycle. So again you
will go through that five minute stage five or six
times in a night. Yeah, and this one, you know
you'll wake up very easily from N one, whereas in
two obviously is a bit deeper. Your body is going
to be pretty much completely relaxed and into your body
temp drops, your heart rate drops, your respiration drops a
(11:28):
bit arousal threshold are the words ed use. That sounds
both like a band and like something dirty. That's an
album to me, not a band. Okay, well the band
would be Sleep Architecture then right, it sounds like a
roxy music album. Okay, yeah, I guess, I guess the
band would be sleep architecture. That's a good name for anything, really. Yeah,
(11:52):
that's a term that comes up later, but this, I'm sorry.
The N two cycle is about ten to twenty minutes
on the first run or the end two stage, and
the first cycles ten to twenty minutes, and then each
successive cycle it gets a little bit longer. Yeah, eleven
to twenty one, twelve to twenty two, probably more teen
to twenty three, right, Yeah, and then after that you've
(12:14):
got N three sleep, slow wave sleep. It's your arousal threshold.
It's very high, meaning it's very difficult to wake you up.
I saw that people will commonly sleep through hundred decibel
noises in N three sleep you were just out, Yeah,
and that's great. N three sleep you're getting all sorts
of like your cells are repairing themselves. You're actually literally growing,
(12:38):
especially if you're a younger human. Yeah, and you'll stay
in it for anywhere between twenty to forty minutes. But
it's the opposite of ND two. It gets shorter with
each cycle. There's a problem with N three sleep in
that if you wake up from N three sleep, you
are extraordinarily groggy. That grogginess can last like two to
four hours, where like you're essentially suffering a temporary cognitive impairment.
(13:03):
And they call it sleep inertia. It's another way to
put it, just just the grogginess from waking up at
the wrong time, and that is what happens when you
don't complete an end three cycle, but you wake up
in the N three cycle. That's where you're groggiest. Yeah,
what I'm curious about. And we've even had one of
these as a sponsor. I can't remember which one, but
where you'll wear like sleep bands to kind of log
(13:26):
how your sleep cycles are working. Yeah, do any and
the one that we use may have even had this,
I don't remember, But do any of them have an
alarm integrated well, they where they can wake you up
in the best part of your sleep, You know what
I'm saying. I would guess, so they're probably don't think
(13:47):
this is like new research here, So I'm guessing that, Yeah,
if you're going to make something like that, you would
have to make it so that you wake up at
the best optimal time. I'm curious. And then the last
one is the RM sleep. This is where you're dreaming.
Of course, your brain is going to be obviously a
little more active. Your arousal threshold is even higher than
(14:07):
in three. But it's a bit of a paradox because
if you don't have an alarm or whatever, and you
just awake from a dream spontaneously and you've had, you know,
a regular good night's sleep, then it doesn't have the
kind of sleep inertia as in three, so you wake
up easier. Right, And I've found this to be kind
of both. When I wake up from a intense dream,
(14:28):
sometimes I am really out of it. But that's rare
because I'm generally a very awake waker. Right you sit
up like, oh my god, No, not quite like that.
But I've never been one that's just like, oh what,
I'm always just like okay, I'm awake. So when you
watch movies where people wake up, you're like, that is
(14:49):
so fake. That's fake for me. So um, yeah, I
didn't realize that if you naturally, if when you wake
up without an alarm, which I guess it is called
a wake getting spontaneously, which makes sense. I've actually chuck,
I've got a talent here where so I'm still like
LOGI from the jet, Like for some reason, the jet
(15:09):
like just killed me on this West coast trip, like
I've never had it before. We might as well have
gone to Japan and come back over the weekend. It
was like pretty bad, so I'm still suffering from it.
So I woke up to my alarm. But normally, when
I have like a good level of sleep going, I
can calculate how long I have to sleep and what
(15:31):
time I need to wake up, and I will wake
up every time a couple minutes before my alarm goes off. Dude,
me too. I talked a bit this on our sleepep.
I have a natural alarm. If I tell myself the
night before what time I have to wake up, I'm
within like five minutes of that. That's just so cool.
And that's one of the circadian rhythms or one of
the biological rhythms that we have. We have like an
(15:54):
inner several inner clocks of different types, and apparently one
just as there and count it's the seconds. What a
terrible job that would be. Yeah, I mean, I haven't
used I don't think maybe some real weird outlier nights,
but I know for a fact, I haven't really used
an alarm since we did the TV show Wow and
(16:17):
generally never use an alarm because I just I wake up.
I'm not one of those who will just sleep the
day away. I still set my alarm on days where
we're studying recording, days where I have to get up early,
but I still usually wake up before it. So well.
Pets and human children also serve as natural alarms, either
(16:38):
from a pet usually like it's time to get that
morning feeding or let me out and go pee or whatever. Right,
but yeah, once you once you have a human kid,
you're you're waking when they wake right. Okay, So we
basically just explained sleep again. And the reason we did
that is because now that we know the different stages
of sleep and how long each one lasts and when
(16:59):
you want to wake up or don't wake up, you
can actually use this information to optimize your nap. And
I think we should take a break and then come
back and teach everybody how to optimize their naps. Let's
do it all, right, So how to Nap Better is
(17:40):
how Ed titled this section, which I just love that
the way that sounds in my ears. Yeah, and Ed
made up a couple of terms that he didn't tell
us until after this section that he had made up
because they sound right on the money to me, and
so we're going to go ahead and use his terminology,
and that is partial cycle naps and full cycle naps YEP.
(18:02):
A partial cycle nap being the power nap what people
call a disco nap or a power nap, or a
cat nap or a cat nap, and that's at ten
or twenty minute nap where officially you will or scientifically
you'll be entering into sleep, but you're waking up before
that in three sleep or the RM sleep, right, so
(18:23):
you're not going through a full sleep cycle, but you
still get the n one and the end too sleep.
And this seems to be, as we'll see, like the
nap that you want to take depending on what you're
trying to do. If you're catching up on sleep, a
longer nap is typically recommended. But if you're trying to
be like the most productive worker possible, then this is
(18:44):
what you want to do. Is a partial cycle nap
is egg calls it. And in his defense, I looked
up to see if there were any and strangely there isn't,
So there was actually a lot of room for him
to make up these terms. There was a void for
him to fill. Yeah, I think I could see the
the industry jumping on this. Sure, partial cycle NAP, full
(19:04):
cycle nap. It sounds very scientific. He should trademark that stuff, definitely. Well,
we'll email him before this comes out so we can
get it in the works. Make some money off a
big mattress. So there are some studies here and there.
We're going to mention there are lots of nap studies
and sleep studies and they're not the most consistent across
(19:24):
the board. So kind of the net net of all
of this is, like we kind of mentioned at the beginning,
we tease it out. You know, some people can nap
and get a lot out of it and some people don't.
And there isn't a definitive study that says like everyone
should do this or not do that. It can help
certain people, for sure. It seems like study wise and
(19:49):
data wise, the partial cycle nap, the twenty minute or
so nap is the one with the most measurable benefits. Yeah,
there was one study I I didn't see where it
was from, but they found that the ten minute nap
is actually ideal. Get out of my face with that.
What is that ten minutes that's not even a nap,
(20:10):
I know. But apparently the ten minute nap showed that
there was a reduced sleepiness, increased mental ability, and that
people tended to have a better memory consolidation just after
a ten minute nap, and that it was even better
than a twenty minute nap in this one study. Here's
the thing. There are a lot of sleep stays out there,
(20:31):
and a lot of them contradict one another's findings, but
there does seem to be enough studies that some you know,
fairly definitive answers have risen to the top, and it
seems to be that ten minutes is a pretty sweet
spot twenty minute. Sometimes I will say this, I have
worked in I've developed the ability to take a super
(20:54):
super short nap if that's the only thing I can
do that day, Because some days you just can't do it,
you know. I try to build it into my schedule
and I it's pretty much successfully have, But sometimes life
happens and you just can't do it, and I'm really
tired in the afternoon, and I've developed the ability to
lay down and sleep for like eight or ten minutes,
and I do feel super refreshed. So you lay down.
(21:15):
You're not one of those people that can just nap anywhere.
I mean, I can nap on a plane, but I don't,
like I'm not at the old man stage yet where
I'm sitting up right in a chair, right, I get horizontal.
You reminded me of Japanese school kids. In Japan, if
you ride the subway, like almost all of them will
just fall asleep, sitting up and just be on the subway,
(21:38):
and then all of a sudden it's their stop, and
they just stand up and walk off the subway like
just they're sleeping and now they're not, They're walking off
the subway. It's really impressive. But they apparently can sleep
absolutely anywhere. Well as if you can sleep on the subway,
and I like ten in the morning, you can sleep anywhere.
You know. Well, I was gonna say trains and boats
and modes of transport can kind of lull people to sleep,
(21:59):
but I think Japanese subways are known for being fairly crowded.
They are crowded, very loud. But I mean, also, like,
how do they know it's their stop? Like that's just amazing.
That is pretty great. I love that. Yeah, I mean too,
So next we've got the full cycle nap, Chuck, And
that's one that's I mean basically not a partial cycle NAP.
(22:19):
The goal here is to make it through ND one,
end two, and end three and then into rim sleep
because remember rim sleep is where we normally naturally wake up,
so you're not nearly as groggy as if you woke
up and three sleep. The problem is it's really difficult
to pinpoint your individual sleep cycles. Like even if you
(22:40):
did a sleep study, if you start new medication, if
you age as most people do, there's all sorts of
different factors, how much sleep you had the night before,
you put all that together and whatever that sleep studies
said you your sleep cycles go through, like the time
or length of each one that can be altered, but
(23:01):
you're you're trying to guess essentially what you would what
it takes you to go through a full cycle one
sleep cycle and Ed suggests starting with sixty minutes and
then depending on whether you're groggy or not when you
wake up, like moving it downward or upward, but usually
they're between forty five and ninety minutes. Yeah, and this
is what I shoot for, but it's never over an hour.
(23:22):
It's what I'll usually do is set the timer for
an hour, and I will wake up naturally about forty
five minutes later. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I rarely make it. Well,
that's not true. Sometimes I make it to that full hour,
but never beyond that because just there's too much going
on in life for me to go longer than an hour.
(23:43):
But if you know, if you need that ninety minutes,
I mean they say that you're if you can get
to that RM stage, you know you're going to have
the benefits of waking up without the grogginess. But like
you said, it's it's complicated unless you really have done us,
either done us leap study or just super in sync
with where you think your cycles are. Yeah, but I mean,
(24:04):
if you really want to become like a pro napper,
you could do worse than saying like, I'm going to
take this week or the next two weeks to study
my deep cycles and yeah, start with sixty minutes and
adjust it from there. Yeah, I think that's respectable. Anybody
who takes themselves that, I guess seriously, I don't know
(24:27):
where they're like, I'm going to improve my life and
I'm going to do it scientifically. I appreciate that. I
think that's cool. Well, I talked to my friend Eddie
into napping semi recently. Huh with you like then a
friend's episode, come over and have a guttle I would
(24:47):
do that. I'm sure Eddie's a great spooner. But he
got on board, and the last I heard from him,
he was like, I'm doing it now, built it into
my day and it's like made a huge difference. Wow. Yeah.
So yeah, even though I know I'm not a nap or,
I'm still a little envious. So please stop talking about
how great it is. Okay, it's so great. So there's
(25:12):
another nap you can take two that's supposedly, from what
I can tell, the ideal nap. Yeah, it's called a
coffee nap, and it's not a ten minute napisode a
ninety minute nap. It's a twenty minute nap and it's
sounds kind of awesome. But basically, you drink a cup
of coffee. Ostensibly, this is the only coffee you've drank,
or at least your morning coffee has long worn off
(25:34):
by now, so you're basically at your set point for
caffeine and take. You drink a cup of coffee, you
go lay down and you go to sleep, and then
twenty minutes later, after the caffeine has entered your bloodstream
and started to take effect, you wake up. But not
only do you just wake up like, oh, I've got
some caffeine, Like, there's a whole bunch of neurochemistry going
(25:55):
on that really makes this coffee nap something special. Yeah,
this sounds like a great nap for if you're doing
a long road trip and you're you're smart enough to
pull over and take a little rest stop nap, drink
the coffee, and then you're you're up. You start that
car back up, and you're fired up and ready to
hit the road again. Right. So the reason why it works, Chuck,
(26:18):
is because of aDNA scene. That's a neurochemical, it's a neurotransmitter,
and one of the things a DNA sing does is
it tells your body that you're tired. The thing is
is caffeine can attach to aDNA sine receptors, So when
there's less places for your aDNA scene to attach, there's
less chance for those ADENA scene molecules to tell your
(26:41):
body that you're tired. So not only do you have
the benefits of waking up with the cafe, like the
whole caffeinated energy boost, You're feeling less tired because the
caffeine has literally like elbowed out. Yeah, well maybe not
literally elbowed, but you know what I mean. Sure, this
chemical that makes you feel tired. So it's like the
best of both worlds put together. Yeah, and not only that,
(27:04):
but if you're in too sleep, you're going to be
flushing a DNA scene in that stage from your brain.
So that's just going to open up more garage space
for the caffeine to come park. And you're just, yeah,
it sounds pretty great. I'm not the biggest caffeine guy.
Caffeine I will have sometimes in the winter, as you know,
(27:26):
I'll have like lattes and stuff. It's like a cold
weather thing for me, sure, but always it always makes
me excessively tired after. Like, the caffeine come down for
me is pretty pretty big. Right. That used to be
the same for me, but now I'm just so used
to it I don't even notice, right. Yeah, there is
something that I have noticed, though, I think everybody's noticed,
(27:48):
which is the post lunch dip. Yeah, that's what I
take mine. Yes, Okay, So This actually makes a lot
of sense because there's entire cultures that are dedicated to
napping during the post lunch dip. But there is a
is a period, and apparently it's not due to having
lunch or a big lunch. It's just a natural period
of sleepiness that humans tend to experience in the middle
(28:13):
of the day, the early afternoon about for about three
hours from early to mid afternoon. It's called the post
post lunch dip. And a lot of people just say, hey,
I'm taking a nap right now. And they have found
that there's actually an optimal time to take a nap
in an optimal length. And it sounds like if you
took a coffee nap at this time, you would wake
up with some sort of superpowers in that time. Drumroll please?
(28:38):
Is what two pm? Right? Yeah, it's just fourteen hours
two pm. Your brother in law would know. So, yeah,
the twenty minute nap. And these were studies and researchers
have done, like you know, looked over the metadata of
lots of studies, and they found that a twenty minute
nap at two pm produced greater and longer lasting benefits
(29:01):
to mood, fatigue, objective performance, self rated performance and objective
alertness compared to that same nap at noon. Yeah, so
there you have it, if you ask me, Like we've
just told everybody, if you're going to take a nap,
this is when and how to do it. Yeah, go
forth and sleep at that. Cista agreed. So, Chuck, we're
(29:24):
not through with the DNA scene yet. Now we're not.
Should we take a break? I think we should take
a break, and then we're going to talk more about
a DNA scene. All right, I'm gonna have a two
minute nap and I'll be right back. Okay, I mentioned
(30:04):
a DNA scene, said we weren't done with it, and
by god I was telling the truth, because there's a
whole other segment about a DNA scene that I find
just absolutely fascinating, and that is that it's essentially like
almost a mechanical um What am I thinking of, Chuck,
(30:26):
I don't know. So it's almost like, okay, it's it's
almost like a little bit, but more like you have
like a tray, and the tray is on like a scale,
like a balancing scale, but attached to that scale is
like a stick, and when enough, a DNA scene builds
(30:47):
up on that tray and the scale that stick goes up,
and yes, it throws a switch and all of a
sudden for you, it's lights out, that's right. So sort
of the takeaway from this is the longest it's a
byproduct of cell cheese, cellular breakdown of the energy that
you use. So the longer you're awake and the more
(31:08):
active you are, the more a DNA scene you're gonna have.
And again that's your body saying you're tired. So it
sounds obvious like, hey, if you're a wake longer and
you're working harder, you're going to be more tired. Sure,
but that's how it works. But this is why. There's
actually a reason why, and it's because the DNA sne
builds up in your in your body, and a DNA
scene is part of that currency that all cells us
(31:30):
as energy ATP a DNA scene triphosphate. Yeah, And it's
it's just so neat that it's like it's part of
this energy package. And then once that energy package is
broken open and the energy is removed from it, what's
left over builds up. This ADENA scene builds up and
then makes you tired. And then when you're sleeping a
DNA scene is cleared out, which which which stage was
(31:52):
it in? Three? Well, I think if you have a
lot of a DNA scene, meaning you were up longer
and you're super tired, you're going to be deeper and
N three and r mum, But I don't know where
it's cleared out, but that that is a theory that Um,
if you wake up in your groggy, then you didn't
clear out enough of the ADENA scene, right. But if
(32:13):
you do get a good night's sleep and your body
goes through its normal stages and cycles, um, aDNA scene
is cleared from your body, and after it reaches a
certain threshold, you wake up because that tells your body
that you're gonna start to need some more energy soon.
So wake up, dummy and start eating brain flakes. Right.
(32:33):
Uh yeah, I love it, like you know it again,
it's intuitive, but it's always it's always kind of I
think empowering to know like what's going on in your body. Yeah, okay, yes,
it is intuitive, like you're but to to say this
is the thing that's doing it when it rises or
raises and lowers, I just for some reason I can't
put my finger on I am just enthralled by it.
(32:55):
I wonder if that would help you nap knowing the
function behind it. That's a lot of people. Well, they
proposed a DNA scene as like a sleep aid, but
the problem is is you have ADENA scene receptors all
over your body, including your heart, and it can actually
affect your heart's rhythm. And they're like, you don't want
to mess with your heart's rhythm using a DNA scene,
so it's not worth it as a sleep aid. Oh
(33:16):
that's they've synthesized it. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, if you go
to your doctor and they put it, put you through
a chemical stress test, they're introducing a DNA scene into
your system. And then what's the other thing. They actually
use it to correct a regular heartbeat too, So it's
a powerful heart squeezer. Okay, so were you my friend?
(33:37):
Thank you? Thank you. So now we're at the point
where we kind of go over whether or naps are
good for you, And again I've kind of already ruined that, Like, sure,
they can be great for your functioning if they work
for you and your memory and your alertness and your
your recall and things like that, if they work for you,
(33:59):
but they aren't for everyone. They will if you're not
getting enough sleep, Like if you're doing it because you
have a sleep deficit, then it will for sure improve
your performance and help out. And I think the long,
full cycle nap is probably what you want if it's
just one of those deals where you just didn't get
enough sleep last night because of one reason or another
(34:19):
and you need something more. But like Ed said, this
is more like, hey, this is sort of an emergency
thing and need this nap. Right. The thing is is
there does seem to be benefits from people like you
who take naps as part of their everyday routine. And
I don't know if it's just like I'm missing out
(34:40):
on those benefits or I just don't need a nap
to have those benefits. Who knows. But they have shown
that people who are even well rested who take regular
naps show consistent benefits like an improved mood, reduced impulsiveness,
you're better able to deal with frustrating situation, that's meat
(35:01):
to a t yeah, for sure. And what's funny enough
is I'm the opposite of that, So maybe I should
start napping. And they also improve performance on memory tasks, right, So,
and this is from people who are getting plenty of
sleep during the night but still take a nap during
the day. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, on the downside, and
(35:22):
you knew there would be one, Dear listener, but there
have been and I don't think that they've like proven
direct links, but there have been some correlative is that
the word. Yeah, I think so correlative links between regular
naps and the length of naps if you are elderly,
and things like dementia and heart disease. Yeah, they've shown
(35:46):
that napping for more than an hour every day was
tied to a forty percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer's
disease among older people. And they're like, Okay, well that's
pretty scary. But they haven't figured out whether that's a
symptom of developing Alzheimer's or it's actually a contributing factor
to developing Alzheimer's. Either way, that's definitely something to chew on. Yeah,
(36:10):
like I wonder I'm very sort of dementia aware lately,
not for myself or anything like that, just you know,
it's it's come up quite a bit with like friends
and family in recent years. As you get to be
our age and our parents get older, like everyone starts
to face those things in your family. So I'm just
very aware of, like, all right, keeping the brain sharp,
(36:34):
not just settling down until like, of course we're not
retired or anything, but one day when if that eventually happens,
your tongue stings. Al that hurts staying active brain wise.
And you know, Emily's dear grandmother Mary, he just passed
away at one on one was up until the last
(36:56):
year where you know, she had the stroke and things
like really went south. Was she was just a word
puzzles all day and saduko and or sadoku which is
it sidoku and crosswords? And did not just fall into
that routine that I think so many folks as they
get some age on them do, which is you sit
around and watch TV. Because that is that's a just
(37:19):
a prolonged slow death sentence. Basically, Yeah, sitting around watching
TV is not a good way to keep sharp. No,
not at all. So anyway, a long way of saying,
I had just been thinking a lot more about dementia
over the last few years, and I'm like, well, you know,
maybe one day I'm gonna have to give up this
this nap. Yeah, maybe, But I mean this was an
(37:41):
hour or longer every single day, and it was just
a forty percent greater chance. So you're probably fine, thanks buddy.
So we were talking about you possibly being a natural
born napper and how I am not. They have actually
done genome wide associated studies where they survey hundreds of
(38:03):
thousands of people to ask them, you know, hey, do
you nap every day? How long do you nap for?
Do you nap sometimes? Rarely, never? And then they look
at those respondents genomes, their entire genomes, they scan them,
and then they look for commonalities. And from doing those
kinds of studies, they found one hundred and twenty three
(38:24):
different regions in the genome that are associated with daytime napping.
I have zero of them, really, they I'm sure I did.
I haven't. Actually I have had my genome scan, but
I don't know what if I have them or not,
I would I would assume not. But that raises the
question like are humans designed to nap? Are we genetically
(38:45):
programmed to nap? Or not? And I feel like the
fact that some people seem to be genetically predisposed to
it and other people not. There's your answer right there.
I think some and some not, but I don't think
it appears to be a through trait that humans all
had at one point, right, you know, And you can
(39:06):
kind of come up with the answer by comparing us
to other other groups. Yeah, Like I think the idea
is that did we is this modern life that we
live where we go to work for forty plus hours
or so and we're up during the day and we're
doing things like did we force that upon ourselves or
(39:26):
were we supposed to have evolved differently? And it really
doesn't seem that way. It seems like kind of the
other way around, like circadian rhythm wise, that humans were
probably evolved to sleep at night over a reasonable you know,
period of time and then do things during the day
during the daylight. That just kind of makes sense. Yeah,
(39:48):
And if you look if you say, well, what about
some of our evolutionary cousins like primates. If you look
at primates, some sleep during the day, others don't. If
you look at hunter gatherer society, some sleep during the day,
others don't. And then culturally speaking as well, some cultures do,
others don't. Like you know, Spanish and Latin American cultures
(40:10):
are famous for taking siestas and apparently that is not
some sort of genetically ingrained thing that was originally something
that they did during their agrarian days to escape, to
take a break from the hottest hours of the sunshine. Yeah. Sure,
and then I mean you're just sitting around hanging out
after you've just eaten lunch, the chances are you're probably
(40:32):
going to fall asleep. But that's not the case with
all cultures who are exposed to heavy sunshine during the
daylight hours either. It just seems to have kind of
developed among some cultures. And by the way, the Spanish
are trying to abandon that. Yeah, it has a real
detrimental effect. My friends Laurel and Braden lived in Spain
(40:53):
for a little while and they came back and they're like,
that's siesta, man, it's a killer because everything just stops
for a little while, an hour or two hours, and
then to make up for it, they end up working
until like seven eight at night every night. It's interesting. Yeah,
and for weirdly, the society, the modern version of like
Spanish society, is still trying to figure out how to
(41:15):
reconcile the tune. What they finally come up with is like,
we're just we should not be doing this anymore. Oh,
they should do the Chuck method, which is nap and
don't work until eight o'clock at night. There you go,
there's your solution, Spain. Yeah, people work too much. Yeah,
for sure, you know, for sure, Chuck, they do. I
know that. The sad thing is is you have to
(41:36):
to keep up these days. I know. All right, let's
not get into that right now, I know. So that's
it for naps. Everybody, go forth and test yourself. Maybe
try a coffee nap and see how that does. You
go from there? And since I said coffee nap, it's
time for listener man, all right, I'm gonna call this honey.
(41:59):
I'm gonna call it. What was in the subject line,
Honey saved my pooch's leg. Nice And this is from
Travis will Grin in Texas, and accompanied were some pretty
gnarly pictures because Travis's dog got bit by a rattlesnake yow.
So here we go. Hey, guys, just wanted to drop
a line and tell you how Honey saved my dog's leg.
A long story short. My three year old chocolate lab
(42:21):
Scout got bit on his back leg by a timber
rattle snake here in Texas three days and five vials
of anti ven and later the necrosis had stopped, but
they were worried that his joint was compromised and wanted
to amputate. Being a paramedic, I knew of honey for
wound care, so we took him to our local backwoods
vet did wound care, changing the bandage every two days,
(42:44):
putting Manuka honey only on the wound, and within two
months his leg was healed up with no adverse effects
and he's now a happy pup and attached or some
pictures look at your own risk. Also, we just relocated
the snake because it wasn't his fault, just a snake
being a snake. Wow. And that is Travis Wilgrin. And
there was one, two, three, four pictures of the initial
(43:09):
wound that was really hard to look at, and then
getting better, better, better, and then two very happy, sleepy
dogs and then a rattlesnake with his neck pin to
the ground by you know, someone who knows how to
do that kind of thing. So as a gift to you,
(43:29):
I printed them all out like quality photo papers or
made you a collage. Maybe that could in the wallpaper
my bedroom. Thanks Travis, that was an amazing story. I
haven't seen the pictures yet, but I will probably be
looking at them later. Yeah. Check it out. If you
want to be like Travis and share an amazing story
about something we've talked about. We love hearing about those things.
(43:51):
You can send it in the email to Stuff podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, lingering, which makes this stuff you
should know, right, And can we quickly just say a
(00:21):
brief thank you to everyone that came out on the
first three show leg of our nine show tour. Yeah,
thank you to everybody in Seattle, to everyone in Portland, yay.
Thank you to everyone in San Francisco yeehall. And that's
the three so far. Yeah, and they went great. I
think we were both a little nervous. Could it's been
(00:43):
a while And it was like putting on an old
shirt all right with a bunch of moth holes in.
It was awesome, perfectly placed. So just one nipple sticks
out through one of the Oh wow, that's what it
felt like to me. I think going out on stage
in that year, you did so good, my friend. I
(01:04):
was very proud of you. You were funny and engaging
and doled out the information. It was just vintage Josh. Well.
I have to say that is great to hear because
I feel the same way about your performance, which you delivered. Chuck,
you did great too. Wilson. Either one of us screwed
it up. I don't think so. No. I mean, yes,
both of us screwed up plenty of times, but not
(01:26):
the whole shebang, you know what I mean. Yeah, So,
I feel like we're really kind of overselling things. I
don't want everybody to come out expecting a lot based
on what we just said for the next six shows.
But we are going to be touring some more this year,
so heads up, keep an ear out for where we're
going to be. I think we've already kind of said
mostly right. Yeah, And and big thanks to everyone for
(01:49):
as always doing their best to keep a lid on
the topic because it's it's not like the front Door
combination to Fort Knox or anything, but it's always nice,
I think, to be surprised when you show up. Yeah,
to see the look on people's faces and they're like,
oh my god, I was not expecting this. Oh my god,
that's the Pinto right, what's that? Never even heard of it? All? Right?
(02:14):
So on with the nap say, oh yeah, nap. So um,
I have to say, chuck. When I was researching this,
I got very very tired, and I still didn't nap.
As you know I am a non napper. Yeah, I mean,
I guess it's funny. We were talking about the tour
because on tour you probably just adrenaline and nerves and
all that stuff. You had some trouble sleeping and then
(02:35):
could not nap to catch up, and you know my deal,
and we'll talk about it through the episode. But I
started taking a daily nap about probably about a year ago.
I used to you know, I called it sneaking a
nap every now and then. My whole life, i'ven't enjoyed
a nap, but then I was. I started to own it,
(02:58):
and which means basically, let Emily no like, hey, I'm
gonna nap and I'm not gonna feel bad about it tonight.
And she got behind it and was like, you know what,
you do better, She said, you don't get as much
sleep as I do. You do better with with like
a forty five minute lay down in the afternoon, and like,
go for it. It's great, that's awesome. So I felt
like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't nap,
(03:21):
because it does seem like that's something that everybody should
be able to do, especially as beneficial as it is.
But After reading this article and doing research, Ed helped
us with this one, by the way, so thanks Ed.
I've come to realize like I'm just a non napper,
probably on a genetic level. Yeah, some people just don't
nap and some people do, and there doesn't mean anyone's
(03:43):
right or wrong. I am good at it. I get
a lot out of it, and you're not great at it.
And who knows if you would get anything out of it? Yeah?
I know, who knows? I mean, yeah, I don't know.
Who knows. I might just wake up even worse off
than I have been before, but I really really can
try and it just does not happen. So it's just
(04:06):
have you ever I mean I know obviously kids nap
and stuff, but like as an adult, have you ever
ever napped? Or not? Really? I'm sure I have, but
I can't remember when, if ever, and if I if
I ever, Like my my propensity is to just stay up,
keep staying up, and then go to bed at your
normal bedtime and just try to reset everything. To me,
(04:28):
taking a nap is like, oh no, everything's even more
out of whack than it was before. You know, like
if you if you've missed out on a bunch of
sleep tonight before rather than taking a nap, I just
stay awake until the next sleep time and then hopefully
that everything gets back to normal. Yeah yeah, my um.
I just remember my brother in law, the Marine Corps
(04:49):
General is has a as you would imagine a pretty
rebbed up motor sure as a human in life, just
to accomplish things. And I live with him in a
Zona for a year and I saw him take a
nap one day and I was worried. Head up to
my sister. I was like, Michelle s Cartson, Okay, I
(05:09):
was like, I think we need to call somebody. Does
he take him regularly? No, not at all. So it
was it was really disconcerting to see him not awake
and like building a new deck or a swing set,
or cleaning cleaning something curiously, especially since when you lean
closer you could hear him go, this is my rifle.
(05:34):
Oh what a great Stanley Kubrick joke. So let's let's
talk napping. We could just sit here and share napping
anecdotes for the rest of the episode. Yeah good. I
suspect most people would be turned off by a significant portion.
Would a lot of people come for the science the statistics.
The explanation me screwing up the word statistics all that
stuff combined. That's a tough word, it is. Uh yeah,
(05:57):
but we should talk a little bit about sleep. We
have a quite a few episodes on sleep, but one
just on sleep and kind of the different phases. So
if you want a full, a deep dive into that,
go check that one out. But briefly we'll go over
the stages of sleep again. Right. Yeah, I mean you
basically have to talk about napping because spoiler alert, napping
(06:20):
is a type of sleep. It's just abbreviated and there's
actually a clinical definition agreed upon definition of a funny one,
I think you should take this one. A nap is
any sleep period where a duration with a duration of
less than fifty percent of the average major sleep period
of an individual. So if you sleep eight hours a
(06:43):
night and you took a three hour and forty five
minute sleep during the afternoon, that would be considered a nap.
That's a nap and then a weird big one. It's
odd that there's a definition out there, but it makes
sense even though everyone knows what a nap is. Yeah, So, yeah,
we need to talk about sleep because we don't actually
understand why we sleep still. It's one of the great
(07:05):
fascinating things about humans, and we've talked about it plenty
of times, more than in just some of our sleep episodes.
But there's theories that your brain is clearing out like
detritus and junk, that you are consolidating memories and making
new connections between memories like remember our Sleeping on It
short stuff that we released recently. Yep, we talked a
(07:26):
lot about that. There's basically forcing your body to lay
still so that it can repair and grow and do
all sorts of stuff. And then another another theories that
we're actually saving energy, we have less we have less
energy needs or fewer energy needs because we sleep about
six to eight or six to nine hours a day. Yeah,
(07:48):
and what do you get these days sleepwise? I get, oh,
usually on the nose, eight hours, maybe nine sometimes. But
you're an early riser, so you're going to bed at tennish,
tennish ninish. Okay, all right? If the beds sounding really
like comforting of eight eight thirty, I don't care. I
(08:10):
have nothing to prove to anyone. My life is into
it too, So no, no, no, there's the older you
get the less aim you have about just saying like
I'm going to bed, everybody good exactly. Yeah, because as
as you get older, when you say it at like eight,
you like raise your fists in triumph. Right, I get
to I completed everything I needed to complete today, and
now I get to go to bed at eight thirty, right,
(08:31):
right right. I generally stay up later and still get
up kind of early. That's why the nap really helps
me out, because I feel like I get probably seven
and under every night. I go to bed at eleven
or twelve, and I usually get up around six thirty
or seven. Yeah, that's the best time to do it,
(08:53):
to get up really early. I've not been much of
a night owl for many, many years. Yeah, but the
early rising thing I really I can dig on for sure. Yeah.
I was in San Francisco actually on sort of the
big night out, which was after our Friday show when
we were completely done. Yeah, I sort of got into
it with some old friends Hodgman and some guys and
(09:14):
Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison and our buddies, and I
was up. Adam and I were the last ones up,
and I looked at my watch fully expecting it to
be maybe twelve forty five or one fifteen at the latest,
and it was like two forty five, and I was like,
oh boy, I'm in trouble that in a long time. Yeah,
I know, that's a feeling of dread when you go
(09:35):
to bed like that. And I took a legit three
hour nap the next day. Nice. Well, that's we'll get
to why that probably helped. I'm sure when you woke
up after that three hour nap you felt good. I
felt good in that I had got given my body
what it needed. But it was definitely like waking up
from real sleep like I was. I was pretty groggy.
(09:55):
And we'll again, we'll get into all that. Okay, So
we were talking about a tuck about the stages of
sleep are explaining sleep and sleep is divided into stages.
There's really two big ones, and then one of the
big ones can be subdivided. But you've got rapid eye
movement RIM sleep or REM sleep if you're in the
sleep biz, and then you've got non RIM sleep or
(10:19):
n REM, and NREM is what you can divide into
further subsections. There's stage N one, N two, and N three.
And I didn't know this chuck. But you put N one,
N two, N three followed by rim sleep. You've got
a full sleep cycle, and that you cycle through those
(10:40):
multiple times, five six times during a night's sleep. Did
you know that? You knew that because we've talked about it.
You just forgot it. I plumb forgot because yeah, it
seemed like brand new infoto me. Yeah, you go through
the complete cycle five or six times, and when you
start looking at the breakdown of the minutes, it makes
sense because N one is that first little light sleep stage.
(11:04):
It's only about five minutes per cycle. So again you
will go through that five minute stage five or six
times in a night. Yeah, and this one, you know
you'll wake up very easily from N one, whereas in
two obviously is a bit deeper. Your body is going
to be pretty much completely relaxed and into your body
temp drops, your heart rate drops, your respiration drops a
(11:28):
bit arousal threshold are the words ed use. That sounds
both like a band and like something dirty. That's an
album to me, not a band. Okay, well the band
would be Sleep Architecture then right, it sounds like a
roxy music album. Okay, yeah, I guess, I guess the
band would be sleep architecture. That's a good name for anything, really. Yeah,
(11:52):
that's a term that comes up later, but this, I'm sorry.
The N two cycle is about ten to twenty minutes
on the first run or the end two stage, and
the first cycles ten to twenty minutes, and then each
successive cycle it gets a little bit longer. Yeah, eleven
to twenty one, twelve to twenty two, probably more teen
to twenty three, right, Yeah, and then after that you've
(12:14):
got N three sleep, slow wave sleep. It's your arousal threshold.
It's very high, meaning it's very difficult to wake you up.
I saw that people will commonly sleep through hundred decibel
noises in N three sleep you were just out, Yeah,
and that's great. N three sleep you're getting all sorts
of like your cells are repairing themselves. You're actually literally growing,
(12:38):
especially if you're a younger human. Yeah, and you'll stay
in it for anywhere between twenty to forty minutes. But
it's the opposite of ND two. It gets shorter with
each cycle. There's a problem with N three sleep in
that if you wake up from N three sleep, you
are extraordinarily groggy. That grogginess can last like two to
four hours, where like you're essentially suffering a temporary cognitive impairment.
(13:03):
And they call it sleep inertia. It's another way to
put it, just just the grogginess from waking up at
the wrong time, and that is what happens when you
don't complete an end three cycle, but you wake up
in the N three cycle. That's where you're groggiest. Yeah,
what I'm curious about. And we've even had one of
these as a sponsor. I can't remember which one, but
where you'll wear like sleep bands to kind of log
(13:26):
how your sleep cycles are working. Yeah, do any and
the one that we use may have even had this,
I don't remember, But do any of them have an
alarm integrated well, they where they can wake you up
in the best part of your sleep, You know what
I'm saying. I would guess, so they're probably don't think
(13:47):
this is like new research here, So I'm guessing that, Yeah,
if you're going to make something like that, you would
have to make it so that you wake up at
the best optimal time. I'm curious. And then the last
one is the RM sleep. This is where you're dreaming.
Of course, your brain is going to be obviously a
little more active. Your arousal threshold is even higher than
(14:07):
in three. But it's a bit of a paradox because
if you don't have an alarm or whatever, and you
just awake from a dream spontaneously and you've had, you know,
a regular good night's sleep, then it doesn't have the
kind of sleep inertia as in three, so you wake
up easier. Right, And I've found this to be kind
of both. When I wake up from a intense dream,
(14:28):
sometimes I am really out of it. But that's rare
because I'm generally a very awake waker. Right you sit
up like, oh my god, No, not quite like that.
But I've never been one that's just like, oh what,
I'm always just like okay, I'm awake. So when you
watch movies where people wake up, you're like, that is
(14:49):
so fake. That's fake for me. So um, yeah, I
didn't realize that if you naturally, if when you wake
up without an alarm, which I guess it is called
a wake getting spontaneously, which makes sense. I've actually chuck,
I've got a talent here where so I'm still like
LOGI from the jet, Like for some reason, the jet
(15:09):
like just killed me on this West coast trip, like
I've never had it before. We might as well have
gone to Japan and come back over the weekend. It
was like pretty bad, so I'm still suffering from it.
So I woke up to my alarm. But normally, when
I have like a good level of sleep going, I
can calculate how long I have to sleep and what
(15:31):
time I need to wake up, and I will wake
up every time a couple minutes before my alarm goes off. Dude,
me too. I talked a bit this on our sleepep.
I have a natural alarm. If I tell myself the
night before what time I have to wake up, I'm
within like five minutes of that. That's just so cool.
And that's one of the circadian rhythms or one of
the biological rhythms that we have. We have like an
(15:54):
inner several inner clocks of different types, and apparently one
just as there and count it's the seconds. What a
terrible job that would be. Yeah, I mean, I haven't
used I don't think maybe some real weird outlier nights,
but I know for a fact, I haven't really used
an alarm since we did the TV show Wow and
(16:17):
generally never use an alarm because I just I wake up.
I'm not one of those who will just sleep the
day away. I still set my alarm on days where
we're studying recording, days where I have to get up early,
but I still usually wake up before it. So well.
Pets and human children also serve as natural alarms, either
(16:38):
from a pet usually like it's time to get that
morning feeding or let me out and go pee or whatever. Right,
but yeah, once you once you have a human kid,
you're you're waking when they wake right. Okay, So we
basically just explained sleep again. And the reason we did
that is because now that we know the different stages
of sleep and how long each one lasts and when
(16:59):
you want to wake up or don't wake up, you
can actually use this information to optimize your nap. And
I think we should take a break and then come
back and teach everybody how to optimize their naps. Let's
do it all, right, So how to Nap Better is
(17:40):
how Ed titled this section, which I just love that
the way that sounds in my ears. Yeah, and Ed
made up a couple of terms that he didn't tell
us until after this section that he had made up
because they sound right on the money to me, and
so we're going to go ahead and use his terminology,
and that is partial cycle naps and full cycle naps YEP.
(18:02):
A partial cycle nap being the power nap what people
call a disco nap or a power nap, or a
cat nap or a cat nap, and that's at ten
or twenty minute nap where officially you will or scientifically
you'll be entering into sleep, but you're waking up before
that in three sleep or the RM sleep, right, so
(18:23):
you're not going through a full sleep cycle, but you
still get the n one and the end too sleep.
And this seems to be, as we'll see, like the
nap that you want to take depending on what you're
trying to do. If you're catching up on sleep, a
longer nap is typically recommended. But if you're trying to
be like the most productive worker possible, then this is
(18:44):
what you want to do. Is a partial cycle nap
is egg calls it. And in his defense, I looked
up to see if there were any and strangely there isn't,
So there was actually a lot of room for him
to make up these terms. There was a void for
him to fill. Yeah, I think I could see the
the industry jumping on this. Sure, partial cycle NAP, full
(19:04):
cycle nap. It sounds very scientific. He should trademark that stuff, definitely. Well,
we'll email him before this comes out so we can
get it in the works. Make some money off a
big mattress. So there are some studies here and there.
We're going to mention there are lots of nap studies
and sleep studies and they're not the most consistent across
(19:24):
the board. So kind of the net net of all
of this is, like we kind of mentioned at the beginning,
we tease it out. You know, some people can nap
and get a lot out of it and some people don't.
And there isn't a definitive study that says like everyone
should do this or not do that. It can help
certain people, for sure. It seems like study wise and
(19:49):
data wise, the partial cycle nap, the twenty minute or
so nap is the one with the most measurable benefits. Yeah,
there was one study I I didn't see where it
was from, but they found that the ten minute nap
is actually ideal. Get out of my face with that.
What is that ten minutes that's not even a nap,
(20:10):
I know. But apparently the ten minute nap showed that
there was a reduced sleepiness, increased mental ability, and that
people tended to have a better memory consolidation just after
a ten minute nap, and that it was even better
than a twenty minute nap in this one study. Here's
the thing. There are a lot of sleep stays out there,
(20:31):
and a lot of them contradict one another's findings, but
there does seem to be enough studies that some you know,
fairly definitive answers have risen to the top, and it
seems to be that ten minutes is a pretty sweet
spot twenty minute. Sometimes I will say this, I have
worked in I've developed the ability to take a super
(20:54):
super short nap if that's the only thing I can
do that day, Because some days you just can't do it,
you know. I try to build it into my schedule
and I it's pretty much successfully have, But sometimes life
happens and you just can't do it, and I'm really
tired in the afternoon, and I've developed the ability to
lay down and sleep for like eight or ten minutes,
and I do feel super refreshed. So you lay down.
(21:15):
You're not one of those people that can just nap anywhere.
I mean, I can nap on a plane, but I don't,
like I'm not at the old man stage yet where
I'm sitting up right in a chair, right, I get horizontal.
You reminded me of Japanese school kids. In Japan, if
you ride the subway, like almost all of them will
just fall asleep, sitting up and just be on the subway,
(21:38):
and then all of a sudden it's their stop, and
they just stand up and walk off the subway like
just they're sleeping and now they're not, They're walking off
the subway. It's really impressive. But they apparently can sleep
absolutely anywhere. Well as if you can sleep on the subway,
and I like ten in the morning, you can sleep anywhere.
You know. Well, I was gonna say trains and boats
and modes of transport can kind of lull people to sleep,
(21:59):
but I think Japanese subways are known for being fairly crowded.
They are crowded, very loud. But I mean, also, like,
how do they know it's their stop? Like that's just amazing.
That is pretty great. I love that. Yeah, I mean too,
So next we've got the full cycle nap, Chuck, And
that's one that's I mean basically not a partial cycle NAP.
(22:19):
The goal here is to make it through ND one,
end two, and end three and then into rim sleep
because remember rim sleep is where we normally naturally wake up,
so you're not nearly as groggy as if you woke
up and three sleep. The problem is it's really difficult
to pinpoint your individual sleep cycles. Like even if you
(22:40):
did a sleep study, if you start new medication, if
you age as most people do, there's all sorts of
different factors, how much sleep you had the night before,
you put all that together and whatever that sleep studies
said you your sleep cycles go through, like the time
or length of each one that can be altered, but
(23:01):
you're you're trying to guess essentially what you would what
it takes you to go through a full cycle one
sleep cycle and Ed suggests starting with sixty minutes and
then depending on whether you're groggy or not when you
wake up, like moving it downward or upward, but usually
they're between forty five and ninety minutes. Yeah, and this
is what I shoot for, but it's never over an hour.
(23:22):
It's what I'll usually do is set the timer for
an hour, and I will wake up naturally about forty
five minutes later. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I rarely make it. Well,
that's not true. Sometimes I make it to that full hour,
but never beyond that because just there's too much going
on in life for me to go longer than an hour.
(23:43):
But if you know, if you need that ninety minutes,
I mean they say that you're if you can get
to that RM stage, you know you're going to have
the benefits of waking up without the grogginess. But like
you said, it's it's complicated unless you really have done us,
either done us leap study or just super in sync
with where you think your cycles are. Yeah, but I mean,
(24:04):
if you really want to become like a pro napper,
you could do worse than saying like, I'm going to
take this week or the next two weeks to study
my deep cycles and yeah, start with sixty minutes and
adjust it from there. Yeah, I think that's respectable. Anybody
who takes themselves that, I guess seriously, I don't know
(24:27):
where they're like, I'm going to improve my life and
I'm going to do it scientifically. I appreciate that. I
think that's cool. Well, I talked to my friend Eddie
into napping semi recently. Huh with you like then a
friend's episode, come over and have a guttle I would
(24:47):
do that. I'm sure Eddie's a great spooner. But he
got on board, and the last I heard from him,
he was like, I'm doing it now, built it into
my day and it's like made a huge difference. Wow. Yeah.
So yeah, even though I know I'm not a nap or,
I'm still a little envious. So please stop talking about
how great it is. Okay, it's so great. So there's
(25:12):
another nap you can take two that's supposedly, from what
I can tell, the ideal nap. Yeah, it's called a
coffee nap, and it's not a ten minute napisode a
ninety minute nap. It's a twenty minute nap and it's
sounds kind of awesome. But basically, you drink a cup
of coffee. Ostensibly, this is the only coffee you've drank,
or at least your morning coffee has long worn off
(25:34):
by now, so you're basically at your set point for
caffeine and take. You drink a cup of coffee, you
go lay down and you go to sleep, and then
twenty minutes later, after the caffeine has entered your bloodstream
and started to take effect, you wake up. But not
only do you just wake up like, oh, I've got
some caffeine, Like, there's a whole bunch of neurochemistry going
(25:55):
on that really makes this coffee nap something special. Yeah,
this sounds like a great nap for if you're doing
a long road trip and you're you're smart enough to
pull over and take a little rest stop nap, drink
the coffee, and then you're you're up. You start that
car back up, and you're fired up and ready to
hit the road again. Right. So the reason why it works, Chuck,
(26:18):
is because of aDNA scene. That's a neurochemical, it's a neurotransmitter,
and one of the things a DNA sing does is
it tells your body that you're tired. The thing is
is caffeine can attach to aDNA sine receptors, So when
there's less places for your aDNA scene to attach, there's
less chance for those ADENA scene molecules to tell your
(26:41):
body that you're tired. So not only do you have
the benefits of waking up with the cafe, like the
whole caffeinated energy boost, You're feeling less tired because the
caffeine has literally like elbowed out. Yeah, well maybe not
literally elbowed, but you know what I mean. Sure, this
chemical that makes you feel tired. So it's like the
best of both worlds put together. Yeah, and not only that,
(27:04):
but if you're in too sleep, you're going to be
flushing a DNA scene in that stage from your brain.
So that's just going to open up more garage space
for the caffeine to come park. And you're just, yeah,
it sounds pretty great. I'm not the biggest caffeine guy.
Caffeine I will have sometimes in the winter, as you know,
(27:26):
I'll have like lattes and stuff. It's like a cold
weather thing for me, sure, but always it always makes
me excessively tired after. Like, the caffeine come down for
me is pretty pretty big. Right. That used to be
the same for me, but now I'm just so used
to it I don't even notice, right. Yeah, there is
something that I have noticed, though, I think everybody's noticed,
(27:48):
which is the post lunch dip. Yeah, that's what I
take mine. Yes, Okay, So This actually makes a lot
of sense because there's entire cultures that are dedicated to
napping during the post lunch dip. But there is a
is a period, and apparently it's not due to having
lunch or a big lunch. It's just a natural period
of sleepiness that humans tend to experience in the middle
(28:13):
of the day, the early afternoon about for about three
hours from early to mid afternoon. It's called the post
post lunch dip. And a lot of people just say, hey,
I'm taking a nap right now. And they have found
that there's actually an optimal time to take a nap
in an optimal length. And it sounds like if you
took a coffee nap at this time, you would wake
up with some sort of superpowers in that time. Drumroll please?
(28:38):
Is what two pm? Right? Yeah, it's just fourteen hours
two pm. Your brother in law would know. So, yeah,
the twenty minute nap. And these were studies and researchers
have done, like you know, looked over the metadata of
lots of studies, and they found that a twenty minute
nap at two pm produced greater and longer lasting benefits
(29:01):
to mood, fatigue, objective performance, self rated performance and objective
alertness compared to that same nap at noon. Yeah, so
there you have it, if you ask me, Like we've
just told everybody, if you're going to take a nap,
this is when and how to do it. Yeah, go
forth and sleep at that. Cista agreed. So, Chuck, we're
(29:24):
not through with the DNA scene yet. Now we're not.
Should we take a break? I think we should take
a break, and then we're going to talk more about
a DNA scene. All right, I'm gonna have a two
minute nap and I'll be right back. Okay, I mentioned
(30:04):
a DNA scene, said we weren't done with it, and
by god I was telling the truth, because there's a
whole other segment about a DNA scene that I find
just absolutely fascinating, and that is that it's essentially like
almost a mechanical um What am I thinking of, Chuck,
(30:26):
I don't know. So it's almost like, okay, it's it's
almost like a little bit, but more like you have
like a tray, and the tray is on like a scale,
like a balancing scale, but attached to that scale is
like a stick, and when enough, a DNA scene builds
(30:47):
up on that tray and the scale that stick goes up,
and yes, it throws a switch and all of a
sudden for you, it's lights out, that's right. So sort
of the takeaway from this is the longest it's a
byproduct of cell cheese, cellular breakdown of the energy that
you use. So the longer you're awake and the more
(31:08):
active you are, the more a DNA scene you're gonna have.
And again that's your body saying you're tired. So it
sounds obvious like, hey, if you're a wake longer and
you're working harder, you're going to be more tired. Sure,
but that's how it works. But this is why. There's
actually a reason why, and it's because the DNA sne
builds up in your in your body, and a DNA
scene is part of that currency that all cells us
(31:30):
as energy ATP a DNA scene triphosphate. Yeah, And it's
it's just so neat that it's like it's part of
this energy package. And then once that energy package is
broken open and the energy is removed from it, what's
left over builds up. This ADENA scene builds up and
then makes you tired. And then when you're sleeping a
DNA scene is cleared out, which which which stage was
(31:52):
it in? Three? Well, I think if you have a
lot of a DNA scene, meaning you were up longer
and you're super tired, you're going to be deeper and
N three and r mum, But I don't know where
it's cleared out, but that that is a theory that Um,
if you wake up in your groggy, then you didn't
clear out enough of the ADENA scene, right. But if
(32:13):
you do get a good night's sleep and your body
goes through its normal stages and cycles, um, aDNA scene
is cleared from your body, and after it reaches a
certain threshold, you wake up because that tells your body
that you're gonna start to need some more energy soon.
So wake up, dummy and start eating brain flakes. Right.
(32:33):
Uh yeah, I love it, like you know it again,
it's intuitive, but it's always it's always kind of I
think empowering to know like what's going on in your body. Yeah, okay, yes,
it is intuitive, like you're but to to say this
is the thing that's doing it when it rises or
raises and lowers, I just for some reason I can't
put my finger on I am just enthralled by it.
(32:55):
I wonder if that would help you nap knowing the
function behind it. That's a lot of people. Well, they
proposed a DNA scene as like a sleep aid, but
the problem is is you have ADENA scene receptors all
over your body, including your heart, and it can actually
affect your heart's rhythm. And they're like, you don't want
to mess with your heart's rhythm using a DNA scene,
so it's not worth it as a sleep aid. Oh
(33:16):
that's they've synthesized it. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, if you go
to your doctor and they put it, put you through
a chemical stress test, they're introducing a DNA scene into
your system. And then what's the other thing. They actually
use it to correct a regular heartbeat too, So it's
a powerful heart squeezer. Okay, so were you my friend?
(33:37):
Thank you? Thank you. So now we're at the point
where we kind of go over whether or naps are
good for you, And again I've kind of already ruined that, Like, sure,
they can be great for your functioning if they work
for you and your memory and your alertness and your
your recall and things like that, if they work for you,
(33:59):
but they aren't for everyone. They will if you're not
getting enough sleep, Like if you're doing it because you
have a sleep deficit, then it will for sure improve
your performance and help out. And I think the long,
full cycle nap is probably what you want if it's
just one of those deals where you just didn't get
enough sleep last night because of one reason or another
(34:19):
and you need something more. But like Ed said, this
is more like, hey, this is sort of an emergency
thing and need this nap. Right. The thing is is
there does seem to be benefits from people like you
who take naps as part of their everyday routine. And
I don't know if it's just like I'm missing out
(34:40):
on those benefits or I just don't need a nap
to have those benefits. Who knows. But they have shown
that people who are even well rested who take regular
naps show consistent benefits like an improved mood, reduced impulsiveness,
you're better able to deal with frustrating situation, that's meat
(35:01):
to a t yeah, for sure. And what's funny enough
is I'm the opposite of that, So maybe I should
start napping. And they also improve performance on memory tasks, right, So,
and this is from people who are getting plenty of
sleep during the night but still take a nap during
the day. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, on the downside, and
(35:22):
you knew there would be one, Dear listener, but there
have been and I don't think that they've like proven
direct links, but there have been some correlative is that
the word. Yeah, I think so correlative links between regular
naps and the length of naps if you are elderly,
and things like dementia and heart disease. Yeah, they've shown
(35:46):
that napping for more than an hour every day was
tied to a forty percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer's
disease among older people. And they're like, Okay, well that's
pretty scary. But they haven't figured out whether that's a
symptom of developing Alzheimer's or it's actually a contributing factor
to developing Alzheimer's. Either way, that's definitely something to chew on. Yeah,
(36:10):
like I wonder I'm very sort of dementia aware lately,
not for myself or anything like that, just you know,
it's it's come up quite a bit with like friends
and family in recent years. As you get to be
our age and our parents get older, like everyone starts
to face those things in your family. So I'm just
very aware of, like, all right, keeping the brain sharp,
(36:34):
not just settling down until like, of course we're not
retired or anything, but one day when if that eventually happens,
your tongue stings. Al that hurts staying active brain wise.
And you know, Emily's dear grandmother Mary, he just passed
away at one on one was up until the last
(36:56):
year where you know, she had the stroke and things
like really went south. Was she was just a word
puzzles all day and saduko and or sadoku which is
it sidoku and crosswords? And did not just fall into
that routine that I think so many folks as they
get some age on them do, which is you sit
around and watch TV. Because that is that's a just
(37:19):
a prolonged slow death sentence. Basically, Yeah, sitting around watching
TV is not a good way to keep sharp. No,
not at all. So anyway, a long way of saying,
I had just been thinking a lot more about dementia
over the last few years, and I'm like, well, you know,
maybe one day I'm gonna have to give up this
this nap. Yeah, maybe, But I mean this was an
(37:41):
hour or longer every single day, and it was just
a forty percent greater chance. So you're probably fine, thanks buddy.
So we were talking about you possibly being a natural
born napper and how I am not. They have actually
done genome wide associated studies where they survey hundreds of
(38:03):
thousands of people to ask them, you know, hey, do
you nap every day? How long do you nap for?
Do you nap sometimes? Rarely, never? And then they look
at those respondents genomes, their entire genomes, they scan them,
and then they look for commonalities. And from doing those
kinds of studies, they found one hundred and twenty three
(38:24):
different regions in the genome that are associated with daytime napping.
I have zero of them, really, they I'm sure I did.
I haven't. Actually I have had my genome scan, but
I don't know what if I have them or not,
I would I would assume not. But that raises the
question like are humans designed to nap? Are we genetically
(38:45):
programmed to nap? Or not? And I feel like the
fact that some people seem to be genetically predisposed to
it and other people not. There's your answer right there.
I think some and some not, but I don't think
it appears to be a through trait that humans all
had at one point, right, you know, And you can
(39:06):
kind of come up with the answer by comparing us
to other other groups. Yeah, Like I think the idea
is that did we is this modern life that we
live where we go to work for forty plus hours
or so and we're up during the day and we're
doing things like did we force that upon ourselves or
(39:26):
were we supposed to have evolved differently? And it really
doesn't seem that way. It seems like kind of the
other way around, like circadian rhythm wise, that humans were
probably evolved to sleep at night over a reasonable you know,
period of time and then do things during the day
during the daylight. That just kind of makes sense. Yeah,
(39:48):
And if you look if you say, well, what about
some of our evolutionary cousins like primates. If you look
at primates, some sleep during the day, others don't. If
you look at hunter gatherer society, some sleep during the day,
others don't. And then culturally speaking as well, some cultures do,
others don't. Like you know, Spanish and Latin American cultures
(40:10):
are famous for taking siestas and apparently that is not
some sort of genetically ingrained thing that was originally something
that they did during their agrarian days to escape, to
take a break from the hottest hours of the sunshine. Yeah. Sure,
and then I mean you're just sitting around hanging out
after you've just eaten lunch, the chances are you're probably
(40:32):
going to fall asleep. But that's not the case with
all cultures who are exposed to heavy sunshine during the
daylight hours either. It just seems to have kind of
developed among some cultures. And by the way, the Spanish
are trying to abandon that. Yeah, it has a real
detrimental effect. My friends Laurel and Braden lived in Spain
(40:53):
for a little while and they came back and they're like,
that's siesta, man, it's a killer because everything just stops
for a little while, an hour or two hours, and
then to make up for it, they end up working
until like seven eight at night every night. It's interesting. Yeah,
and for weirdly, the society, the modern version of like
Spanish society, is still trying to figure out how to
(41:15):
reconcile the tune. What they finally come up with is like,
we're just we should not be doing this anymore. Oh,
they should do the Chuck method, which is nap and
don't work until eight o'clock at night. There you go,
there's your solution, Spain. Yeah, people work too much. Yeah,
for sure, you know, for sure, Chuck, they do. I
know that. The sad thing is is you have to
(41:36):
to keep up these days. I know. All right, let's
not get into that right now, I know. So that's
it for naps. Everybody, go forth and test yourself. Maybe
try a coffee nap and see how that does. You
go from there? And since I said coffee nap, it's
time for listener man, all right, I'm gonna call this honey.
(41:59):
I'm gonna call it. What was in the subject line,
Honey saved my pooch's leg. Nice And this is from
Travis will Grin in Texas, and accompanied were some pretty
gnarly pictures because Travis's dog got bit by a rattlesnake yow.
So here we go. Hey, guys, just wanted to drop
a line and tell you how Honey saved my dog's leg.
A long story short. My three year old chocolate lab
(42:21):
Scout got bit on his back leg by a timber
rattle snake here in Texas three days and five vials
of anti ven and later the necrosis had stopped, but
they were worried that his joint was compromised and wanted
to amputate. Being a paramedic, I knew of honey for
wound care, so we took him to our local backwoods
vet did wound care, changing the bandage every two days,
(42:44):
putting Manuka honey only on the wound, and within two
months his leg was healed up with no adverse effects
and he's now a happy pup and attached or some
pictures look at your own risk. Also, we just relocated
the snake because it wasn't his fault, just a snake
being a snake. Wow. And that is Travis Wilgrin. And
there was one, two, three, four pictures of the initial
(43:09):
wound that was really hard to look at, and then
getting better, better, better, and then two very happy, sleepy
dogs and then a rattlesnake with his neck pin to
the ground by you know, someone who knows how to
do that kind of thing. So as a gift to you,
(43:29):
I printed them all out like quality photo papers or
made you a collage. Maybe that could in the wallpaper
my bedroom. Thanks Travis, that was an amazing story. I
haven't seen the pictures yet, but I will probably be
looking at them later. Yeah. Check it out. If you
want to be like Travis and share an amazing story
about something we've talked about. We love hearing about those things.
(43:51):
You can send it in the email to Stuff podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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