Naps can be fantastic. They revitalize us in several ways, increasing alertness, reaction time and problem-solving capacity. But a new study suggests that certain napping patterns could be a warning sign…
Science already knows that short naps can offset some of the damage caused by sleep deprivation and can even help reduce the risk of dementia.
However, a study last week in JAMA Network Open revealed what to do lots of naps during the day, especially in the morningis associated with higher death rates in older adults.
This “excess” of naps – writes – can signal underlying or developing health problems, they say, and can represent a trackable metric for early detection.
“Our study is one of the first to show an association between objectively measured napping patterns and mortality, and suggests that there is enormous clinical value in monitoring napping patterns to detect health conditions early,” emphasizes study leader, Chenlu Gaono .
Previous research has linked frequent naps to specific health problems, including hypertension and strokebut the overall relationship remains poorly understood.
But calm down, naps do not necessarily promote disease and may be beneficial attempts to mitigate a pre-existing health problem.
Despite strong evidence of a link between napping and illness, there remain key questions about the mere association, let alone what causes what. This is partly due to limitations in existing data.
“Excessive napping later in life has been linked to neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease, and even greater morbidity, but many of these results are based on self-reported napping habits and leave out metrics like when and how regular these naps are,” explains Gao.
Hoping to resolve such concerns, the team used information from Rush University’s Memory and Aging Project, which began in 1997 as a study of cognitive abilities and neurodegeneration in hundreds of people over the age of 55.
As Science Alert details, the study incorporated wrist monitors in 2005 to record people’s behavior over an average period of 10 days and differentiate between periods of activity and rest.
These activity monitors have remained a feature of the ongoing study, contributing to two decades of statistics available for a total of 1,338 individuals by 2025.
By analyzing napping patterns at baseline and all-cause mortality over 19 years of follow-up, researchers found that napping longer and more frequent, as well as morning napswere associated with a higher risk of death.
Be careful with long, frequent and early morning naps…
Every extra hour of daily nap was associated with a mortality risk nearly 13 percent higherconcluded the study.
Each additional nap per day was also associated with a risk 7 percent highest rate of death during the follow-up period.
The time of day also seems to matter. The risk of mortality for those who take naps in the morning it is about 30 percent higher than those who take naps in the early afternoon, the study suggests.
It is important to emphasize that this does not necessarily mean that naps are responsible, it is just a pattern, warns Gao: “This is correlation, not causation.”
Still, “excessive napping likely indicates underlying illness, chronic conditions, sleep disorders, or circadian dysregulation,” he concluded.
