Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, lingering, which makes this stuff you should know, right, And can we quickly just say a brief thank you to everyone that came out on the first three show leg of our nine show tour. Yeah, thank you to everybody in Seattle, to everyone in Portland, yay. Thank you to everyone in San Francisco yeehall. And that's the three so far. Yeah, and they went great. I think we were both a little nervous. Could it's been a while And it was like putting on an old shirt all right with a bunch of moth holes in. It was awesome, perfectly placed. So just one nipple sticks out through one of the Oh wow, that's what it felt like to me. I think going out on stage in that year, you did so good, my friend. I was very proud of you. You were funny and engaging and doled out the information. It was just vintage Josh. Well. I have to say that is great to hear because I feel the same way about your performance, which you delivered. Chuck, you did great too. Wilson. Either one of us screwed it up. I don't think so. No. I mean, yes, both of us screwed up plenty of times, but not the whole shebang, you know what I mean. Yeah, So, I feel like we're really kind of overselling things. I don't want everybody to come out expecting a lot based on what we just said for the next six shows. But we are going to be touring some more this year, so heads up, keep an ear out for where we're going to be. I think we've already kind of said mostly right. Yeah, And and big thanks to everyone for as always doing their best to keep a lid on the topic because it's it's not like the front Door combination to Fort Knox or anything, but it's always nice, I think, to be surprised when you show up. Yeah, to see the look on people's faces and they're like, oh my god, I was not expecting this. Oh my god, that's the Pinto right, what's that? Never even heard of it? All? Right? So on with the nap say, oh yeah, nap. So um, I have to say, chuck. When I was researching this, I got very very tired, and I still didn't nap. As you know I am a non napper. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's funny. We were talking about the tour because on tour you probably just adrenaline and nerves and all that stuff. You had some trouble sleeping and then could not nap to catch up, and you know my deal, and we'll talk about it through the episode. But I started taking a daily nap about probably about a year ago. I used to you know, I called it sneaking a nap every now and then. My whole life, i'ven't enjoyed a nap, but then I was. I started to own it, and which means basically, let Emily no like, hey, I'm gonna nap and I'm not gonna feel bad about it tonight. And she got behind it and was like, you know what, you do better, She said, you don't get as much sleep as I do. You do better with with like a forty five minute lay down in the afternoon, and like, go for it. It's great, that's awesome. So I felt like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't nap, because it does seem like that's something that everybody should be able to do, especially as beneficial as it is. But After reading this article and doing research, Ed helped us with this one, by the way, so thanks Ed. I've come to realize like I'm just a non napper, probably on a genetic level. Yeah, some people just don't nap and some people do, and there doesn't mean anyone's right or wrong. I am good at it. I get a lot out of it, and you're not great at it. And who knows if you would get anything out of it? Yeah? I know, who knows? I mean, yeah, I don't know. Who knows. I might just wake up even worse off than I have been before, but I really really can try and it just does not happen. So it's just have you ever I mean I know obviously kids nap and stuff, but like as an adult, have you ever ever napped? Or not? Really? I'm sure I have, but I can't remember when, if ever, and if I if I ever, Like my my propensity is to just stay up, keep staying up, and then go to bed at your normal bedtime and just try to reset everything. To me, taking a nap is like, oh no, everything's even more out of whack than it was before. You know, like if you if you've missed out on a bunch of sleep tonight before rather than taking a nap, I just stay awake until the next sleep time and then hopefully that everything gets back to normal. Yeah yeah, my um. I just remember my brother in law, the Marine Corps General is has a as you would imagine a pretty rebbed up motor sure as a human in life, just to accomplish things. And I live with him in a Zona for a year and I saw him take a nap one day and I was worried. Head up to my sister. I was like, Michelle s Cartson, Okay, I was like, I think we need to call somebody. Does he take him regularly? No, not at all. So it was it was really disconcerting to see him not awake and like building a new deck or a swing set, or cleaning cleaning something curiously, especially since when you lean closer you could hear him go, this is my rifle. Oh what a great Stanley Kubrick joke. So let's let's talk napping. We could just sit here and share napping anecdotes for the rest of the episode. Yeah good. I suspect most people would be turned off by a significant portion. Would a lot of people come for the science the statistics. The explanation me screwing up the word statistics all that stuff combined. That's a tough word, it is. Uh yeah, but we should talk a little bit about sleep. We have a quite a few episodes on sleep, but one just on sleep and kind of the different phases. So if you want a full, a deep dive into that, go check that one out. But briefly we'll go over the stages of sleep again. Right. Yeah, I mean you basically have to talk about napping because spoiler alert, napping is a type of sleep. It's just abbreviated and there's actually a clinical definition agreed upon definition of a funny one, I think you should take this one. A nap is any sleep period where a duration with a duration of less than fifty percent of the average major sleep period of an individual. So if you sleep eight hours a night and you took a three hour and forty five minute sleep during the afternoon, that would be considered a nap. That's a nap and then a weird big one. It's odd that there's a definition out there, but it makes sense even though everyone knows what a nap is. Yeah, So, yeah, we need to talk about sleep because we don't actually understand why we sleep still. It's one of the great fascinating things about humans, and we've talked about it plenty of times, more than in just some of our sleep episodes. But there's theories that your brain is clearing out like detritus and junk, that you are consolidating memories and making new connections between memories like remember our Sleeping on It short stuff that we released recently. Yep, we talked a lot about that. There's basically forcing your body to lay still so that it can repair and grow and do all sorts of stuff. And then another another theories that we're actually saving energy, we have less we have less energy needs or fewer energy needs because we sleep about six to eight or six to nine hours a day. Yeah, and what do you get these days sleepwise? I get, oh, usually on the nose, eight hours, maybe nine sometimes. But you're an early riser, so you're going to bed at tennish, tennish ninish. Okay, all right? If the beds sounding really like comforting of eight eight thirty, I don't care. I have nothing to prove to anyone. My life is into it too, So no, no, no, there's the older you get the less aim you have about just saying like I'm going to bed, everybody good exactly. Yeah, because as as you get older, when you say it at like eight, you like raise your fists in triumph. Right, I get to I completed everything I needed to complete today, and now I get to go to bed at eight thirty, right, right right. I generally stay up later and still get up kind of early. That's why the nap really helps me out, because I feel like I get probably seven and under every night. I go to bed at eleven or twelve, and I usually get up around six thirty or seven. Yeah, that's the best time to do it, to get up really early. I've not been much of a night owl for many, many years. Yeah, but the early rising thing I really I can dig on for sure. Yeah. I was in San Francisco actually on sort of the big night out, which was after our Friday show when we were completely done. Yeah, I sort of got into it with some old friends Hodgman and some guys and Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison and our buddies, and I was up. Adam and I were the last ones up, and I looked at my watch fully expecting it to be maybe twelve forty five or one fifteen at the latest, and it was like two forty five, and I was like, oh boy, I'm in trouble that in a long time. Yeah, I know, that's a feeling of dread when you go to bed like that. And I took a legit three hour nap the next day. Nice. Well, that's we'll get to why that probably helped. I'm sure when you woke up after that three hour nap you felt good. I felt good in that I had got given my body what it needed. But it was definitely like waking up from real sleep like I was. I was pretty groggy. And we'll again, we'll get into all that. Okay, So we were talking about a tuck about the stages of sleep are explaining sleep and sleep is divided into stages. There's really two big ones, and then one of the big ones can be subdivided. But you've got rapid eye movement RIM sleep or REM sleep if you're in the sleep biz, and then you've got non RIM sleep or n REM, and NREM is what you can divide into further subsections. There's stage N one, N two, and N three. And I didn't know this chuck. But you put N one, N two, N three followed by rim sleep. You've got a full sleep cycle, and that you cycle through those multiple times, five six times during a night's sleep. Did you know that? You knew that because we've talked about it. You just forgot it. I plumb forgot because yeah, it seemed like brand new infoto me. Yeah, you go through the complete cycle five or six times, and when you start looking at the breakdown of the minutes, it makes sense because N one is that first little light sleep stage. It's only about five minutes per cycle. So again you will go through that five minute stage five or six times in a night. Yeah, and this one, you know you'll wake up very easily from N one, whereas in two obviously is a bit deeper. Your body is going to be pretty much completely relaxed and into your body temp drops, your heart rate drops, your respiration drops a bit arousal threshold are the words ed use. That sounds both like a band and like something dirty. That's an album to me, not a band. Okay, well the band would be Sleep Architecture then right, it sounds like a roxy music album. Okay, yeah, I guess, I guess the band would be sleep architecture. That's a good name for anything, really. Yeah, that's a term that comes up later, but this, I'm sorry. The N two cycle is about ten to twenty minutes on the first run or the end two stage, and the first cycles ten to twenty minutes, and then each successive cycle it gets a little bit longer. Yeah, eleven to twenty one, twelve to twenty two, probably more teen to twenty three, right, Yeah, and then after that you've got N three sleep, slow wave sleep. It's your arousal threshold. It's very high, meaning it's very difficult to wake you up. I saw that people will commonly sleep through hundred decibel noises in N three sleep you were just out, Yeah, and that's great. N three sleep you're getting all sorts of like your cells are repairing themselves. You're actually literally growing, especially if you're a younger human. Yeah, and you'll stay in it for anywhere between twenty to forty minutes. But it's the opposite of ND two. It gets shorter with each cycle. There's a problem with N three sleep in that if you wake up from N three sleep, you are extraordinarily groggy. That grogginess can last like two to four hours, where like you're essentially suffering a temporary cognitive impairment. And they call it sleep inertia. It's another way to put it, just just the grogginess from waking up at the wrong time, and that is what happens when you don't complete an end three cycle, but you wake up in the N three cycle. That's where you're groggiest. Yeah, what I'm curious about. And we've even had one of these as a sponsor. I can't remember which one, but where you'll wear like sleep bands to kind of log how your sleep cycles are working. Yeah, do any and the one that we use may have even had this, I don't remember, But do any of them have an alarm integrated well, they where they can wake you up in the best part of your sleep, You know what I'm saying. I would guess, so they're probably don't think this is like new research here, So I'm guessing that, Yeah, if you're going to make something like that, you would have to make it so that you wake up at the best optimal time. I'm curious. And then the last one is the RM sleep. This is where you're dreaming. Of course, your brain is going to be obviously a little more active. Your arousal threshold is even higher than in three. But it's a bit of a paradox because if you don't have an alarm or whatever, and you just awake from a dream spontaneously and you've had, you know, a regular good night's sleep, then it doesn't have the kind of sleep inertia as in three, so you wake up easier. Right, And I've found this to be kind of both. When I wake up from a intense dream, sometimes I am really out of it. But that's rare because I'm generally a very awake waker. Right you sit up like, oh my god, No, not quite like that. But I've never been one that's just like, oh what, I'm always just like okay, I'm awake. So when you watch movies where people wake up, you're like, that is so fake. That's fake for me. So um, yeah, I didn't realize that if you naturally, if when you wake up without an alarm, which I guess it is called a wake getting spontaneously, which makes sense. I've actually chuck, I've got a talent here where so I'm still like LOGI from the jet, Like for some reason, the jet like just killed me on this West coast trip, like I've never had it before. We might as well have gone to Japan and come back over the weekend. It was like pretty bad, so I'm still suffering from it. So I woke up to my alarm. But normally, when I have like a good level of sleep going, I can calculate how long I have to sleep and what time I need to wake up, and I will wake up every time a couple minutes before my alarm goes off. Dude, me too. I talked a bit this on our sleepep. I have a natural alarm. If I tell myself the night before what time I have to wake up, I'm within like five minutes of that. That's just so cool. And that's one of the circadian rhythms or one of the biological rhythms that we have. We have like an inner several inner clocks of different types, and apparently one just as there and count it's the seconds. What a terrible job that would be. Yeah, I mean, I haven't used I don't think maybe some real weird outlier nights, but I know for a fact, I haven't really used an alarm since we did the TV show Wow and generally never use an alarm because I just I wake up. I'm not one of those who will just sleep the day away. I still set my alarm on days where we're studying recording, days where I have to get up early, but I still usually wake up before it. So well. Pets and human children also serve as natural alarms, either from a pet usually like it's time to get that morning feeding or let me out and go pee or whatever. Right, but yeah, once you once you have a human kid, you're you're waking when they wake right. Okay, So we basically just explained sleep again. And the reason we did that is because now that we know the different stages of sleep and how long each one lasts and when you want to wake up or don't wake up, you can actually use this information to optimize your nap. And I think we should take a break and then come back and teach everybody how to optimize their naps. Let's do it all, right, So how to Nap Better is how Ed titled this section, which I just love that the way that sounds in my ears. Yeah, and Ed made up a couple of terms that he didn't tell us until after this section that he had made up because they sound right on the money to me, and so we're going to go ahead and use his terminology, and that is partial cycle naps and full cycle naps YEP. A partial cycle nap being the power nap what people call a disco nap or a power nap, or a cat nap or a cat nap, and that's at ten or twenty minute nap where officially you will or scientifically you'll be entering into sleep, but you're waking up before that in three sleep or the RM sleep, right, so you're not going through a full sleep cycle, but you still get the n one and the end too sleep. And this seems to be, as we'll see, like the nap that you want to take depending on what you're trying to do. If you're catching up on sleep, a longer nap is typically recommended. But if you're trying to be like the most productive worker possible, then this is what you want to do. Is a partial cycle nap is egg calls it. And in his defense, I looked up to see if there were any and strangely there isn't, So there was actually a lot of room for him to make up these terms. There was a void for him to fill. Yeah, I think I could see the the industry jumping on this. Sure, partial cycle NAP, full cycle nap. It sounds very scientific. He should trademark that stuff, definitely. Well, we'll email him before this comes out so we can get it in the works. Make some money off a big mattress. So there are some studies here and there. We're going to mention there are lots of nap studies and sleep studies and they're not the most consistent across the board. So kind of the net net of all of this is, like we kind of mentioned at the beginning, we tease it out. You know, some people can nap and get a lot out of it and some people don't. And there isn't a definitive study that says like everyone should do this or not do that. It can help certain people, for sure. It seems like study wise and data wise, the partial cycle nap, the twenty minute or so nap is the one with the most measurable benefits. Yeah, there was one study I I didn't see where it was from, but they found that the ten minute nap is actually ideal. Get out of my face with that. What is that ten minutes that's not even a nap, I know. But apparently the ten minute nap showed that there was a reduced sleepiness, increased mental ability, and that people tended to have a better memory consolidation just after a ten minute nap, and that it was even better than a twenty minute nap in this one study. Here's the thing. There are a lot of sleep stays out there, and a lot of them contradict one another's findings, but there does seem to be enough studies that some you know, fairly definitive answers have risen to the top, and it seems to be that ten minutes is a pretty sweet spot twenty minute. Sometimes I will say this, I have worked in I've developed the ability to take a super super short nap if that's the only thing I can do that day, Because some days you just can't do it, you know. I try to build it into my schedule and I it's pretty much successfully have, But sometimes life happens and you just can't do it, and I'm really tired in the afternoon, and I've developed the ability to lay down and sleep for like eight or ten minutes, and I do feel super refreshed. So you lay down. You're not one of those people that can just nap anywhere. I mean, I can nap on a plane, but I don't, like I'm not at the old man stage yet where I'm sitting up right in a chair, right, I get horizontal. You reminded me of Japanese school kids. In Japan, if you ride the subway, like almost all of them will just fall asleep, sitting up and just be on the subway, and then all of a sudden it's their stop, and they just stand up and walk off the subway like just they're sleeping and now they're not, They're walking off the subway. It's really impressive. But they apparently can sleep absolutely anywhere. Well as if you can sleep on the subway, and I like ten in the morning, you can sleep anywhere. You know. Well, I was gonna say trains and boats and modes of transport can kind of lull people to sleep, but I think Japanese subways are known for being fairly crowded. They are crowded, very loud. But I mean, also, like, how do they know it's their stop? Like that's just amazing. That is pretty great. I love that. Yeah, I mean too, So next we've got the full cycle nap, Chuck, And that's one that's I mean basically not a partial cycle NAP. The goal here is to make it through ND one, end two, and end three and then into rim sleep because remember rim sleep is where we normally naturally wake up, so you're not nearly as groggy as if you woke up and three sleep. The problem is it's really difficult to pinpoint your individual sleep cycles. Like even if you did a sleep study, if you start new medication, if you age as most people do, there's all sorts of different factors, how much sleep you had the night before, you put all that together and whatever that sleep studies said you your sleep cycles go through, like the time or length of each one that can be altered, but you're you're trying to guess essentially what you would what it takes you to go through a full cycle one sleep cycle and Ed suggests starting with sixty minutes and then depending on whether you're groggy or not when you wake up, like moving it downward or upward, but usually they're between forty five and ninety minutes. Yeah, and this is what I shoot for, but it's never over an hour. It's what I'll usually do is set the timer for an hour, and I will wake up naturally about forty five minutes later. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I rarely make it. Well, that's not true. Sometimes I make it to that full hour, but never beyond that because just there's too much going on in life for me to go longer than an hour. But if you know, if you need that ninety minutes, I mean they say that you're if you can get to that RM stage, you know you're going to have the benefits of waking up without the grogginess. But like you said, it's it's complicated unless you really have done us, either done us leap study or just super in sync with where you think your cycles are. Yeah, but I mean, if you really want to become like a pro napper, you could do worse than saying like, I'm going to take this week or the next two weeks to study my deep cycles and yeah, start with sixty minutes and adjust it from there. Yeah, I think that's respectable. Anybody who takes themselves that, I guess seriously, I don't know where they're like, I'm going to improve my life and I'm going to do it scientifically. I appreciate that. I think that's cool. Well, I talked to my friend Eddie into napping semi recently. Huh with you like then a friend's episode, come over and have a guttle I would do that. I'm sure Eddie's a great spooner. But he got on board, and the last I heard from him, he was like, I'm doing it now, built it into my day and it's like made a huge difference. Wow. Yeah. So yeah, even though I know I'm not a nap or, I'm still a little envious. So please stop talking about how great it is. Okay, it's so great. So there's another nap you can take two that's supposedly, from what I can tell, the ideal nap. Yeah, it's called a coffee nap, and it's not a ten minute napisode a ninety minute nap. It's a twenty minute nap and it's sounds kind of awesome. But basically, you drink a cup of coffee. Ostensibly, this is the only coffee you've drank, or at least your morning coffee has long worn off by now, so you're basically at your set point for caffeine and take. You drink a cup of coffee, you go lay down and you go to sleep, and then twenty minutes later, after the caffeine has entered your bloodstream and started to take effect, you wake up. But not only do you just wake up like, oh, I've got some caffeine, Like, there's a whole bunch of neurochemistry going on that really makes this coffee nap something special. Yeah, this sounds like a great nap for if you're doing a long road trip and you're you're smart enough to pull over and take a little rest stop nap, drink the coffee, and then you're you're up. You start that car back up, and you're fired up and ready to hit the road again. Right. So the reason why it works, Chuck, is because of aDNA scene. That's a neurochemical, it's a neurotransmitter, and one of the things a DNA sing does is it tells your body that you're tired. The thing is is caffeine can attach to aDNA sine receptors, So when there's less places for your aDNA scene to attach, there's less chance for those ADENA scene molecules to tell your body that you're tired. So not only do you have the benefits of waking up with the cafe, like the whole caffeinated energy boost, You're feeling less tired because the caffeine has literally like elbowed out. Yeah, well maybe not literally elbowed, but you know what I mean. Sure, this chemical that makes you feel tired. So it's like the best of both worlds put together. Yeah, and not only that, but if you're in too sleep, you're going to be flushing a DNA scene in that stage from your brain. So that's just going to open up more garage space for the caffeine to come park. And you're just, yeah, it sounds pretty great. I'm not the biggest caffeine guy. Caffeine I will have sometimes in the winter, as you know, I'll have like lattes and stuff. It's like a cold weather thing for me, sure, but always it always makes me excessively tired after. Like, the caffeine come down for me is pretty pretty big. Right. That used to be the same for me, but now I'm just so used to it I don't even notice, right. Yeah, there is something that I have noticed, though, I think everybody's noticed, which is the post lunch dip. Yeah, that's what I take mine. Yes, Okay, So This actually makes a lot of sense because there's entire cultures that are dedicated to napping during the post lunch dip. But there is a is a period, and apparently it's not due to having lunch or a big lunch. It's just a natural period of sleepiness that humans tend to experience in the middle of the day, the early afternoon about for about three hours from early to mid afternoon. It's called the post post lunch dip. And a lot of people just say, hey, I'm taking a nap right now. And they have found that there's actually an optimal time to take a nap in an optimal length. And it sounds like if you took a coffee nap at this time, you would wake up with some sort of superpowers in that time. Drumroll please? Is what two pm? Right? Yeah, it's just fourteen hours two pm. Your brother in law would know. So, yeah, the twenty minute nap. And these were studies and researchers have done, like you know, looked over the metadata of lots of studies, and they found that a twenty minute nap at two pm produced greater and longer lasting benefits to mood, fatigue, objective performance, self rated performance and objective alertness compared to that same nap at noon. Yeah, so there you have it, if you ask me, Like we've just told everybody, if you're going to take a nap, this is when and how to do it. Yeah, go forth and sleep at that. Cista agreed. So, Chuck, we're not through with the DNA scene yet. Now we're not. Should we take a break? I think we should take a break, and then we're going to talk more about a DNA scene. All right, I'm gonna have a two minute nap and I'll be right back. Okay, I mentioned a DNA scene, said we weren't done with it, and by god I was telling the truth, because there's a whole other segment about a DNA scene that I find just absolutely fascinating, and that is that it's essentially like almost a mechanical um What am I thinking of, Chuck, I don't know. So it's almost like, okay, it's it's almost like a little bit, but more like you have like a tray, and the tray is on like a scale, like a balancing scale, but attached to that scale is like a stick, and when enough, a DNA scene builds up on that tray and the scale that stick goes up, and yes, it throws a switch and all of a sudden for you, it's lights out, that's right. So sort of the takeaway from this is the longest it's a byproduct of cell cheese, cellular breakdown of the energy that you use. So the longer you're awake and the more active you are, the more a DNA scene you're gonna have. And again that's your body saying you're tired. So it sounds obvious like, hey, if you're a wake longer and you're working harder, you're going to be more tired. Sure, but that's how it works. But this is why. There's actually a reason why, and it's because the DNA sne builds up in your in your body, and a DNA scene is part of that currency that all cells us as energy ATP a DNA scene triphosphate. Yeah, And it's it's just so neat that it's like it's part of this energy package. And then once that energy package is broken open and the energy is removed from it, what's left over builds up. This ADENA scene builds up and then makes you tired. And then when you're sleeping a DNA scene is cleared out, which which which stage was it in? Three? Well, I think if you have a lot of a DNA scene, meaning you were up longer and you're super tired, you're going to be deeper and N three and r mum, But I don't know where it's cleared out, but that that is a theory that Um, if you wake up in your groggy, then you didn't clear out enough of the ADENA scene, right. But if you do get a good night's sleep and your body goes through its normal stages and cycles, um, aDNA scene is cleared from your body, and after it reaches a certain threshold, you wake up because that tells your body that you're gonna start to need some more energy soon. So wake up, dummy and start eating brain flakes. Right. Uh yeah, I love it, like you know it again, it's intuitive, but it's always it's always kind of I think empowering to know like what's going on in your body. Yeah, okay, yes, it is intuitive, like you're but to to say this is the thing that's doing it when it rises or raises and lowers, I just for some reason I can't put my finger on I am just enthralled by it. I wonder if that would help you nap knowing the function behind it. That's a lot of people. Well, they proposed a DNA scene as like a sleep aid, but the problem is is you have ADENA scene receptors all over your body, including your heart, and it can actually affect your heart's rhythm. And they're like, you don't want to mess with your heart's rhythm using a DNA scene, so it's not worth it as a sleep aid. Oh that's they've synthesized it. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, if you go to your doctor and they put it, put you through a chemical stress test, they're introducing a DNA scene into your system. And then what's the other thing. They actually use it to correct a regular heartbeat too, So it's a powerful heart squeezer. Okay, so were you my friend? Thank you? Thank you. So now we're at the point where we kind of go over whether or naps are good for you, And again I've kind of already ruined that, Like, sure, they can be great for your functioning if they work for you and your memory and your alertness and your your recall and things like that, if they work for you, but they aren't for everyone. They will if you're not getting enough sleep, Like if you're doing it because you have a sleep deficit, then it will for sure improve your performance and help out. And I think the long, full cycle nap is probably what you want if it's just one of those deals where you just didn't get enough sleep last night because of one reason or another and you need something more. But like Ed said, this is more like, hey, this is sort of an emergency thing and need this nap. Right. The thing is is there does seem to be benefits from people like you who take naps as part of their everyday routine. And I don't know if it's just like I'm missing out on those benefits or I just don't need a nap to have those benefits. Who knows. But they have shown that people who are even well rested who take regular naps show consistent benefits like an improved mood, reduced impulsiveness, you're better able to deal with frustrating situation, that's meat to a t yeah, for sure. And what's funny enough is I'm the opposite of that, So maybe I should start napping. And they also improve performance on memory tasks, right, So, and this is from people who are getting plenty of sleep during the night but still take a nap during the day. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, on the downside, and you knew there would be one, Dear listener, but there have been and I don't think that they've like proven direct links, but there have been some correlative is that the word. Yeah, I think so correlative links between regular naps and the length of naps if you are elderly, and things like dementia and heart disease. Yeah, they've shown that napping for more than an hour every day was tied to a forty percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer's disease among older people. And they're like, Okay, well that's pretty scary. But they haven't figured out whether that's a symptom of developing Alzheimer's or it's actually a contributing factor to developing Alzheimer's. Either way, that's definitely something to chew on. Yeah, like I wonder I'm very sort of dementia aware lately, not for myself or anything like that, just you know, it's it's come up quite a bit with like friends and family in recent years. As you get to be our age and our parents get older, like everyone starts to face those things in your family. So I'm just very aware of, like, all right, keeping the brain sharp, not just settling down until like, of course we're not retired or anything, but one day when if that eventually happens, your tongue stings. Al that hurts staying active brain wise. And you know, Emily's dear grandmother Mary, he just passed away at one on one was up until the last year where you know, she had the stroke and things like really went south. Was she was just a word puzzles all day and saduko and or sadoku which is it sidoku and crosswords? And did not just fall into that routine that I think so many folks as they get some age on them do, which is you sit around and watch TV. Because that is that's a just a prolonged slow death sentence. Basically, Yeah, sitting around watching TV is not a good way to keep sharp. No, not at all. So anyway, a long way of saying, I had just been thinking a lot more about dementia over the last few years, and I'm like, well, you know, maybe one day I'm gonna have to give up this this nap. Yeah, maybe, But I mean this was an hour or longer every single day, and it was just a forty percent greater chance. So you're probably fine, thanks buddy. So we were talking about you possibly being a natural born napper and how I am not. They have actually done genome wide associated studies where they survey hundreds of thousands of people to ask them, you know, hey, do you nap every day? How long do you nap for? Do you nap sometimes? Rarely, never? And then they look at those respondents genomes, their entire genomes, they scan them, and then they look for commonalities. And from doing those kinds of studies, they found one hundred and twenty three different regions in the genome that are associated with daytime napping. I have zero of them, really, they I'm sure I did. I haven't. Actually I have had my genome scan, but I don't know what if I have them or not, I would I would assume not. But that raises the question like are humans designed to nap? Are we genetically programmed to nap? Or not? And I feel like the fact that some people seem to be genetically predisposed to it and other people not. There's your answer right there. I think some and some not, but I don't think it appears to be a through trait that humans all had at one point, right, you know, And you can kind of come up with the answer by comparing us to other other groups. Yeah, Like I think the idea is that did we is this modern life that we live where we go to work for forty plus hours or so and we're up during the day and we're doing things like did we force that upon ourselves or were we supposed to have evolved differently? And it really doesn't seem that way. It seems like kind of the other way around, like circadian rhythm wise, that humans were probably evolved to sleep at night over a reasonable you know, period of time and then do things during the day during the daylight. That just kind of makes sense. Yeah, And if you look if you say, well, what about some of our evolutionary cousins like primates. If you look at primates, some sleep during the day, others don't. If you look at hunter gatherer society, some sleep during the day, others don't. And then culturally speaking as well, some cultures do, others don't. Like you know, Spanish and Latin American cultures are famous for taking siestas and apparently that is not some sort of genetically ingrained thing that was originally something that they did during their agrarian days to escape, to take a break from the hottest hours of the sunshine. Yeah. Sure, and then I mean you're just sitting around hanging out after you've just eaten lunch, the chances are you're probably going to fall asleep. But that's not the case with all cultures who are exposed to heavy sunshine during the daylight hours either. It just seems to have kind of developed among some cultures. And by the way, the Spanish are trying to abandon that. Yeah, it has a real detrimental effect. My friends Laurel and Braden lived in Spain for a little while and they came back and they're like, that's siesta, man, it's a killer because everything just stops for a little while, an hour or two hours, and then to make up for it, they end up working until like seven eight at night every night. It's interesting. Yeah, and for weirdly, the society, the modern version of like Spanish society, is still trying to figure out how to reconcile the tune. What they finally come up with is like, we're just we should not be doing this anymore. Oh, they should do the Chuck method, which is nap and don't work until eight o'clock at night. There you go, there's your solution, Spain. Yeah, people work too much. Yeah, for sure, you know, for sure, Chuck, they do. I know that. The sad thing is is you have to to keep up these days. I know. All right, let's not get into that right now, I know. So that's it for naps. Everybody, go forth and test yourself. Maybe try a coffee nap and see how that does. You go from there? And since I said coffee nap, it's time for listener man, all right, I'm gonna call this honey. I'm gonna call it. What was in the subject line, Honey saved my pooch's leg. Nice And this is from Travis will Grin in Texas, and accompanied were some pretty gnarly pictures because Travis's dog got bit by a rattlesnake yow. So here we go. Hey, guys, just wanted to drop a line and tell you how Honey saved my dog's leg. A long story short. My three year old chocolate lab Scout got bit on his back leg by a timber rattle snake here in Texas three days and five vials of anti ven and later the necrosis had stopped, but they were worried that his joint was compromised and wanted to amputate. Being a paramedic, I knew of honey for wound care, so we took him to our local backwoods vet did wound care, changing the bandage every two days, putting Manuka honey only on the wound, and within two months his leg was healed up with no adverse effects and he's now a happy pup and attached or some pictures look at your own risk. Also, we just relocated the snake because it wasn't his fault, just a snake being a snake. Wow. And that is Travis Wilgrin. And there was one, two, three, four pictures of the initial wound that was really hard to look at, and then getting better, better, better, and then two very happy, sleepy dogs and then a rattlesnake with his neck pin to the ground by you know, someone who knows how to do that kind of thing. So as a gift to you, I printed them all out like quality photo papers or made you a collage. Maybe that could in the wallpaper my bedroom. Thanks Travis, that was an amazing story. I haven't seen the pictures yet, but I will probably be looking at them later. Yeah. Check it out. If you want to be like Travis and share an amazing story about something we've talked about. We love hearing about those things. You can send it in the email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, lingering, which makes this stuff you should know, right, And can we quickly just say a brief thank you to everyone that came out on the first three show leg of our nine show tour. Yeah, thank you to everybody in Seattle, to everyone in Portland, yay. Thank you to everyone in San Francisco yeehall. And that's the three so far. Yeah, and they went great. I think we were both a little nervous. Could it's been a while And it was like putting on an old shirt all right with a bunch of moth holes in. It was awesome, perfectly placed. So just one nipple sticks out through one of the Oh wow, that's what it felt like to me. I think going out on stage in that year, you did so good, my friend. I was very proud of you. You were funny and engaging and doled out the information. It was just vintage Josh. Well. I have to say that is great to hear because I feel the same way about your performance, which you delivered. Chuck, you did great too. Wilson. Either one of us screwed it up. I don't think so. No. I mean, yes, both of us screwed up plenty of times, but not the whole shebang, you know what I mean. Yeah, So, I feel like we're really kind of overselling things. I don't want everybody to come out expecting a lot based on what we just said for the next six shows. But we are going to be touring some more this year, so heads up, keep an ear out for where we're going to be. I think we've already kind of said mostly right. Yeah, And and big thanks to everyone for as always doing their best to keep a lid on the topic because it's it's not like the front Door combination to Fort Knox or anything, but it's always nice, I think, to be surprised when you show up. Yeah, to see the look on people's faces and they're like, oh my god, I was not expecting this. Oh my god, that's the Pinto right, what's that? Never even heard of it? All? Right? So on with the nap say, oh yeah, nap. So um, I have to say, chuck. When I was researching this, I got very very tired, and I still didn't nap. As you know I am a non napper. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's funny. We were talking about the tour because on tour you probably just adrenaline and nerves and all that stuff. You had some trouble sleeping and then could not nap to catch up, and you know my deal, and we'll talk about it through the episode. But I started taking a daily nap about probably about a year ago. I used to you know, I called it sneaking a nap every now and then. My whole life, i'ven't enjoyed a nap, but then I was. I started to own it, and which means basically, let Emily no like, hey, I'm gonna nap and I'm not gonna feel bad about it tonight. And she got behind it and was like, you know what, you do better, She said, you don't get as much sleep as I do. You do better with with like a forty five minute lay down in the afternoon, and like, go for it. It's great, that's awesome. So I felt like there was something wrong with me because I couldn't nap, because it does seem like that's something that everybody should be able to do, especially as beneficial as it is. But After reading this article and doing research, Ed helped us with this one, by the way, so thanks Ed. I've come to realize like I'm just a non napper, probably on a genetic level. Yeah, some people just don't nap and some people do, and there doesn't mean anyone's right or wrong. I am good at it. I get a lot out of it, and you're not great at it. And who knows if you would get anything out of it? Yeah? I know, who knows? I mean, yeah, I don't know. Who knows. I might just wake up even worse off than I have been before, but I really really can try and it just does not happen. So it's just have you ever I mean I know obviously kids nap and stuff, but like as an adult, have you ever ever napped? Or not? Really? I'm sure I have, but I can't remember when, if ever, and if I if I ever, Like my my propensity is to just stay up, keep staying up, and then go to bed at your normal bedtime and just try to reset everything. To me, taking a nap is like, oh no, everything's even more out of whack than it was before. You know, like if you if you've missed out on a bunch of sleep tonight before rather than taking a nap, I just stay awake until the next sleep time and then hopefully that everything gets back to normal. Yeah yeah, my um. I just remember my brother in law, the Marine Corps General is has a as you would imagine a pretty rebbed up motor sure as a human in life, just to accomplish things. And I live with him in a Zona for a year and I saw him take a nap one day and I was worried. Head up to my sister. I was like, Michelle s Cartson, Okay, I was like, I think we need to call somebody. Does he take him regularly? No, not at all. So it was it was really disconcerting to see him not awake and like building a new deck or a swing set, or cleaning cleaning something curiously, especially since when you lean closer you could hear him go, this is my rifle. Oh what a great Stanley Kubrick joke. So let's let's talk napping. We could just sit here and share napping anecdotes for the rest of the episode. Yeah good. I suspect most people would be turned off by a significant portion. Would a lot of people come for the science the statistics. The explanation me screwing up the word statistics all that stuff combined. That's a tough word, it is. Uh yeah, but we should talk a little bit about sleep. We have a quite a few episodes on sleep, but one just on sleep and kind of the different phases. So if you want a full, a deep dive into that, go check that one out. But briefly we'll go over the stages of sleep again. Right. Yeah, I mean you basically have to talk about napping because spoiler alert, napping is a type of sleep. It's just abbreviated and there's actually a clinical definition agreed upon definition of a funny one, I think you should take this one. A nap is any sleep period where a duration with a duration of less than fifty percent of the average major sleep period of an individual. So if you sleep eight hours a night and you took a three hour and forty five minute sleep during the afternoon, that would be considered a nap. That's a nap and then a weird big one. It's odd that there's a definition out there, but it makes sense even though everyone knows what a nap is. Yeah, So, yeah, we need to talk about sleep because we don't actually understand why we sleep still. It's one of the great fascinating things about humans, and we've talked about it plenty of times, more than in just some of our sleep episodes. But there's theories that your brain is clearing out like detritus and junk, that you are consolidating memories and making new connections between memories like remember our Sleeping on It short stuff that we released recently. Yep, we talked a lot about that. There's basically forcing your body to lay still so that it can repair and grow and do all sorts of stuff. And then another another theories that we're actually saving energy, we have less we have less energy needs or fewer energy needs because we sleep about six to eight or six to nine hours a day. Yeah, and what do you get these days sleepwise? I get, oh, usually on the nose, eight hours, maybe nine sometimes. But you're an early riser, so you're going to bed at tennish, tennish ninish. Okay, all right? If the beds sounding really like comforting of eight eight thirty, I don't care. I have nothing to prove to anyone. My life is into it too, So no, no, no, there's the older you get the less aim you have about just saying like I'm going to bed, everybody good exactly. Yeah, because as as you get older, when you say it at like eight, you like raise your fists in triumph. Right, I get to I completed everything I needed to complete today, and now I get to go to bed at eight thirty, right, right right. I generally stay up later and still get up kind of early. That's why the nap really helps me out, because I feel like I get probably seven and under every night. I go to bed at eleven or twelve, and I usually get up around six thirty or seven. Yeah, that's the best time to do it, to get up really early. I've not been much of a night owl for many, many years. Yeah, but the early rising thing I really I can dig on for sure. Yeah. I was in San Francisco actually on sort of the big night out, which was after our Friday show when we were completely done. Yeah, I sort of got into it with some old friends Hodgman and some guys and Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison and our buddies, and I was up. Adam and I were the last ones up, and I looked at my watch fully expecting it to be maybe twelve forty five or one fifteen at the latest, and it was like two forty five, and I was like, oh boy, I'm in trouble that in a long time. Yeah, I know, that's a feeling of dread when you go to bed like that. And I took a legit three hour nap the next day. Nice. Well, that's we'll get to why that probably helped. I'm sure when you woke up after that three hour nap you felt good. I felt good in that I had got given my body what it needed. But it was definitely like waking up from real sleep like I was. I was pretty groggy. And we'll again, we'll get into all that. Okay, So we were talking about a tuck about the stages of sleep are explaining sleep and sleep is divided into stages. There's really two big ones, and then one of the big ones can be subdivided. But you've got rapid eye movement RIM sleep or REM sleep if you're in the sleep biz, and then you've got non RIM sleep or n REM, and NREM is what you can divide into further subsections. There's stage N one, N two, and N three. And I didn't know this chuck. But you put N one, N two, N three followed by rim sleep. You've got a full sleep cycle, and that you cycle through those multiple times, five six times during a night's sleep. Did you know that? You knew that because we've talked about it. You just forgot it. I plumb forgot because yeah, it seemed like brand new infoto me. Yeah, you go through the complete cycle five or six times, and when you start looking at the breakdown of the minutes, it makes sense because N one is that first little light sleep stage. It's only about five minutes per cycle. So again you will go through that five minute stage five or six times in a night. Yeah, and this one, you know you'll wake up very easily from N one, whereas in two obviously is a bit deeper. Your body is going to be pretty much completely relaxed and into your body temp drops, your heart rate drops, your respiration drops a bit arousal threshold are the words ed use. That sounds both like a band and like something dirty. That's an album to me, not a band. Okay, well the band would be Sleep Architecture then right, it sounds like a roxy music album. Okay, yeah, I guess, I guess the band would be sleep architecture. That's a good name for anything, really. Yeah, that's a term that comes up later, but this, I'm sorry. The N two cycle is about ten to twenty minutes on the first run or the end two stage, and the first cycles ten to twenty minutes, and then each successive cycle it gets a little bit longer. Yeah, eleven to twenty one, twelve to twenty two, probably more teen to twenty three, right, Yeah, and then after that you've got N three sleep, slow wave sleep. It's your arousal threshold. It's very high, meaning it's very difficult to wake you up. I saw that people will commonly sleep through hundred decibel noises in N three sleep you were just out, Yeah, and that's great. N three sleep you're getting all sorts of like your cells are repairing themselves. You're actually literally growing, especially if you're a younger human. Yeah, and you'll stay in it for anywhere between twenty to forty minutes. But it's the opposite of ND two. It gets shorter with each cycle. There's a problem with N three sleep in that if you wake up from N three sleep, you are extraordinarily groggy. That grogginess can last like two to four hours, where like you're essentially suffering a temporary cognitive impairment. And they call it sleep inertia. It's another way to put it, just just the grogginess from waking up at the wrong time, and that is what happens when you don't complete an end three cycle, but you wake up in the N three cycle. That's where you're groggiest. Yeah, what I'm curious about. And we've even had one of these as a sponsor. I can't remember which one, but where you'll wear like sleep bands to kind of log how your sleep cycles are working. Yeah, do any and the one that we use may have even had this, I don't remember, But do any of them have an alarm integrated well, they where they can wake you up in the best part of your sleep, You know what I'm saying. I would guess, so they're probably don't think this is like new research here, So I'm guessing that, Yeah, if you're going to make something like that, you would have to make it so that you wake up at the best optimal time. I'm curious. And then the last one is the RM sleep. This is where you're dreaming. Of course, your brain is going to be obviously a little more active. Your arousal threshold is even higher than in three. But it's a bit of a paradox because if you don't have an alarm or whatever, and you just awake from a dream spontaneously and you've had, you know, a regular good night's sleep, then it doesn't have the kind of sleep inertia as in three, so you wake up easier. Right, And I've found this to be kind of both. When I wake up from a intense dream, sometimes I am really out of it. But that's rare because I'm generally a very awake waker. Right you sit up like, oh my god, No, not quite like that. But I've never been one that's just like, oh what, I'm always just like okay, I'm awake. So when you watch movies where people wake up, you're like, that is so fake. That's fake for me. So um, yeah, I didn't realize that if you naturally, if when you wake up without an alarm, which I guess it is called a wake getting spontaneously, which makes sense. I've actually chuck, I've got a talent here where so I'm still like LOGI from the jet, Like for some reason, the jet like just killed me on this West coast trip, like I've never had it before. We might as well have gone to Japan and come back over the weekend. It was like pretty bad, so I'm still suffering from it. So I woke up to my alarm. But normally, when I have like a good level of sleep going, I can calculate how long I have to sleep and what time I need to wake up, and I will wake up every time a couple minutes before my alarm goes off. Dude, me too. I talked a bit this on our sleepep. I have a natural alarm. If I tell myself the night before what time I have to wake up, I'm within like five minutes of that. That's just so cool. And that's one of the circadian rhythms or one of the biological rhythms that we have. We have like an inner several inner clocks of different types, and apparently one just as there and count it's the seconds. What a terrible job that would be. Yeah, I mean, I haven't used I don't think maybe some real weird outlier nights, but I know for a fact, I haven't really used an alarm since we did the TV show Wow and generally never use an alarm because I just I wake up. I'm not one of those who will just sleep the day away. I still set my alarm on days where we're studying recording, days where I have to get up early, but I still usually wake up before it. So well. Pets and human children also serve as natural alarms, either from a pet usually like it's time to get that morning feeding or let me out and go pee or whatever. Right, but yeah, once you once you have a human kid, you're you're waking when they wake right. Okay, So we basically just explained sleep again. And the reason we did that is because now that we know the different stages of sleep and how long each one lasts and when you want to wake up or don't wake up, you can actually use this information to optimize your nap. And I think we should take a break and then come back and teach everybody how to optimize their naps. Let's do it all, right, So how to Nap Better is how Ed titled this section, which I just love that the way that sounds in my ears. Yeah, and Ed made up a couple of terms that he didn't tell us until after this section that he had made up because they sound right on the money to me, and so we're going to go ahead and use his terminology, and that is partial cycle naps and full cycle naps YEP. A partial cycle nap being the power nap what people call a disco nap or a power nap, or a cat nap or a cat nap, and that's at ten or twenty minute nap where officially you will or scientifically you'll be entering into sleep, but you're waking up before that in three sleep or the RM sleep, right, so you're not going through a full sleep cycle, but you still get the n one and the end too sleep. And this seems to be, as we'll see, like the nap that you want to take depending on what you're trying to do. If you're catching up on sleep, a longer nap is typically recommended. But if you're trying to be like the most productive worker possible, then this is what you want to do. Is a partial cycle nap is egg calls it. And in his defense, I looked up to see if there were any and strangely there isn't, So there was actually a lot of room for him to make up these terms. There was a void for him to fill. Yeah, I think I could see the the industry jumping on this. Sure, partial cycle NAP, full cycle nap. It sounds very scientific. He should trademark that stuff, definitely. Well, we'll email him before this comes out so we can get it in the works. Make some money off a big mattress. So there are some studies here and there. We're going to mention there are lots of nap studies and sleep studies and they're not the most consistent across the board. So kind of the net net of all of this is, like we kind of mentioned at the beginning, we tease it out. You know, some people can nap and get a lot out of it and some people don't. And there isn't a definitive study that says like everyone should do this or not do that. It can help certain people, for sure. It seems like study wise and data wise, the partial cycle nap, the twenty minute or so nap is the one with the most measurable benefits. Yeah, there was one study I I didn't see where it was from, but they found that the ten minute nap is actually ideal. Get out of my face with that. What is that ten minutes that's not even a nap, I know. But apparently the ten minute nap showed that there was a reduced sleepiness, increased mental ability, and that people tended to have a better memory consolidation just after a ten minute nap, and that it was even better than a twenty minute nap in this one study. Here's the thing. There are a lot of sleep stays out there, and a lot of them contradict one another's findings, but there does seem to be enough studies that some you know, fairly definitive answers have risen to the top, and it seems to be that ten minutes is a pretty sweet spot twenty minute. Sometimes I will say this, I have worked in I've developed the ability to take a super super short nap if that's the only thing I can do that day, Because some days you just can't do it, you know. I try to build it into my schedule and I it's pretty much successfully have, But sometimes life happens and you just can't do it, and I'm really tired in the afternoon, and I've developed the ability to lay down and sleep for like eight or ten minutes, and I do feel super refreshed. So you lay down. You're not one of those people that can just nap anywhere. I mean, I can nap on a plane, but I don't, like I'm not at the old man stage yet where I'm sitting up right in a chair, right, I get horizontal. You reminded me of Japanese school kids. In Japan, if you ride the subway, like almost all of them will just fall asleep, sitting up and just be on the subway, and then all of a sudden it's their stop, and they just stand up and walk off the subway like just they're sleeping and now they're not, They're walking off the subway. It's really impressive. But they apparently can sleep absolutely anywhere. Well as if you can sleep on the subway, and I like ten in the morning, you can sleep anywhere. You know. Well, I was gonna say trains and boats and modes of transport can kind of lull people to sleep, but I think Japanese subways are known for being fairly crowded. They are crowded, very loud. But I mean, also, like, how do they know it's their stop? Like that's just amazing. That is pretty great. I love that. Yeah, I mean too, So next we've got the full cycle nap, Chuck, And that's one that's I mean basically not a partial cycle NAP. The goal here is to make it through ND one, end two, and end three and then into rim sleep because remember rim sleep is where we normally naturally wake up, so you're not nearly as groggy as if you woke up and three sleep. The problem is it's really difficult to pinpoint your individual sleep cycles. Like even if you did a sleep study, if you start new medication, if you age as most people do, there's all sorts of different factors, how much sleep you had the night before, you put all that together and whatever that sleep studies said you your sleep cycles go through, like the time or length of each one that can be altered, but you're you're trying to guess essentially what you would what it takes you to go through a full cycle one sleep cycle and Ed suggests starting with sixty minutes and then depending on whether you're groggy or not when you wake up, like moving it downward or upward, but usually they're between forty five and ninety minutes. Yeah, and this is what I shoot for, but it's never over an hour. It's what I'll usually do is set the timer for an hour, and I will wake up naturally about forty five minutes later. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I rarely make it. Well, that's not true. Sometimes I make it to that full hour, but never beyond that because just there's too much going on in life for me to go longer than an hour. But if you know, if you need that ninety minutes, I mean they say that you're if you can get to that RM stage, you know you're going to have the benefits of waking up without the grogginess. But like you said, it's it's complicated unless you really have done us, either done us leap study or just super in sync with where you think your cycles are. Yeah, but I mean, if you really want to become like a pro napper, you could do worse than saying like, I'm going to take this week or the next two weeks to study my deep cycles and yeah, start with sixty minutes and adjust it from there. Yeah, I think that's respectable. Anybody who takes themselves that, I guess seriously, I don't know where they're like, I'm going to improve my life and I'm going to do it scientifically. I appreciate that. I think that's cool. Well, I talked to my friend Eddie into napping semi recently. Huh with you like then a friend's episode, come over and have a guttle I would do that. I'm sure Eddie's a great spooner. But he got on board, and the last I heard from him, he was like, I'm doing it now, built it into my day and it's like made a huge difference. Wow. Yeah. So yeah, even though I know I'm not a nap or, I'm still a little envious. So please stop talking about how great it is. Okay, it's so great. So there's another nap you can take two that's supposedly, from what I can tell, the ideal nap. Yeah, it's called a coffee nap, and it's not a ten minute napisode a ninety minute nap. It's a twenty minute nap and it's sounds kind of awesome. But basically, you drink a cup of coffee. Ostensibly, this is the only coffee you've drank, or at least your morning coffee has long worn off by now, so you're basically at your set point for caffeine and take. You drink a cup of coffee, you go lay down and you go to sleep, and then twenty minutes later, after the caffeine has entered your bloodstream and started to take effect, you wake up. But not only do you just wake up like, oh, I've got some caffeine, Like, there's a whole bunch of neurochemistry going on that really makes this coffee nap something special. Yeah, this sounds like a great nap for if you're doing a long road trip and you're you're smart enough to pull over and take a little rest stop nap, drink the coffee, and then you're you're up. You start that car back up, and you're fired up and ready to hit the road again. Right. So the reason why it works, Chuck, is because of aDNA scene. That's a neurochemical, it's a neurotransmitter, and one of the things a DNA sing does is it tells your body that you're tired. The thing is is caffeine can attach to aDNA sine receptors, So when there's less places for your aDNA scene to attach, there's less chance for those ADENA scene molecules to tell your body that you're tired. So not only do you have the benefits of waking up with the cafe, like the whole caffeinated energy boost, You're feeling less tired because the caffeine has literally like elbowed out. Yeah, well maybe not literally elbowed, but you know what I mean. Sure, this chemical that makes you feel tired. So it's like the best of both worlds put together. Yeah, and not only that, but if you're in too sleep, you're going to be flushing a DNA scene in that stage from your brain. So that's just going to open up more garage space for the caffeine to come park. And you're just, yeah, it sounds pretty great. I'm not the biggest caffeine guy. Caffeine I will have sometimes in the winter, as you know, I'll have like lattes and stuff. It's like a cold weather thing for me, sure, but always it always makes me excessively tired after. Like, the caffeine come down for me is pretty pretty big. Right. That used to be the same for me, but now I'm just so used to it I don't even notice, right. Yeah, there is something that I have noticed, though, I think everybody's noticed, which is the post lunch dip. Yeah, that's what I take mine. Yes, Okay, So This actually makes a lot of sense because there's entire cultures that are dedicated to napping during the post lunch dip. But there is a is a period, and apparently it's not due to having lunch or a big lunch. It's just a natural period of sleepiness that humans tend to experience in the middle of the day, the early afternoon about for about three hours from early to mid afternoon. It's called the post post lunch dip. And a lot of people just say, hey, I'm taking a nap right now. And they have found that there's actually an optimal time to take a nap in an optimal length. And it sounds like if you took a coffee nap at this time, you would wake up with some sort of superpowers in that time. Drumroll please? Is what two pm? Right? Yeah, it's just fourteen hours two pm. Your brother in law would know. So, yeah, the twenty minute nap. And these were studies and researchers have done, like you know, looked over the metadata of lots of studies, and they found that a twenty minute nap at two pm produced greater and longer lasting benefits to mood, fatigue, objective performance, self rated performance and objective alertness compared to that same nap at noon. Yeah, so there you have it, if you ask me, Like we've just told everybody, if you're going to take a nap, this is when and how to do it. Yeah, go forth and sleep at that. Cista agreed. So, Chuck, we're not through with the DNA scene yet. Now we're not. Should we take a break? I think we should take a break, and then we're going to talk more about a DNA scene. All right, I'm gonna have a two minute nap and I'll be right back. Okay, I mentioned a DNA scene, said we weren't done with it, and by god I was telling the truth, because there's a whole other segment about a DNA scene that I find just absolutely fascinating, and that is that it's essentially like almost a mechanical um What am I thinking of, Chuck, I don't know. So it's almost like, okay, it's it's almost like a little bit, but more like you have like a tray, and the tray is on like a scale, like a balancing scale, but attached to that scale is like a stick, and when enough, a DNA scene builds up on that tray and the scale that stick goes up, and yes, it throws a switch and all of a sudden for you, it's lights out, that's right. So sort of the takeaway from this is the longest it's a byproduct of cell cheese, cellular breakdown of the energy that you use. So the longer you're awake and the more active you are, the more a DNA scene you're gonna have. And again that's your body saying you're tired. So it sounds obvious like, hey, if you're a wake longer and you're working harder, you're going to be more tired. Sure, but that's how it works. But this is why. There's actually a reason why, and it's because the DNA sne builds up in your in your body, and a DNA scene is part of that currency that all cells us as energy ATP a DNA scene triphosphate. Yeah, And it's it's just so neat that it's like it's part of this energy package. And then once that energy package is broken open and the energy is removed from it, what's left over builds up. This ADENA scene builds up and then makes you tired. And then when you're sleeping a DNA scene is cleared out, which which which stage was it in? Three? Well, I think if you have a lot of a DNA scene, meaning you were up longer and you're super tired, you're going to be deeper and N three and r mum, But I don't know where it's cleared out, but that that is a theory that Um, if you wake up in your groggy, then you didn't clear out enough of the ADENA scene, right. But if you do get a good night's sleep and your body goes through its normal stages and cycles, um, aDNA scene is cleared from your body, and after it reaches a certain threshold, you wake up because that tells your body that you're gonna start to need some more energy soon. So wake up, dummy and start eating brain flakes. Right. Uh yeah, I love it, like you know it again, it's intuitive, but it's always it's always kind of I think empowering to know like what's going on in your body. Yeah, okay, yes, it is intuitive, like you're but to to say this is the thing that's doing it when it rises or raises and lowers, I just for some reason I can't put my finger on I am just enthralled by it. I wonder if that would help you nap knowing the function behind it. That's a lot of people. Well, they proposed a DNA scene as like a sleep aid, but the problem is is you have ADENA scene receptors all over your body, including your heart, and it can actually affect your heart's rhythm. And they're like, you don't want to mess with your heart's rhythm using a DNA scene, so it's not worth it as a sleep aid. Oh that's they've synthesized it. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, if you go to your doctor and they put it, put you through a chemical stress test, they're introducing a DNA scene into your system. And then what's the other thing. They actually use it to correct a regular heartbeat too, So it's a powerful heart squeezer. Okay, so were you my friend? Thank you? Thank you. So now we're at the point where we kind of go over whether or naps are good for you, And again I've kind of already ruined that, Like, sure, they can be great for your functioning if they work for you and your memory and your alertness and your your recall and things like that, if they work for you, but they aren't for everyone. They will if you're not getting enough sleep, Like if you're doing it because you have a sleep deficit, then it will for sure improve your performance and help out. And I think the long, full cycle nap is probably what you want if it's just one of those deals where you just didn't get enough sleep last night because of one reason or another and you need something more. But like Ed said, this is more like, hey, this is sort of an emergency thing and need this nap. Right. The thing is is there does seem to be benefits from people like you who take naps as part of their everyday routine. And I don't know if it's just like I'm missing out on those benefits or I just don't need a nap to have those benefits. Who knows. But they have shown that people who are even well rested who take regular naps show consistent benefits like an improved mood, reduced impulsiveness, you're better able to deal with frustrating situation, that's meat to a t yeah, for sure. And what's funny enough is I'm the opposite of that, So maybe I should start napping. And they also improve performance on memory tasks, right, So, and this is from people who are getting plenty of sleep during the night but still take a nap during the day. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, on the downside, and you knew there would be one, Dear listener, but there have been and I don't think that they've like proven direct links, but there have been some correlative is that the word. Yeah, I think so correlative links between regular naps and the length of naps if you are elderly, and things like dementia and heart disease. Yeah, they've shown that napping for more than an hour every day was tied to a forty percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer's disease among older people. And they're like, Okay, well that's pretty scary. But they haven't figured out whether that's a symptom of developing Alzheimer's or it's actually a contributing factor to developing Alzheimer's. Either way, that's definitely something to chew on. Yeah, like I wonder I'm very sort of dementia aware lately, not for myself or anything like that, just you know, it's it's come up quite a bit with like friends and family in recent years. As you get to be our age and our parents get older, like everyone starts to face those things in your family. So I'm just very aware of, like, all right, keeping the brain sharp, not just settling down until like, of course we're not retired or anything, but one day when if that eventually happens, your tongue stings. Al that hurts staying active brain wise. And you know, Emily's dear grandmother Mary, he just passed away at one on one was up until the last year where you know, she had the stroke and things like really went south. Was she was just a word puzzles all day and saduko and or sadoku which is it sidoku and crosswords? And did not just fall into that routine that I think so many folks as they get some age on them do, which is you sit around and watch TV. Because that is that's a just a prolonged slow death sentence. Basically, Yeah, sitting around watching TV is not a good way to keep sharp. No, not at all. So anyway, a long way of saying, I had just been thinking a lot more about dementia over the last few years, and I'm like, well, you know, maybe one day I'm gonna have to give up this this nap. Yeah, maybe, But I mean this was an hour or longer every single day, and it was just a forty percent greater chance. So you're probably fine, thanks buddy. So we were talking about you possibly being a natural born napper and how I am not. They have actually done genome wide associated studies where they survey hundreds of thousands of people to ask them, you know, hey, do you nap every day? How long do you nap for? Do you nap sometimes? Rarely, never? And then they look at those respondents genomes, their entire genomes, they scan them, and then they look for commonalities. And from doing those kinds of studies, they found one hundred and twenty three different regions in the genome that are associated with daytime napping. I have zero of them, really, they I'm sure I did. I haven't. Actually I have had my genome scan, but I don't know what if I have them or not, I would I would assume not. But that raises the question like are humans designed to nap? Are we genetically programmed to nap? Or not? And I feel like the fact that some people seem to be genetically predisposed to it and other people not. There's your answer right there. I think some and some not, but I don't think it appears to be a through trait that humans all had at one point, right, you know, And you can kind of come up with the answer by comparing us to other other groups. Yeah, Like I think the idea is that did we is this modern life that we live where we go to work for forty plus hours or so and we're up during the day and we're doing things like did we force that upon ourselves or were we supposed to have evolved differently? And it really doesn't seem that way. It seems like kind of the other way around, like circadian rhythm wise, that humans were probably evolved to sleep at night over a reasonable you know, period of time and then do things during the day during the daylight. That just kind of makes sense. Yeah, And if you look if you say, well, what about some of our evolutionary cousins like primates. If you look at primates, some sleep during the day, others don't. If you look at hunter gatherer society, some sleep during the day, others don't. And then culturally speaking as well, some cultures do, others don't. Like you know, Spanish and Latin American cultures are famous for taking siestas and apparently that is not some sort of genetically ingrained thing that was originally something that they did during their agrarian days to escape, to take a break from the hottest hours of the sunshine. Yeah. Sure, and then I mean you're just sitting around hanging out after you've just eaten lunch, the chances are you're probably going to fall asleep. But that's not the case with all cultures who are exposed to heavy sunshine during the daylight hours either. It just seems to have kind of developed among some cultures. And by the way, the Spanish are trying to abandon that. Yeah, it has a real detrimental effect. My friends Laurel and Braden lived in Spain for a little while and they came back and they're like, that's siesta, man, it's a killer because everything just stops for a little while, an hour or two hours, and then to make up for it, they end up working until like seven eight at night every night. It's interesting. Yeah, and for weirdly, the society, the modern version of like Spanish society, is still trying to figure out how to reconcile the tune. What they finally come up with is like, we're just we should not be doing this anymore. Oh, they should do the Chuck method, which is nap and don't work until eight o'clock at night. There you go, there's your solution, Spain. Yeah, people work too much. Yeah, for sure, you know, for sure, Chuck, they do. I know that. The sad thing is is you have to to keep up these days. I know. All right, let's not get into that right now, I know. So that's it for naps. Everybody, go forth and test yourself. Maybe try a coffee nap and see how that does. You go from there? And since I said coffee nap, it's time for listener man, all right, I'm gonna call this honey. I'm gonna call it. What was in the subject line, Honey saved my pooch's leg. Nice And this is from Travis will Grin in Texas, and accompanied were some pretty gnarly pictures because Travis's dog got bit by a rattlesnake yow. So here we go. Hey, guys, just wanted to drop a line and tell you how Honey saved my dog's leg. A long story short. My three year old chocolate lab Scout got bit on his back leg by a timber rattle snake here in Texas three days and five vials of anti ven and later the necrosis had stopped, but they were worried that his joint was compromised and wanted to amputate. Being a paramedic, I knew of honey for wound care, so we took him to our local backwoods vet did wound care, changing the bandage every two days, putting Manuka honey only on the wound, and within two months his leg was healed up with no adverse effects and he's now a happy pup and attached or some pictures look at your own risk. Also, we just relocated the snake because it wasn't his fault, just a snake being a snake. Wow. And that is Travis Wilgrin. And there was one, two, three, four pictures of the initial wound that was really hard to look at, and then getting better, better, better, and then two very happy, sleepy dogs and then a rattlesnake with his neck pin to the ground by you know, someone who knows how to do that kind of thing. So as a gift to you, I printed them all out like quality photo papers or made you a collage. Maybe that could in the wallpaper my bedroom. Thanks Travis, that was an amazing story. I haven't seen the pictures yet, but I will probably be looking at them later. Yeah. Check it out. If you want to be like Travis and share an amazing story about something we've talked about. We love hearing about those things. You can send it in the email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.