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 Health & Beauty | September 2007 
Modern Research Praises the Siesta
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News Service
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| | Dr. Jose S. Laredo, who grew up in Mexico and now heads the Sleep Medicine Center at UCSD, met with patient Ruben Ramos this month. Laredo says he likes to take a siesta when he visits his family in San Luis Potosi. (John Gastaldo/San Diego Union-Tribune) |
Mexico City – On this side of the border it's called a siesta, that time-honored snooze after a heavy lunch. On the other side of the border it has a different name: the power nap.
Mexicans have known for centuries that siestas are good for what ails you. But it wasn't until researchers starting studying naps that the siesta got an image makeover.
Doctors now say a short nap can curb irritability, sharpen memory and, most important, make people more productive.
“The power nap is more sexy, more snappy,” said Dr. Jose S. Laredo, who grew up in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi and now heads the Sleep Medicine Center at the University of California San Diego. “The purpose is different. It's not just to have leisure time; it's to recover yourself so you can keep on working. That's why it's looked at in our society, which is go-go-go, as better.”
The stereotype of a Mexican catching a few zzzs in a hammock is rapidly fading. Today's napper is a business executive tilted back in a leather chair, taking a 30-minute break to fight off that afternoon grogginess known as the “midday dip” before resuming a hectic schedule.
History is full of nap-takers. John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Napoleon Bonaparte and Leonardo da Vinci all grabbed a few winks during the day. Even President Bush has been known to take a nap, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Sleep Foundation.
Sleepiness naturally sets in between 3 and 5 p.m. Unless the person suffers from chronic insomnia, doctors say a quick nap is just the prescription.
Consider a study by Dr. Mark Rosekind of commercial airline pilots making nine-hour flights to Japan. After taking a 26-minute nap in the cockpit as two other pilots flew the plane, each of the pilots experienced a 34 percent boost in performance. They also reported a 54 percent boost in alertness.
“When you think about it culturally, the folks who take siestas got it right,” said Rosekind, president and chief scientist at Alertness Solutions in Cupertino and former director of the Fatigue Countermeasures Program at the NASA Ames Research Center. “In the United States, we have it totally backward. Three to five? We just keep pushing.”
Union Pacific Railroad changed its work rules in 1998 to give employees 40-minute nap breaks while trains are stopped or parked on sidings. Most other U.S. railroads have followed suit.
“People are more rested, they're more alert, they're more productive, so that means they're working safer,” said Dr. Dennis Holland, who directs Union Pacific's alertness management program. “That benefits us and the employees.”
But just as the power nap is catching on in the United States, Mexicans seem to be abandoning siestas. Their days are so crowded with urban pressures – bosses with urgent deadlines, traffic, kids who need to be driven home from school – that they can't afford the quick pick-me-up that was once a national ritual.
“The problem is we are sleeping two hours less than we did 100 years ago,” said Dr. Sonia Meza, director of the federal government's sleep disorder clinic in Mexico City, “because we watch the television until very late, because in these huge cities we have to get up very early to go from one place to another, because in the workplace you are not perceived as competitive if you say, 'Excuse me, I'm going to sleep.' ”
Dr. Alberto Servín, who heads Baja California's only sleep clinic, said that for most of his patients, going home during the day for a siesta is impractical.
Servín squeezes a power nap into his schedule three times a week during the break between his daytime practice at a government hospital and his evening practice at his Tijuana clinic.
When he wakes up, “I feel like new,” he said.
Siestas aren't uniquely Mexican. Scientists estimate that two-thirds of the world's population takes an afternoon nap.
“Any culture where there are very hot afternoons, people will divide their day into a main sleep period of six hours and a nap of a couple of hours,” said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University.
The traditional Mexican lunch break, from 3 to 6 p.m., is “right on the mark,” Belenky said. “That's a time that's conducive to sleep, when the gauge to sleep is open.”
Belenky, whose motto is “You snooze, you win,” said the stereotypes about Mexican siestas simply don't fit with new research on napping conducted by sleep specialists.
Some data suggest that “dividing your sleep is actually better than one consolidated sleep,” Belenky said. “It's like filling your gas tank. Does it matter if you fill 5 gallons here and 5 gallons there, or fill all 10 gallons at once? The effect, in terms of the numbers of miles you can travel, is the same.”
Juan López, a 54-year-old communications executive, sleeps five to 10 minutes every day after lunch.
When he leans back in an easy chair in his Mexico City office, it takes him back to his childhood in the northern border state of Sonora. When the desert heat rises, most businesses there still close for the siesta.
“It is part of the regional culture,” López said.
Most Americans cram too many activities into the day to find time for a nap.
That forces some weary workers to seek unorthodox places to fight off drowsiness. According to one study, the place Americans most commonly nap during the day is in a bathroom stall, with a roll of toilet paper as a pillow.
It was only a decade ago that doctors began linking lack of sleep to serious health problems.
When Dr. Reyes Haro opened his sleep clinic in Mexico City in 1998, his colleagues were skeptical.
After all, who would think snoring was a sign of anything but deep, healthy sleep? Who would believe that insomnia, or waking up several times a night, could make you sick?
“People went to witch doctors. They drank herbal teas. They took their neighbor's advice. We were their last resort,” said Haro, who heads the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Clinic for Sleep Disorders where more than 40,000 patients have been treated.
Mexico isn't the only place where people have been slow to accept scientific findings on sleep disorders.
It was only last year that the American Board of Medical Specialties recognized sleep medicine as a specialty. And an estimated 85 percent of Americans who have sleep disorders still are not being treated.
Laredo is so interested in how the U.S. lifestyle affects sleep habits that he is conducting a study comparing the patterns of 2,000 Caucasians and 2,000 Mexican-Americans in the United States.
“When people come here, they adopt the bad habits of the U.S., not the good ones,” he said. “They don't start jogging and eating vegetables. They go for the meat, and they go for the television.”
The demands of the U.S. workplace also mean that Mexicans have to give up their siestas.
“It is a more stressful life,” Laredo said.
When Laredo visits his family's cattle ranch in San Luis Potosi, he joins his father in a siesta.
“He works hard and after lunch, everybody takes a little nap,” Laredo said with a laugh. “You're out there in the field under a tree. It actually feels good.”
S. Lynne Walker: slwalker@prodigy.net.mx |
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