Napping for too long can cause you to wake up feeling groggy and disoriented, known as sleep inertia. This can cause feelings of sickness, dizziness, and headache.
If you take naps that are longer than an hour and a half, you may wake up feeling grumpy due to sleep inertia. That's when your body resists waking up, typically because you were in deep NREM sleep. The term “sleep drunkenness” is often used to describe this feeling. You may feel groggy, achy and confused.
Treatments for Sleep Inertia
Make sure your naps are no longer than 30 minutes, as this may increase your risk of experiencing sleep inertia and difficulty falling asleep at night. Caffeine intake: Reaching for a cup of coffee or energy drink may help you feel more awake in the morning.
Is a Two-Hour Nap Too Long? A 2-hour nap may make you feel groggy after you wake up and you might have trouble falling asleep at night. Aim for napping up to 90 minutes, 120-minutes if necessary. Napping every day for 2 hours could be a sign of sleep deprivation and should be discussed with a doctor.
Naps can be short (15 to 30 minutes) or longer; both short and long naps can increase alertness and be useful. Take into account that sleep becomes deeper the longer you sleep, reaching the deepest level (slow-wave sleep) in about 1 hour.
Naps for adults should be no more than an hour and probably best kept to the 15- to 20-minute range. Anything beyond that – especially considering the time of day – could have consequences. We caught up with sleep medicine specialist Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer, DO, MS, for more insight on how long your nap should be.
Dysania means an extreme difficulty rising from bed or an inability to leave the bed. Dysania is closely associated with clinomania, which is an obsession with or profound desire for staying in bed. These terms are not widely recognized by the medical community. Some professionals use the term clinophilia.
Sleep drunkenness is a casual term for confusional arousal, which is a type of parasomnia. A parasomnia is an unusual behavior that happens while you're asleep or just waking up. Confusional arousal is a problem with sleep inertia when your brain transitions between sleeping and waking up.
Made in the hypothalamus of your brain, vasopressin rises due to our first two factors (dehydration and stress) and is associated with nausea onset. The shock of waking when exhausted triggers a rapid spike in your sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system and can trigger nausea.
“A power nap is a nap that's short — less than 30 minutes long,” says Safia Khan, MD, a specialist in sleep disorders and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine and the department of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Your sweat consists of both fluid and electrolytes that are pushed to the skin's surface. There, it's absorbed into the air, causing a cooling effect. At the same time, you aren't replacing this fluid and electrolytes since you're sleeping, leading to dehydration that can cause you to wake up thirsty.
After awakening from a nap or a long sleep episode (for example, 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night), people tend to feel groggy from sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is a temporary disorientation and decline in performance and/or mood after awakening from sleep.
If you aren't feeling rested when you wake up, despite getting to sleep at least 8 hours prior, then it might not be the quantity of your sleep that's the problem. It could be your sleep quality that needs some attention. The amount of sleep you get is important, but equally important is the quality of that sleep.
Confusional arousal, also known as Elpenor syndrome, is a type of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnia. Other arousal parasomnias include sleep terrors and sleepwalking. These events cause you to have wakeful behaviors while apparently asleep. View Source .
(PAYR-uh-SOM-nee-uh) An abnormal disruption of sleep, such as sleep walking, sleep talking, nightmares, bedwetting, sleep apnea (problems with breathing that cause loud snoring), or nighttime seizures.
Alcohol may aid with sleep onset due to its sedative properties, allowing you to fall asleep more quickly. However, people who drink before bed often experience disruptions later in their sleep cycle as liver enzymes metabolize alcohol. This can lead to excessive daytime sleepiness and other issues the following day.
Isolation, exhaustion, and lack of motivation or interest in life are common experiences of individuals struggling with stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Almost everyone experiences these to some degree. Hearing this doesn't always help or make things feel easier, however.
Possible underlying reasons include depression and anxiety. Depression is linked to dysania, a nonmedical term for when a person feels the need to stay in bed without sleeping. A wide range of physical conditions can also lead to fatigue, making it hard to get up. They include ME/CFS and long COVID.
It's the body's way of recharging and healing. For some people, it's also a great escape. Dreaming is fun, and sleep is a way to get away from problems in the real world. Sleep enthusiasts know that a good snooze is a great cure for things like stress, anxiety, and a bad mood.
Most babies are sleeping longer at night and have 2–3 daytime naps. Toddlers (1–2 years): 11–14 hours. Young toddlers may still take two naps, but most drop down to one nap a day by 18 months. Preschool (3–5 years): 10–13 hours.
In general, the results showed that people who regularly napped were 12% more likely to develop high blood pressure and 24% more likely to have a stroke.
Your body clock is naturally primed for a break, and it's far enough away from bedtime so as to not interfere with your night sleep. Next, the reason why a brief nap feels best. It takes about 90 minutes for your body (and brain) to go through a complete sleep cycle.
A confusional arousal is when a sleeping person appears to wake up but their behavior is unusual or strange. The individual may be disoriented, unresponsive, have slow speech or confused thinking.
Sleep hygiene practices
not having a regular bedtime routine, which includes consistent sleep and wake times. taking long daytime naps. looking at phone or computer screens before going to bed. having a sleeping environment that is too hot, too bright, or too loud.