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Why breaking the rules isn't such a bad thing after all.
Catching Some Z's
By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, June 17, 2009.
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As the ever-quotable Winston Churchill put it, “You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner. You get two days in one – well, at least one and a half.” Other prolific nappers include Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison.
The afternoon nap is one of the first luxuries of childhood to fall by the wayside. These days even the Spanish, known for their afternoon siestas, are easing up on the practice.
But now researchers are finding that a 90-minute nap, complete with a dream-inducing REM sleep, could spark greater levels of creativity. Sara Mednick is an assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and author of a new study on the benefits of napping.
Let Me Sleep On It: Creative Problem Solving Enhanced by REM Sleep
(Photo by Dra sick Love via Flickr/Creative Commons)
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Fascinated to see your article with a comment about Churchill and his habit for sleeping.
He discovered the secret of having a sleep for an hour after lunch when he was a young man following the Spanish army in Cuba.
He stook to the principle of having an hours sleep during the day, for the rest of his life.
Even during WW2 he would insist on a sleep he stated that it helped him work 14-16 hours a day during the busiest and most difficult time in his life. He had a golden rule, he was only to be woken up if the Nazi's actually landed on British soil.
I am convinced it is the secret to an extended life.
I recently published abook on Amazon.com called Churchill's Secret Skills were I duscuss this trick of Winston's in greater detail.