Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 29, 1995                   TAG: 9506290122
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WELL-RESTED

All those little snoozefests - your head bowed slightly as you manage to grab a few winks and appear to be working at your desk, the full reclining slumber when you stretch out on the boardroom table to catch up on your rems - serve your company well.

No wonder Mr. Dithers hasn't fired you (for good) despite years of catching you with your eyes closed. You are no bum, Bumstead, but a man in touch with his circadian rhythms!

Peers may snicker and bosses may sneer, but research suggests that a 15- or 20-minute nap can make workers more alert and, therefore, more productive, not to mention more pleasant to be around. We just may be programmed by nature to work that way, and we ignore nature at our peril.

Well, that's what the Wall Street Journal reports, anyway. A study last year by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed that pilots who had slept for half an hour during a flight made better landings (if the nap did not occur during the landing, we assume). Federal Aviation Administration policy now approves of in-flight pilot naps. And a French nuclear-power company found that plant operators who get an hour of on-the-job sleep are more alert, and is trying out a policy allowing naptimes.

(Can it be that Homer Simpson, too, is simply a misunderstood man-ahead-of-his-time? ... Nah. That guy is just a bum.)

Researchers theorize that people may need sleep outside their normal sleep cycles, and this need is triggered by our circadian rhythms, a sort of biological clock that, among other things, tells the body when it should be active and when it should rest. We seldom act on these rhythms, however, because in America, at least, sleeping on the job is considered, well, lazy at best.

Folks brag about how little sleep they can get by with, not how well-rested they manage to be.

Executives at some of the nation's biggest corporations reportedly have discovered the benefits of "power napping." Even so, pilots and nuclear-utility workers notwithstanding, we don't see a large-scale return to siestas anytime soon. People are just too busy to take time for winks, 40 or otherwise.