Does napping increase serotonin?
While sleeping, your brain produces serotonin, also known as the happy chemical. This helps you feel energized and positive. Even a short nap can boost your mood.
Scientists found that people who napped for 30 to 90 minutes had better word recall – which is a sign of good memory – than people who did not nap or who napped for longer than 90 minutes. People who napped for that golden 30 to 90 minutes were also better at figure drawing, another sign of good cognition.
Naps increase energy, improve reaction time and reduce daytime sleepiness. They lower stress and help to regulate mood, reducing anxiety and depression and inducing relaxation. They enhance creativity, increase productivity, boost problem-solving abilities and improve many cognitive abilities.
Napping helps you shift into the parasympathetic nervous system — the calm, relaxed zone. If you can spend more time in PNS (i.e. stay calm and relaxed), you'll have an easier time with your evening sleep. Basically, we're talking about retraining your nervous system.
The serotonin levels were measured by ELISA every hour at night (20:00-08:00 h) and every 4 h during the daytime (08:00-20:00 h). Ours results show that the maximum levels of serotonin in plasma were obtained at 09:00 and 22:00 and a minor peak at 01:00 h.
Serotonin is a chemical in the brain that can affect mood. Eating foods that contain the essential amino acid known as tryptophan can help the body to produce more serotonin. Foods, including salmon, eggs, spinach, and seeds are among those that help boost serotonin naturally.
Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.
Albert Einstein is said to have slept 10 hours per night, plus regular daytime naps. Other great achievers, inventors, and thinkers – such as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton – are said to have slept between two and four hours per day.
Sleep experts agree that mid-afternoon is optimal. Your body clock is naturally primed for a break, and it's far enough away from bedtime so as to not interfere with your night sleep. Next, the reason why a brief nap feels best. It takes about 90 minutes for your body (and brain) to go through a complete sleep cycle.
It's still unclear whether depression naps are helpful, harmful, or maybe a little of both. If these sleep sessions are an unwelcome addition to your day, the first step toward relief could be speaking with a mental health professional. Treating symptoms of fatigue and insomnia might require treating depression.
Why do Chinese take a nap?
Afternoon nap is a traditional practice commonly seen in populations of Mediterranean, Latin American, and Chinese countries. In Chinese society, it is widely accepted that afternoon nap, as a complementary sleep, is a healthy activity and is especially good for older adults who need longer sleeping time.
“Naps can be good if they are a part of a person's sleep plan, but bad if they make up for insufficient sleep at night,” she said. Research by the Sleep Foundation indicates that depression and sleep problems can go hand-in-hand.
If you're experiencing an increased need for naps and there's no obvious cause of new fatigue in your life, talk to your doctor. You could be taking a medication or have a sleep disorder or other medical condition that's disrupting your nighttime sleep.
Strong scientific evidence shows that our brains benefit from a brief period of actual sleep (a nap), not just a quiet period, to recover from fatigue and to help restore alertness. Both short (15-30 minute) and long (1.5-hour) naps can increase alertness. During the daytime, a brief nap is recommended.
Changes in sleep patterns, circadian rhythms, and lifestyles in older life make older adults more prone to taking naps during the daytime [4]. Older adults also take naps to counter excessive sleepiness and fatigue from comorbidities or medications [5].
- Depression and other mood problems.
- Anxiety.
- Sleep problems.
- Digestive problems.
- Suicidal behavior.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Panic disorders.
Serotonin is a chemical that the body produces naturally. It's needed for the nerve cells and brain to function. But too much serotonin causes signs and symptoms that can range from mild (shivering and diarrhea) to severe (muscle rigidity, fever and seizures). Severe serotonin syndrome can cause death if not treated.
Although serotonin is well known as a brain neurotransmitter, it is estimated that 90 percent of the body's serotonin is made in the digestive tract. In fact, altered levels of this peripheral serotonin have been linked to diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis.
95% of the body's serotonin, however, is produced in the intestine where it has been increasingly recognized for its hormonal, autocrine, paracrine, and endocrine actions.
Exposure to either the sun or to the bright light meant to replicate it is another way to naturally increase serotonin levels. Light therapy is one of the main treatments for seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the winter blues that may be triggered by a drop in serotonin levels.
What is the best source of serotonin?
Serotonin does not occur in the foods we eat, however it is synthesized from tryptophan, an amino acid. Tryptophan is mostly found in high protein foods, like meat, fish and poultry.
Luckily for Einstein, he also took regular naps. According to apocryphal legend, to make sure he didn't overdo it he'd recline in his armchair with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate directly beneath. He'd allow himself to drift off for a second, then – bam!
They also have higher IQs according to The Independent. Unfortunately, night owls have slightly lower academic scores than early risers (by about 8%). The reason for all these differences is likely due to the difference in brain chemistry between late night creative types and early morning larks.
Those with an IQ of over 125 tended to go to bed around 12:30 a.m. and wake up around 8:00 a.m. on weekdays, and to go to bed around 1:45 a.m. and wake up around 11:00 a.m. on weekends. Those of normal intelligence tended to sleep from 12:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and from 1:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. on weekends.
Elon Musk says he is "fairly nocturnal" and only sleeps about six hours a day. The world's richest man made the comments during an August 5 episode of The Full Send podcast. He said he usually goes to sleep at about 3 a.m. and wakes up after about six hours at 9 a.m. or 9:30 a.m.