Older adults may enjoy their daily naps. At times, this turns into an hours-long siesta that they often assume is good. However, this may make them more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. This is what a new study suggests.
The study’s findings show how people who like to take naps need to pay closer attention to the changes that happen in their sleep habits, especially as they get older and if they notice how their nap times are becoming longer or more routinary.
The New Study on Dementia
A new study had looked into daytime naps and found that these may be linked to an increased risk of dementia. In fact, the older population involved in the study were 40 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s when they napped daily or when they slept for more than an hour during these days. Once the Alzheimer’s disease set in, the frequency and duration of their naps also went up.
“Daytime sleep behaviors of older adults are oftentimes ignored, and a consensus for daytime napping in clinical practice and health care is still lacking,” Peng Li said. He is from the Medical Biodynamics Program in the Brigham’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. He added, “Our results not only suggest that excessive daytime napping may signal an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s dementia, but they also show that faster yearly increase in daytime napping may be a sign of deteriorating or unfavored clinical progression of the disease. Our study calls for a closer attention to 24-hour sleep patterns — not only nighttime sleep but also daytime sleep — for health monitoring in older adults.”
“The vicious cycle we observed between daytime sleep and Alzheimer’s disease offers a basis for better understanding the role of sleep in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease in older adults,” shared Li.
During every year of the study, the average duration of daytime naps went up by 11 minutes among the those who didn’t eventually develop cognitive problems. The researchers had already expected this because napping naturally become more common as people age. Of course, this is also a result of a variety of issues such as more frequent urinations at night, which results to more sleep disruption as well.
However, for those who had eventually developed cognitive health issues, the average duration of daytime naps increased twice as quickly. The mild cognitive impairment climbed by an average of 24 minutes each day during the course of the study. So, the daily naptime durations had a steeper uptick by around three times as quickly for those who developed Alzheimer’s disease. This rose to an average of 68 minutes.
The link between dementia and excessive daytime napping persisted. This happened even after they took into account the quality and quantity of sleep at night. Hence, these nightly awakenings and variation in the amount or quality of sleep from day to day didn’t have an impact on the relationship between sleep and cognitive health.
The study results had been published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia last March 17. This was where they utilized data from a total of 1,401 participants of the Rush Memory and Aging Project. The researchers set about to examine the longitudinal change of daytime napping inferred objectively by actigraphy. This then was linked to incidents of Alzheimer’s dementia during the 14-year follow-up period.
Limitations of the Study
The study did come with its own set of limitations, one of which is that wrist-worn actigraphy isn’t considered the gold standard for measuring the quality or quantity of sleep. The device has been designed to track movement and the scientists assume that long stretches when the participants remain motionless during the day has tracked it as a nap. There may be a possibility that a sedentary activity such as reading or watching television had taken place.
There were also conflicting results on the effects of daytime napping on cognition in older folks. There are actually other studies that show how daytime haps comes with its own set of benefits on acute cognitive performance, mood, and alertness. Then, there are those studies that stress on the unfavorable effects on the person’s cognitive performance. Still, the researchers at the Brigham took note and acknowledged how all previous studies on Alzheimer’s disease assessed napping in a participant only once. More importantly, these were subjective and only questionnaire based.
The current study discussed here set out to test two hypotheses: the first is that participants who nap longer and/or more frequently with aging and the changes are even quicker with the progression of Alzheimer’s; and the second hypothesis is that participants with excessive daytime napping have a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
Then, there’s also another pitfall involved. This is that the results from this set elderly population, with the age range of 74 to 88 years old, might not be a reflection and a telling factor for what would happen among the younger crowd. Nonetheless, the findings point to suggest that people should pay close attention to changes in sleep habits, especially when they get older and when they feel that their naps are becoming more routine and happening for longer stretches of time.
“Our study calls for closer attention to 24-hour sleep patterns — not only nighttime sleep but also daytime sleep — for health monitoring in older adults,” Li said.
“Our hope is to draw more attention to daytime sleep patterns and the importance of patients noting if their sleep schedule is changing over time,” co-senior author Kun Hu also said. He is from the Medical Biodynamics Program in the Brigham’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. Hu stated, “Sleep changes are critical in shaping the internal changes in the brain related to the circadian clocks, cognitive decline, and the risk of dementia.”
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