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Hello, and welcome to the get lean and eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin. I'm a certified health coach, trainer and author. And this podcast is for middle-aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long-term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. All right, welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin. I hope you had a great weekend. Happy Tuesday if you're listening to this on Tuesday, and hopefully you listened to my last interview with Dr.
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Gary Schleifer. This was the second time he came on the podcast episode 1 71, and we touched on all around mental health and how acute stressors can really help with that. And we also touched on ancestral eating what's wrong with our healthcare system and much more. So definitely check him out. He is a bright guy with a ton of great just tips and, you know, deep thinking on a lot of great topics. So I really enjoyed my second interview with Dr. Gary and today I wanted to touch on, I think at the topic. I don't even know if it's been brought up much on my podcast and that is the power of napping.
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And I think sometimes napping gets this like negative connotation that like you're sort of being lazy. I don't know. I feel like in my mind sometimes I think like that where it really shouldn't be because you don't need to take that long of a nap, we call it like a power nap. Right. And you can get a lot of the great benefits of it. And I think if it's something that perhaps you schedule in your day, the right time, I'm going to talk about, talk about, you know, when are the one of the good times to do that and what is the length of the nap and how you know, and what you should do to sort of make it most ideal. But what made me want to talk about this is there was a recent study done by NASA on military pilots and how it can restore alertness, enhanced performance, reduce mistakes.
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And it found that a, the nap improved performance by 34%, so 34% improved performance and alertness by a hundred percent. So it is amazing what you have at your fingertips to almost a little bit like fasting, right? Fasting is free. And it's, it's just a great way to, you know, regenerate new cells and, and perhaps just give your body, your digestive system, a chance to rest. And, you know, we can utilize it from time to time. It doesn't need to be used all the time. And I think that's the same thing with naps. You don't probably have to do it every day, but I think it's something that, you know, you should think about, especially if you have small kids or you didn't get the greatest night's sleep and you wanted sort of a way to somewhat catch up and give yourself sort of a, a reboot.
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So, you know, what's the perfect recipe for a nap. First of all, you want to create some type of peaceful environment. It doesn't have to be anything like, you know, if that, I don't think you necessarily have to do this in bed. I actually liked to, if I'm going to close my eyes for, for a certain amount of time, I could do this as long as like, you know, you have too many interruptions. And what I would do is I would a couple of things I would set your alarm. I would set your alarm for about 10 to 20 minutes. That's ideal for a power nap. Number two, I wouldn't lap. I wouldn't nap too late in the day. I would have that nap middle of the day. Cause if you, if you take a nap too late in the day, that could affect falling asleep later on.
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So setting an alarm nap nap on the earlier side, I would say midway, you know, noon, one, two o'clock would be good times. You want to create, like I mentioned, a sort of a sleep friendly environment where, you know, it's somewhat cool and dark and quiet, and then, you know, just sort of set your worries aside. You know, I, you know, obviously in the middle of day, sometimes it's tough to sort of like reboot, but you just, you know, a lot of, you know, we'll talk about, I've talked about breathing in a few episodes coming up and we talked a little bit about with Dr. Gary and the importance of just, you know, taking deep breaths and doing a little bit of meditation. So you can almost combine the two, maybe meditate for a little bit and then just take a 10, 15 minute power nap.
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And that's about ideal time is about 10 to 20 minutes. Those are great sort of guidelines to follow and definitely set the alarm. You don't want to be sleep for too long because that can affect the rest of the day. And, and also too, you know, we hear about, you know, drivers and the safety on the roads as far as texting or drinking, but like drowsy drivers are a thing, right? Hundreds of thousands of car crash has happened each year from this. And, you know, not everyone can get good adequate sleep all the time, seven to eight hours. And so if, if this is not, you know, if you're not getting adequate sleep all the time, you know, perhaps it's time to maybe take a little nap, a little 20 minute power nap.
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You know, we always talk about caffeine and these stimulants, but you have something that's free and easy. And honestly, when I, anytime I do a power nap, I think to myself, gosh, why don't I do this more often? And it doesn't again, 10, 20 minutes is like the perfect time. So I think it's ready to make, this might be something ready to implement into your routine. Definitely email me and let me know. And at Brian, at Brian green.com and you know, this is restorative, this is a way to feel alert for the rest of the day. And, you know, I think it can definitely help you take a step towards better health. So hope this helps hope this might it maybe, you know, we always think about napping when we're, I feel like we're on like our college days, but, you know, as we got older, we think, oh, we don't, we don't need the nap.
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Well, maybe, maybe we do. And maybe we should set time aside every day to do this and, and find a quiet space to sort of just, you know, sleep, take a great power nap to make the rest of the day that much better. So anyways, that's all I wanted to touch on today. The power of power naps have a great rest of the day. And I will talk to you on Friday. Thanks for listening. The get lean, eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member.
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That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
