I never used to be a napper. Daytime slumber was virtually beyond a congenitally wired type like me. My buddies would catch 40 winks on the long bus ride home from our high school, but for me that was out of the question.

Not just me, traditionally, many cultures have begrudged naps. They may be forced on toddlers, recommended for pregnant women and tolerated among senior citizens with nothing better to do, but they’ve been frowned upon for worker bees in their prime.

Recently, however, sleep scientists have discovered advantages to napping, which they view not just as solace but also as something akin to brain food. No longer written off as a cop-out for the weak and the bored, the nap is coming into its own as an element of a healthy life.

Some new studies make dramatic claims for it. Taken in the workplace, naps can increase productivity and reduce “general crabbiness” according to a just-concluded 25-year survey of the practice in industrial countries.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel showed daytime nappers doing better at retaining a newly mastered skill — bringing a thumb and forefinger together in a certain sequence — than a control group whose members slept only at night.

Experiments conducted by Matthew A Tucker of Harvard Medical School suggest that a 45-minute nap can enhance the ability to perform tasks relying upon memory. And Dimitrios Trichopoulos, also at Harvard, has found that among a sample of 23,000 adult Greeks, habitual nappers were 30 per cent less likely to die of heart disease.

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