“What causes that awful feeling after waking up from an afternoon nap?”
Hey, wonderful question.
I have also always wondered what caused me to sometimes sleep so little and feel amazingly pumped and then sometimes sleep long and feel like a piece of shit… Your question motivated me to research about this topic in depth. Please feel free to add any corrections to my answer, as my English is not very good.
When we sleep, we fall into the following phases:
NREM (75% of night): As we begin to fall asleep, we enter NREM sleep, which is composed of stages 1-4
N1 (formerly "stage 1")
- Between being awake and falling asleep
- Light sleep
N2 (formerly "stage 2")
- Onset of sleep
- Becoming disengaged from surroundings
- Breathing and heart rate are regular
- Body temperature drops (so sleeping in a cool room is helpful)
N3 (formerly "stages 3 and 4")
- Deepest and most restorative sleep
- Blood pressure drops
- Breathing becomes slower
- Muscles are relaxed
- Blood supply to muscles increases
- Tissue growth and REPAIR occurs
- Energy is restored
- Hormones are released, such as: Growth hormone, essential for growth and development, including muscle development
REM (25% of night): First occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep and recurs about every 90 minutes,GETTING longer later in the night
- Provides energy to brain and body
- Supports daytime performance
Above information from http://sleepfoundation.com
We generally feel very shit after our naps because we have awoken in between one the on-going stages. Imagine doing something you love and getting disturbed midway. I am sure its gonna piss the shit out of you. Well, that is the same with sleeping.
We should always aim at waking up before the first stage of our sleep. This is generally 10–20 minutes.
Though you might feel very crap after your sleep, you will be much better at doing creative stuff.
There are also many of the other various factors which the other people have answered. (Dehydration, surrounding, etc.). These also play a pretty important part in our sleep.
I recommend that next time you go to sleep, put your alarm to ring in only 10–20 minutes. I can guarantee you that you will feel much fresher.
Zzzz…..I feel like taking a nap now….
Edit: Thx a lot for the upvotes and views!!!!
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