Never too old to nap

Young Chang

NEWPORT-MESA -- The only thing I don’t love about sleeping is waking.

I could sleep all day and even for many days. I love the experience of

climbing into bed and I love mentally spiraling into semiconsciousness.

It’s sort of dizzying and euphoric because I’m not fully alert.

This week’s leisure story is about the art of relaxing -- sleeping,

napping and moving from stressed-mode to snooze-mode.

Talk about leisurely.

The National Commission on Sleep Disorders tells us 60 million

Americans are sleep deprived.

The National Sleep Foundation says 74% of surveyed women get less

sleep at night than men.

Christopher Ingalls, a Newport Beach psychologist, says we’re mentally

busier today than we were 20 years ago.

“That’s challenged the brain even more,” he said. “And the brain needs

to rest to function effectively. It can’t be wired to stimuli all the

time.”

And to anyone who has ever claimed sleep to be a waste of time, you

might be losing more time in the long run by opting for lively nights.

Jill Murphy Long, a former Newport Beach resident and author of the

newly released book “Permission to Nap,” says adequate sleep is equated

with longer lives.

“Because you’re giving your body time to repair,” explained the

author, who signed books at Fashion Island’s Spa Gregories on Friday.

“The first hours of sleep are when your body starts to repair itself on

the micro-level.”

Long and Ingalls agree that the art of relaxing is in preparing

yourself for rest.

The psychologist said he encourages his patients to create a “buffer

zone” between the time they are active and inactive.

“The buffer zone is a time of quiet,” he said. “The TV should be off,

you could route your calls to the answering machine, turn the cell phone

off and literally make the house quiet and more peaceful to prepare

yourself for rest.”

Long, whose book focuses on the need for napping and general resting

during the day, offers 101 ways to slip into the state of being relaxed.

Her suggestions include making tea (steeping loose leaves is good,

microwaving a tea bag is bad), aroma therapy, hand massages, meditating,

turning on a stone/water fountain, listening to classical music, changing

into sweats or pajamas and surrounding yourself with aesthetically

pleasing scenes.

For Long, who was inspired to write “Nap” by a Garfield comic about

the feline’s membership in a Nap of the Month Club, pretty scenes can

start small.

Even her water is lovely. Her method is to drop thin slices of

cucumber and oranges in a tall pitcher of water because that way you get

a slightly sweet yet fresh taste and also a pretty sight.

Long’s book targets a female audience because research has shown men

sleep more and better than women.

She said she encourages napping because most women feel they can’t

afford to take that break and most children and husbands interrupt a

woman from doing so.

Three years ago, which was when Long began writing “Nap,” she was

juggling her ad agency duties and being a mom. It occurred to her, after

reading the Garfield cartoon, that she needed permission to nap.

“Sleep experts say that if you nap for more than an hour, you wake up

with a sleep hangover,” the now-Colorado writer said. “The best napping

time is 20 minutes to half an hour.”

Both Long and Ingalls discourage people from drinking too much

caffeine, which keeps us wired longer than we think. With lattes, blended

mochas, teas and sodas consumed multiple times throughout the day, too

much caffeine can lead to insomnia.

The negative effects of sleeping too little include stress and

emotional changes.

The frontal lobes of the brain that let us live our daily routines,

solve problems and reason are also in charge of managing our emotions,

Ingalls said. So when these lobes are overworked, the emotions leak out.

“Your inhibitions are decreased, if there’s underlying frustrations or

irritability, you’re gonna be less able to control it,” he said. “Your

emotions are a signal. They’re a barometer for a possible need for rest.”

Which also explains why things seem better in the morning.

“Something emotionally traumatic or a large disappointment affects the

immune system and affects the brain, which subsequently affects the

body,” Ingalls said. “And when it’s exposed to something that’s

traumatic, it needs to rest even more.”

The need to sleep off a problem also connects to cognitive behavioral

therapy, which teaches people to gain perspective on a problem by

temporarily stepping away from it.

Long said relaxing and napping help her ward off colds and even

increase creativity.

But what do you do once you’ve mastered the art of relaxing and are

now ready to sleep?

Get a good mattress, to start.

Dick Roberts, manager of a Costa Mesa showroom for 1-800-Mattress,

said two-thirds of his customers visit his business because of sleeping

problems. In most cases, they’re not getting the right amount of sleep

because the mattress isn’t right for them.

“Everyone’s different,” Roberts said. “The key to a good night’s sleep

is blood circulation in your arms and legs. Mattress comfort affects

that. It’s good to have a mattress that is firm, to keep your body

straight.”

But there are three main types of mattress tops: firm, plush or

pillow-top plush. Every mattress has coils and metal underneath -- which

also can affect support-levels depending on your weight -- but the top

layers vary in firmness.

“When I’m trying to sell a mattress to a person to get them a better

sleep, I have to establish what is their comfort range, what type of job

do they do,” Roberts said. “We all have different comfort levels and

lifestyles.”