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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody it's it's it's Mariel. So every time I take a nap it's the same routine.

You know I'm on my couch, my eyes start closing, and I decide, screw it, I'm going all in.

This nap may mess me up later, but there is nowhere else in the world I'd rather be right now and it is happening. I don't even

set an alarm. And then I wake up like four hours later feeling groggy, often a little

sad and guilty for having slept so long, so close to my bedtime.

So look, it turns out we're actually wired to take some kind of break or rest during the day, which can include naps.

Our body's internal clock, our circadian rhythm, is built to have these natural dips.

Whether it's because the midday sun is too hot for us hunter gathers to you know be

functioning at that time for whatever reason we evolved to have this little early

afternoon dip and if we sort of ride that dip and take our nap as we're

feeling that that's where we're going to get the most benefit out of it like go with your

body instead of against your body.

Jade Wu is a sleep medicine specialist

and researcher based in North Carolina

and the author of the book Hello Sleep.

She says when done right, a nap can offer a lot of mental and emotional benefits.

I like to call it kind of a performance enhancing drug without the drug.

It's good for our emotion regulation. It makes us less biased towards negative stimuli and more flexible in our thinking and things that you learned before you went and took a nap are more solidly embedded in your

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