But it is also possible to take naps at certain times and wake up refreshed, even though you were only asleep for a fraction of the regular time.
Feeling refreshed doesn't mean you're not sleep deprived. Basically, naps can give you an extra help fighting the symptons of sleep deprivation, but research also shows that it might simply be impossible to gain back the hours of sleep you lost. Besides, the effects on cognition are much, much harder to notice/test, especially because subjective reports are especially flawed.
I'm not sure how accepted the advanced napping concepts are anymore (uberman/polyphasic), the type where you only take naps throughout the day... but is it essentially hacking your brain, sort of like teaching a dog, and forcing it to only conduct quick cleaning cycles?
Their problem is not the nap system, it's more the fact that they are designed (at least uberman) to reduce the amount of sleep you experience. By this logic alone, one can already infer that sleep deprivation occurs. Now, whether people feel (like so many reports do) tired or great/refreshed has almost nothing to do with the cognitive/physiological deficits they incur derived from these kind of practices.
Leaving uberman aside, a nap-only sleep pattern wouldn't probably be as efficient as our current model I would think, because you would be dis-regulating your circadian clock.
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