Napping linked to dementia risk

Your napping habits might be a warning flag for dementia, a new study says.

Older adults who fall into unintended naps, nap frequently or take shorter naps may have a higher risk of developing dementia, researchers reported recently in the Journals of Gerontology.

“Monitoring napping behaviors could serve as an early and accessible marker to help identify older adults at higher risk for dementia and guide targeted interventions for dementia prevention,” lead researcher Kening Jiang said in a news release. She is a postdoctoral fellow in mental health research with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

For the new study, researchers followed over 990 Medicare beneficiaries 65 and older for up to 10 years starting in 2013. All of the participants were free of dementia at the beginning of the study.

Results showed that people who napped most days or every day had a 48% higher risk of dementia compared to those who rarely or never napped.

Unintentional napping was linked to a 39% higher risk of dementia, and napping for 30 minutes or less to a 40% higher risk.

There’s likely a two-way relationship between napping and dementia, researchers said. Napping could be a potential risk factor for dementia, but the onset of dementia also could affect brain regions that help to regulate wakefulness, thus leading to more frequent napping.

Researchers warned that the study was not designed to prove a direct cause-and-effect link between daytime napping and dementia. Instead, it highlights a potential association. Larger and longer-term studies are needed to better understand the relationship between napping and dementia risk.

“More frequent napping could be a marker of changes in the brain, rather than a cause of brain changes that lead to dementia,” said senior researcher Adam Spira, a professor at Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health.

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