NASA NAP

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The claim that "NASA found that napping for just 26 minutes can improve job performance by a third" comes from a widely circulated summary of a NASA study conducted in the 1990s. Here's what it's about:

🧪 The Original NASA Study:

• Study Title: NASA Naps (officially part of research conducted by NASA and the U.S. military).

• Participants: Pilots and astronauts.

• Finding: A 26-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness by 54%.

• Purpose: To understand how strategic napping could enhance safety and effectiveness in high-stakes, sleep-deprived environments.

🔍 The Key Takeaways:

• 26 minutes is optimal — long enough to improve alertness and performance, but short enough to avoid sleep inertia (grogginess after waking).

• The nap was strategic, used in contexts where extended sleep wasn’t possible.

• Benefits were most notable in high-performance, high-focus tasks, like flying and monitoring complex systems.

✅ Modern Relevance:

Even for non-astronauts, a short nap (20–30 minutes) has been shown in other studies to:

• Boost alertness

• Improve memory

• Enhance mood and cognitive function

Would you like an infographic summarizing this for your pediatric WhatsApp group?