Short daytime naps may be good for the brain
Research suggests napping during the day may be associated with larger brain volume, reduced risk of dementia
Is a daytime nap good for you? Past research delivered some mixed verdicts, but a new study indicates it may protect against brain shrinkage, which increases with age and is particularly accelerated in people with cognitive problems and neurodegenerative disease.
As reported here, researchers accessed data from the UK Biobank study that had genetic, lifestyle and health information from 500,000 people aged 40 to 69. The researchers took data from 35,080 participants to see “whether a combination of genetic variants that have previously been associated with self-reported habitual daytime napping are also linked to brain volume, cognition and other aspects of brain health.”
The team found an association between a genetic predisposition to habitual daytime napping and larger brain volume “equivalent to 2.6 to 6.5 fewer years of aging.”
“It could be having a short daytime nap…could help preserve brain volume, and that’s a positive thing, potentially, for dementia prevention,” said Dr. Victoria Garfield, a co-author of the study, from University College London.
A duration of up to 30 minutes may be beneficial.
Some caveats, of course — as always. There ae many other factors that could lead to dementia, so the daytime nap should not be viewed as a single magic solution. Also, the study focused on people with a genetic predisposition to daytime napping, but that genetic makeup might also include other factors that positively influence brain volume. If people without the genetic predisposition also took daytime naps, would they see the same results?
Even so, the study is valuable. “This study is important because it adds to the data indicating sleep is important for brain health,” said Prof. Tara Spires-Jones, a group leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute and deputy director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
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