Mar 6, 2019 3 min read

You may have read a recent health and medical article I wrote that appeared in last Saturday’s Observer-Reporter about the results of a new study showing the pros and cons of getting enough, too little or too much sleep.

The study showed that getting less than six hours of sleep per night significantly raises the chances of heart issues such as hardening of the arteries. This should come as no surprise to us since we all know all too well how terrible we feel after we don’t get a good night’s sleep. Just imagine how much damage year after year of too little sleep is doing to our bodies and minds.

On a recent ski trip to a high-altitude destination, I once again wound up tossing and turning each night and not getting enough sleep. I have experienced the insomnia that high altitudes can cause, and it’s maddening. I wasn’t the only person on my trip to experience it, either, and several of us were walking around like zombies toward the end of the week, just wishing we could lie down and take a good long snooze.

That same sleep study also determined that getting too much sleep can be detrimental to heart health. I have to wonder whether there really is such a thing as too much sleep, but I trust the medical experts when they tell me there truly is. When I got home from that ski trip, I slept like a baby for hours and hours that first night. When I was a kid, I remember my mom putting me down for a nap and me fighting hard to resist the urge to sleep. After all, grownups don’t take naps, and I wanted to be all grown up. When we’re kids, we think the worst thing in the world is to have to take a nap. As adults, all I want to do is nap, and I’m a professional at it. I can nap on planes, in cars, on sofas. Part of that is due to my erratic work schedule, often switching from early mornings to late evenings or even pulling a double shift with a nice nap in between.

I recently read about one high-powered executive who firmly believes in the power of napping and actually promotes the practice in her offices. She claims that research shows power napping actually increases productivity and concentration among workers. She pulls down the shades and takes a power nap each afternoon and encourages employees to do the same in some sort of nap pods they had built. I think I will start a movement and recruit co-workers to lobby for this practice to be implemented in our workplace immediately. But first, I’m going to take a nap.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.