"Take a Nap! Change Your Life."

It's OK to nap. It's actually better than OK. It's lifesaving.
"You snooze, you lose." That's a direct quote from the cover of the new book...



But it seems hard to believe. If you're like me, you associate napping with flagging energy — hellooo, sickness. Or boredom. Or hard partying.

But no, says author Dr. Sara Mednick, napping actually increases alertness, improves memory, reduces stress and cuts back on sleep deprivation.

If you are suffering from clinical depression or narcolepsy — a neurological condition — both of which can cause an urge to nap, don't read on. Some diseases, like diabetes when it's out of control, can push a person to conk out. But there are usually other symptoms present when the urge to sleep is derived from illness, Mednick says.

While there have been oodles of books and articles written about how Americans lack sleep — averaging 6.7 hours a night when the gold standard is eight — Mednick concentrates on the benefit of napping rather than lecturing on how we don't go to bed when we should and sleep with the room dark enough, etc. We've all heard that.

Read more after your nap...