Resting during the midday is not a new practice to other areas in the world, however. While the exact date of the start of siestas is impossible to pinpoint, the practice likely goes back to the early Roman Empire, even though it is most commonly associated with Spain.
This closing allowed for people to eat, rest, and escape the heat. The typical work day in Spain would span from 9 a. The term siesta is also used casually to refer to an afternoon nap. There are many benefits to incorporating a siesta into your daily routine. Short naps may help you feel more rested and finish your work day strong.
Most adults need approximately seven to nine hours of sleep each night. However, activities such as work, commuting, and socializing have been shown to reduce the overall amount of time people spend asleep, resulting in a sleep debt. Sleep debt is the difference between how much sleep a person needs and how much they actually receive.
Napping is one way to reduce your sleep debt and its negative impacts. For example, a minute power nap during the day may be enough to help you fight fatigue and sleepiness for up to two hours after your nap. Sleep disruptions can directly impact overall health , affecting the ability to handle stress, diminishing cognition and memory , as well as increasing accidents at work and home.
Naps can also boost your cognitive performance for up to a few hours after your nap. These positive results from naps appear to be dependent on the length of the nap. Sticking to a nap duration of 10 to 30 minutes may be the best way to ensure you reap all the benefits of the nap. Naps lasting longer than 30 minutes are more likely to result in sleep inertia 11 , which is the feeling of grogginess and delayed response time following a long nap.
Sleep inertia goes away after a period of time, after which you are more likely to experience the improved performance from your nap. While there is evidence to suggest that napping for short periods may help overall cognition and memory, this may not be true for all age groups.
Longer habitual daytime naps are associated with an increase in inflammation among older adults. Middle aged women who take naps longer than an hour have an increased likelihood of having hypertension , whereas men do not. There may also be a higher risk of experiencing a heart attack after long naps in people with a history of heart issues.
This risk is due to a decline in blood pressure during naps that then increases rapidly once you wake, which may impact heart health in older populations. There is also evidence that naps in older populations can increase symptoms of depression. If you have a history of heart issues or are an older adult, check with your doctor before adding an afternoon nap to your routine. Taking a siesta or a daily nap might be a beneficial way to add rest into your daily routine.
Sarah has covered news topics for digital and print publications. She holds a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Nevada. Rehman, M. Sleep is just as critical to our body as other basic functions of survival like eating, drinking, and breathing. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. The Sleep Foundation editorial team is dedicated to providing content that meets the highest standards for accuracy and objectivity. Our editors and medical experts rigorously evaluate every article and guide to ensure the information is factual, up-to-date, and free of bias. Updated June 30, Written by Sarah Shoen. Medically Reviewed by Dr. Anis Rehman. While this is more sleep than people get in countries including the United States where people sleep, on average, 6.
The initiative ran under the slogan "save our siesta" Credit: Hotels. Some experts believe returning the nation to its former time zone would go some way to addressing the issue of sleep deprivation among Spaniards.
The Spanish also go to sleep later than their European neighbours. According to Eurostat , Spaniards go to bed, on average, at midnight, compared to Germans at 10pm, the French at He believes there may still be a place for the siesta in Spain and other parts of the world. But if the siesta is to survive into the 21st century, it will perhaps have to become more compatible with office work culture in big cities.
Some companies are already thinking of new ways for Spaniards to enjoy a snooze without it interfering with their busy work schedules. The initiative, run by online booking website Hotels. Some people are integrating the benefits of a siesta into modern life by using technology. SiestAPP, launched in by Spanish developers, is one of many sleep-optimisation apps promising to help users replicate the Spanish siesta by measuring their sleep patterns, then waking them just when they are likely to be the most refreshed and revitalised.
To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. It's time to put the tired Spanish siesta stereotype to bed.
Share using Email. Spanish workers put in more hours than any in Europe despite their laid-back stereotype, but there are some who fear it could be a mistake to abandon the siesta completely. A surprising import Before tackling this question, it is perhaps worth pausing to consider that the siesta does not originally come from Spain at all - it is from Italy.
Another reason for taking our midday nap or siesta was that there was a law that limited shop trading times to 72 hours per week and eight Sundays a year. With these limits, it made sense for businesses to close when many people were hiding from the heat and stay open later. This would, in turn, reinforce itself, as people would stay off the streets since all the shops were closed anyway. One big reason for the traditional siesta is that the Spanish have always liked to have a long lunch.
Many Spaniards take a midday break from work or school, as a cultural tradition designed to slow down the pace of life and to unite the family.
Although traditional Spanish siestas can last for even two hours to avoid the hot sunshine, nowadays it usually lasts around 20 to 30 minutes. Most experts believe a short to minute nap is enoug h to improve health and productivity. Spaniards sleep an hour less per night than the World Health Organization recommends, and we go to sleep later than any country in the world, after Japan. Why so?
One reason is that Spain is in the wrong timezone. Spain shares the Iberian peninsula with Portugal, and, geographically speaking, is almost perfectly aligned with Britain, both of which operate on GMT, while Spain is on Central European Time, which extends as far east as Poland.. The explanation supposedly is due to claims that Spain changed its timezone in World War II to follow Nazi Germany, but this is not strictly true. After the war, most countries reverted to their old timezone, but Spain did not.
No one knows why! The traditional siesta has been dying for a while now. A higher pressure modern job market means that many people are unwilling or unable to take long breaks, and air conditioning has helped us to work through the hottest part of the day. These days, weekends are usually the only time when we might indulge in a quick post-lunch nap.
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