Afternoon nap can help ease mental exhaustion

Bhubaneswar: As empowering the concept of societal development seems, the process is equally challenging.  Be it a student, homemaker, or a working professional, everyone deals with their fair share of workload on a daily basis. So, getting mentally exhausted or drained becomes a pretty obvious scenario at some point.

What if you don’t have enough time to let your mind heal naturally? Is there a shortcut?

Indeed there is.

Researchers say that a quick afternoon nap could help people refresh their brains and enhance their mental agility alongside.

An afternoon nap, also called ‘siesta’ (in Spanish) is a short nap that people take after having their midday meals. It is quite a tradition in countries with warm weather, just like India.

Although afternoon nap has been considered by many people as signs of laziness and low energy, a new study published in the journal General Psychiatry suggests that a 10 to 30 minutes nap between 1 and 3 pm benefits people of all age groups by giving them rest that helps clear their clouded heads.

As per the study, people over 60 years of age who took afternoon naps scored significantly higher than the non-nappers in a cognitive test that was conducted during the observation period.

Davina Ramkissoon, wellbeing director of Zevo Health was quoted by Healthline explaining that napping helps the brain recover from burnout or overload of information. The American health information providing website also quoted Katherine Hall, a sleep coach at Somnus, a guided sleep therapy program, saying that napping is great for improving mood, energy and productivity and reducing anxiety and tension-both physical and mental.

However, researchers warn that a longer nap could prove unhealthy. It could point at insufficient nighttime sleep or aftereffects of long work hours. Therefore, the bottom line is that an afternoon nap should be kept short.

Moreover, if an afternoon nap doesn’t work well for you, there are few other options that you could try to refresh your brain. Here’s what you can do:

–          Restructure  your routine

–          Add some physical and mental training like exercise and meditation into your daily               routine

–         Keep a journal and pen down all the stress you have, in there.

–         Give priority to your mental health

–          Check on toxic-relationships