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A 10-year follow-up study in the United States showed that elderly people over the age of 65 who frequently take daytime naps or fall asleep unintentionally have a higher risk of developing dementia in the future. However, this is more likely to be an early sign of changes in the brain rather than a direct disease caused by napping.
Fox News reported that a 10-year study in the United States found that people over the age of 65 who take frequent naps during the day are more likely to suffer from the disease.dementia The risk may be higher, with people who nap almost every day or every day having a 48% higher risk of dementia than those who rarely or never nap; People who often fall asleep unconsciously have a 39% increased risk. However, the researchers stressed that this does not mean that daytime napping will lead to dementia. Instead, it may be an early warning sign of changes in the brain, and related signs may appear even years before a formal diagnosis.
The study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. The research team has been tracking nearly 1,000 adults over the age of 65 since 2013, none of whom had memory or cognitive problems at the start of the study. After 10 years of tracking, researchers found that the frequency and length of daytime naps, as well as whether they fell asleep involuntarily, were related to long-term brain health.
Research data shows that elderly people who nap almost every day or every day during the day have a 48% higher risk of developing dementia than those who rarely or never nap. Older people who fall asleep unintentionally have a 39% higher risk. Additionally, even after adjusting for other health factors, people who napped 30 minutes or less during the day still had a 40% higher risk of dementia. For those who napped longer than 30 minutes, researchers found that the association between daytime naps and dementia risk weakened after taking into account nighttime sleep.
The researchers included indicators related to nighttime sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, and sleep apnea in the statistical analysis and found that frequent daytime naps and unintentional falling asleep were still associated with a higher risk of dementia.
Study author Adam Spira, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and postdoctoral researcher Kenning Jiang said assessing daytime napping habits should not only look at how long you sleep, but also consider the frequency of naps and whether they are voluntary. They say this long-term follow-up study provides important evidence that frequent daytime napping and involuntary sleep in older adults is associated with a higher risk of dementia in later life.
Both of them told that daytime nap is closely related to night sleep. Daytime naps may be meant to compensate for sleep loss at night, but they can also reduce nighttime sleep needs and interfere with night sleep. Nighttime sleep disorders are also one of the important potential risk factors for dementia.
However, the researchers emphasized that daytime naps do not necessarily cause brain changes, but may be a sign of underlying changes in the brain. Because areas of the brain responsible for controlling wakefulness may begin to degenerate in the early stages of dementia, the elderly are more likely to become tired and fall asleep frequently during the day.
To further confirm, the research team re-analyzed the data excluding participants who developed dementia within the first 5 years of the study. The results found that frequent daytime naps and falling asleep involuntarily were still strongly linked to dementia, suggesting that these changes in sleep habits may occur years before dementia is officially diagnosed.
The research team also reminded that this was an observational study and did not directly intervene or change the participants’ daytime napping habits. Therefore, it cannot prove that napping during the day will cause dementia, nor can it confirm whether changing napping habits can reduce the risk of the disease. However, the study results suggest that the elderly’s daytime napping patterns may help determine the risk of dementia in the future, especially when napping becomes excessive or they often fall asleep unintentionally, which requires special attention.
Summary FAQ
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Research shows that people over the age of 65 who take frequent naps during the day have a higher risk of developing dementia in the future; People who nap almost every day have a 48% higher risk, and people who nap involuntarily have a 39% higher risk.
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Can not. The research team emphasizes that this is an observational study, which can only show a correlation and cannot prove that napping causes disease; It is more likely to reflect early changes in the brain and is one of the precursors to dementia.
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The most important thing to note is that naps are very frequent, almost every day, or often falling asleep unconsciously during the day; Even if a nap does not exceed 30 minutes, the study still found an increased risk.
