Why Coffee Naps Will Perk You Up More Than Either Coffee, or Naps, Alone

We’ve all had a cup of cof­fee after a nap. But maybe we’ve been doing it all wrong. Maybe we should put the cup of cof­fee before the nap. It sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive. But appar­ent­ly the cof­fee nap–a cup of joe fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by a quick nap–has some sci­en­tif­ic mer­its and unex­pect­ed health ben­e­fits.

Over at Vox, they’ve sum­ma­rized the find­ings of researchers at Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, who found that “when tired par­tic­i­pants took a 15-minute cof­fee nap, they went on to com­mit few­er errors in a dri­ving sim­u­la­tor than when they were giv­en only cof­fee, or only took a nap.”

Or “a Japan­ese study found that peo­ple who took a caf­feine nap before tak­ing a series of mem­o­ry tests per­formed sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter on them com­pared with peo­ple who sole­ly took a nap, or took a nap and then washed their faces or had a bright light shone in their eyes.”

The accom­pa­ny­ing Vox video above explains how the cof­fee nap works its mag­ic. The biol­o­gy and chem­istry all get dis­cussed in a quick two-minute clip.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Dr. Weil’s 60-Sec­ond Tech­nique for Falling Asleep