Dr. Michael Grandner

Healthy snacks are great.

A healthy snack in the middle of the day can help stave off hunger, increase your energy, increase your focus, especially if it's kind of a healthy snack, high protein, some fiber, maybe a little bit of sugar or something in there to make it palatable, but you don't want to load it up with calories because you don't need them.

Same thing with a nap.

A nap is

On purpose, that is restricted in time.

You want to wake up before you drop down into that deep sleep if you want to make it sort of like a power nap.

And you should remember, you're dropping down to stage, but you want to wake up before you drop into stage three sleep.

So in the middle of the day, it could be an hour.

The closer you get to where your body is trying to drop into it, that window shortens.

So it could be just 15, 20 minutes.

the later in the day.

Sometimes you're going to drive, like you can't, you shouldn't nap.

when you're in your biological night, don't expect to nap because you're gonna drop straight into it.

But the further out you are, the longer you can make it.

And so that it can increase reaction time, increase focus, increase learning, increase training recovery.

There's data that shows like even in sleep deprived people, a decent nap in the middle of the day can dramatically improve metabolism, muscle strength, all this stuff.

They can be great.

And that's sort of a power nap.

If you're napping all the time, it's like if you're snacking all the time.

It's not the snack that's the problem.