Thread: Is it healthy to sleep in very short bursts, and during the afternoon?

Last night I ended up staying awake until 4:30 AM, and to my dismay I realized that in the morning I was going to have a physics lecture which I really felt that I wanted to attend, and it started at 8:15 AM.
So with an almost superhuman effort I managed to get out of bed after only about 2 hours of sleep, and I obviously felt terribly tired the entire morning.
So when I got back home again, at around 11 AM, I immediately crashed, and slept until 5 PM.
However. I noticed that I kept waking up a lot of times, and I probably slept for about 40-50 minutes at a time.
I know that everyone has natural awakenings during sleep, but I have never noticed them this often before.
I did feel quite rested when I finally got out of bed though, but is there something about this kind of sleep that is "improper" in some way?
Or did I just happen to notice these natural awakenings much more easily than normal?

I did feel quite rested when I finally got out of bed though, but is there something about this kind of sleep that is "improper" in some way?

Naps are a great way to boost cognitive performance if your tired (and studies also show that they can help you with learning), but we're talking about power naps, with durations no longer than 20 minutes. Anything longer and you're essentially getting into deep sleep which can interfere with your normal sleep pattern. This is the reason why it would be best if you had stayed up until the night to resume sleep.
The awakenings could be a matter of your circadian clock being desynchronized with your homeostasis (one thelling your brain "you need to sleep you're tired!" and the other saying "but we're in the middle of the day, wake up wake up!"), but since it's so hard to know these things without EEG analysis, they could also simply be natural awakenings you happen to notice by chance.

Yeah, I thought that it would have probably been better if I had waited until the night, but I just kind of fell asleep without thinking about it.
My initial plan was to just "relax for a while", and then it felt so pleasant to just lie in bed that I remained there for several hours.
I don't regret it though, because it did make me feel very well afterwards, and I feel like I will be able to fall asleep tonight as well.