The afternoon siesta has a pretty bad rap outside of its stronghold in the Mediterranean – shops closing after midday, effectively making temporary ghost towns and leaving tourists scratching their heads for what to do between 2.00 and 5.00 pm.
It’s been characterised by many in the western world as the height of laziness, but for those used to the hours the benefits of the siesta outweigh the criticism.
In Greece, the siesta is in fact mandatory for government departments and banks.
The idea is that during the hottest hours of the day, a person is able to go home, have their lunch and retire for an hour to fight afternoon sleepiness; then return to work re-energised.
In fact, the strange working hours aren’t just a convenience, they are in fact medically proven to be beneficial for our health.
A nap during the day can reduce stress, help cardiovascular functions, and improve alertness and memory.
Australian businesses have caught on, and for some large scale companies, giving their staff areas to unwind and in some cases sleep has been a calculated but fruitful exercise.
Employees at Google, KPMG, iSelect Insurance and Kavanagh Industries are all encouraged to take a power nap during the day to keep their minds fresh and relieve stress.
Google has specially designed ‘sleep pods’ scattered around its offices that harness ‘NASA technology’ to make sure the user gets a refreshing nap. They can be programmed to vibrate people awake at a designated time.
The afternoon nap at work is something chair of the Sleep Health Foundation, Professor David Hillman, says is very beneficial to supplement lost sleep overnight.
“It’s quite an enlightened thing to do, what these companies are saying is, you being properly rested is really important to your productivity and safety, and we’re going to do something to help that so we’re going to give you an opportunity to supplement that and get your overnight sleep right and catch up a bit,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
At iSelect Insurance, the pods have been a good way to keep their call centre staff happy.
“It’s played an important role in keeping our call centre turnover rates to a very low five per cent,” Paul Cross, the iSelect executive general manager, investor and corporate relations said.
The University of Manchester uncovered neurons that keep us alert turn off after we eat, pinpointing the reason why the afternoon slug is always the hardest for workers.
Sleeping for a short period of time is one of the most beneficial ways of getting back into a productive mindset, but for how long is still hotly debated.
Research by the University of California says short naps up to 30 minutes work to enhance muscle memory and help in learning sequential movements.
Thirty-to-60 minute naps improve verbal memory, meaning we can remember what is said to us for longer, while naps for more than an hour improve problem solving.
But for people supplementing the loss of sleep during the day, Professor Hillman believes simple maths can help them determine how long they should nap.
“It’s a mathematical thing, if you get six hours overnight, you need two hours’ nap in the afternoon,” he says.
“But grabbing a quick nap before doing something else, like when you’re on the road, the idea of a power nap is that you don’t slip into what’s called a slow wave sleep, and if you wake up from that and try and do something you don’t feel quite right.”
Professor Leon Lack of Flinders University has found that a 10 minute nap caused an immediate increase in alertness (the same as a half-hour nap) and did so without causing any grogginess.
The effects lasted for two and a half hours, therefore giving workers the extra boost they needed to finish the day without interfering with their night’s sleep.
Many say that getting into a deep sleep during the day can be detrimental to health, especially if it’s done irregularly, causing excessive grogginess and sleeplessness at night.
But the act of resting at any part of the day has shown to reduce blood pressure and stress.
A study conducted in Greece of more than 23,000 Greek adults found that those who regularly took a midday siesta were more than 30 per cent less likely to die of heart disease.
Men were the most protected, and those who took a siesta for 30 minutes or more at least three times a week had a 37 per cent lower risk.
Some of our most prominent leaders were avid nappers, with Winston Churchill actually first coining the term ‘power nap’. He believed the daily afternoon sleep brought him the clarity he needed during wartime.
Margaret Thatcher famously ordered her aides not to disturb her between 2.30 and 3.30 pm so she could nap, and Bill Clinton did the same each day at 3.00 pm.
Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Johannes Brahms also enjoyed a bit of a kip during the day.
For more information on sleep, visit www.sleephealthfoundation.org.au/