Naps

Toddlers nap so they’re less likely to get cranky as the day wears on.

I nap for the same reason.

And despite now having a medical reason for taking a daily nap, sometimes I still feel guilty. Lazy. Unproductive.

Childhood conditioning is hard to shake.

I never, ever, saw my mother take a nap. She voiced more than once that napping, as an older child but especially as an adult, was pure laziness. The sign of a loafer, someone unwilling to work. A slacker.

I remember seeing my father nap on rare occasions. My brothers and I were warned to be quiet and stay away from the living room when he snoozed on the couch some Saturday afternoon, on his back with one arm bent and resting above his head. In my mother’s view, Dad had an excuse because he often worked long, irregular hours as a test pilot, with travel mixed in, and couldn’t always get a good night’s sleep. He certainly wasn’t lazy.

I carried my mother’s views on napping into adulthood. If I wasn’t sick, I shouldn’t nap.

Two things eventually changed my mind.

First, I became an endurance athlete, training for and competing in ultra-distance trail races and triathlons. Weekend workouts involved long distances because I didn’t have time during the work week. I met my then-boyfriend Mike in 1992, soon after I started long-distance trail running. I introduced him to that sport. He introduced me to Ironman triathlons. We began training together. Mike and his triathlete buddies introduced me to a training concept called bricks: a long, hard effort on Saturday morning (say, 35 miles on trails, a six-hour run; or a 100-mile bike ride), followed by a medium distance and effort level training session on Sunday (maybe a six-mile run followed by a two-hour bike), done at least once a month. The goal was utter exhaustion, mimicking a race day effort.

It was during those early endurance training efforts I discovered the joys of a grueling Saturday or Sunday morning workout, followed by a shower, great sex, and an hour’s nap.

Still, those naps were only on weekends, and not every weekend.

The second thing? In 2005, several years into my endurance training habit, I developed a rare neurological condition called spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH). In short, I spring leaks of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) along my spine, which in turn means my brain doesn’t float properly in my skull when I’m upright, which causes headaches, tinnitus, and other annoying symptoms like brain fog, short temper, even sagging eyebrows. Turns out I was born with a deformed spinal column. In addition to spina bifida occulta (a defective closing of the dura around the spinal cord in utero, resulting in a tethered spinal cord), I have scoliosis (curvature of the spine), and two fused vertebrae, all in my lumbar spine area.

It’s actually amazing that this combo of birth defects didn’t significantly impact my life, especially my running, until I was in my mid-forties. In 2003, at age 46, I fell hard during a trail run. Two weeks later I developed a headache that wouldn’t go away, except when I slept. Within 15 minutes of getting up each morning, the headache returned. Turns out that was the key symptom that eventually led to my diagnosis.

In my new book, Wild Running: Lessons from Dogs, Wolves, and the Natural World, I describe the journey it took to get that diagnosis, followed by figuring out how to accommodate my new disability. Salt, diet Dr. Pepper (caffeine), and naps became my primary tools. Sadly, my condition led to becoming single again, through no fault of Mike’s. Moving with my dogs to Idaho for a quiet environment with lots of forest trails was my physical and emotional healing gift to myself.

After my diagnosis, I started napping most days, whether I worked out in the morning or not, was tired or not. Two decades on, I follow the same routine. Usually around noon, I crawl into bed, read for a bit, then sleep for 30-60 minutes. I turn off my phone. I set an alarm so I don’t sleep for more than an hour; I didn’t want to ruin my ability to fall asleep at a reasonable hour at night.

Napping gives my body a chance to re-calibrate, to stock up on CSF (which our bodies are constantly producing), making the latter half of my day far more productive. Because I was self-employed for most of my working life, I could arrange my work schedule around my nap. When work obligations prevented me from napping, I paid for it with worsened headaches, crankiness, and an increased sensitivity to sounds and irritants, resulting in a quickness to anger that wasn’t like me at all.

I’m truly at my best when I get my daily nap.

But I hid my napping habit for years, fearing social disapproval. Even though some knew of my chronic CSF leaks, I didn’t share how debilitating the symptoms were when my CSF levels were really low. I was afraid of the label “disabled.” I mean, I was still running, so how could I be disabled? If I couldn’t wrap my head around it, I couldn’t expect anyone else to. So, mostly, I kept it to myself.

Now, I’m out of the napping closet.

As I worked napping into my daily schedule, I noticed how my dogs appreciated it. Dogs spend much of their day time snoozing anyway, so mine folded my napping routine into their own. Today, two decades into regular naps, Conall heads to my bedroom around noon every day in anticipation of nap time. Finn follows me there. And puppy Chann has now figured out our napping routine, usually joining us but sometimes preferring to stay outside exploring in the back yard. He has yet to grow into a need for midday naps.

During the first months after Chann’s arrival, when he was a wee pup, he frequently interrupted my naps with puppy energy and shenanigans—trying to get the other boys to play, chewing loudly on a toy, tugging and chewing on my bedspread, scrambling underneath the bed while he was still small enough to do so, etc. I’m a light sleeper; it doesn’t take much to wake me up, or keep me awake. But my primary goal with these naps is getting supine so my brain stops exerting downward pressure on my neck and cranial nerves. Sleep is a bonus. We all got through those puppy months and at nearly a year old, Chann’s now a great napper.

I’m 67 and no longer worry what others think about my naps or anything else, for that matter. One of the benefits of aging. Besides, seniors are expected to nap, right? And we senior women are invisible. No one notices us or cares about what we do. That suits me to a T.

****

These days, on the internet there’s a lot of advice about naps for adults of all ages. Examples: Mayo Clinic and the Sleep Foundation.

Most advice is to keep naps short, say 20-30 minutes, for optimal benefit. When I’m leaking CSF (which is almost always), I need longer in order to give my body time to rebuild CSF levels and intracranial pressure, although I don’t need to sleep as much as I just need to lay flat for at least an hour.

Some people are power nappers: they fall asleep instantly, anywhere, and wake up without feeling groggy. I remember a trail running friend who, during 100-mile races, would sit down some place—in a chair in an aid station, or even on the ground alongside the trail, head resting on his arms crossed on his knees—and set his watch alarm for five or ten minutes. Then he’d promptly fall asleep. When his alarm woke him up, he’d start running again. An amazing skill.

I can’t fall asleep that fast, so I read until my eyelids drop. Then I slowly drop off to sleep. Or drowse, not fully sleeping, but reaping the benefits of increased CSF production and a brain that floats as it should in my skull, headache gone.

If I could advise my younger self? I’d tell her, “Stop worrying about what others think. You’re not lazy. If you didn’t need a nap, you wouldn’t sleep. A nap puts you back at the top of your game.”

My body always knew what I needed. I just needed to listen to my body and stop listening to my mother (and others like her).

My advice to you? Nap whenever you want to and can. Don’t worry what anyone else thinks. Your brain will thank you. And you might even add some quality years to your lifespan.

Alrighty, then. Enough advice from me, eh? I think it’s time for my nap now….