Naps are great, no one is here to argue that point, but it seems that if you have a coffee before nabbing some shut eye then it's all the better. 

We all love coffee and we all love naps, so finally science has helped us out by proving that combining the two is a proven way to get better rest. 

Generally, we've come to think that slamming a quick coffee will keep you awake, and thus trying to get some shut-eye after is probably a bad idea, but it seems that, according to what scientists have told us, the opposite would be true, at least when it comes to a nap. 

Here comes the science bit: caffeine is absorbed absorbed through your small intestine and passes into your bloodstream, headed to your brain box. There, it passes through the receptors that tell your brain that you're tired.

Pic via Greg Hirson/Flickr

Adenosine, which is naturally produced by the brain, accumulates in the receptors and makes you feel tired. Caffeine is a similar size and shape to the molecules of adenosine, and therefore can block up these receptors so it can't get through, telling your brain that you're grand sure, keep going. However, it takes a bit of time for the caffeine to get that far, around twenty minutes, so when you're feeling tired you can both relieve the flow of adenosine by grabbing some shut eye, while having a coffee first will mean that the caffeine can reach your brain more easily as there is less adenosine for it to compete with after you nap.

However, as the folks at Vox point out, there isn't hard research to back this up, rather it's based on how scientists understand both the brain and caffeine, and putting two and two together. They have noticed by direct observation that the combnation is more effective on people than one or the other. Tests in Loughborough University in the UK showed that people who took a coffee nap committed fewer errors in a driving simulator than their coffee drinkin' or nap takin' counterparts, while a Japanese study showed that coffee nappers performed 'significantly better' in memory tests too. 

Pic via Jespahoy/Flickr

The key is timing: you need to make sure that you have enough time both to drink the coffee and get to sleep within about 20 minutes, so an espresso or possibly an iced coffee would do the trick nicely. Unless, that is, you don't mind slamming a burning hot americano in about two minutes... Also, don't sleep for longer than 20 minutes, or else you might enter a deeper sleep, and end up feeling groggy.

Anyway, we're a bout to grab a cup of Joe and then catch forty winks, we were up last night watching the NFL and eating nachos. 

Via Vox