Power naps are often recommended by doctors as a way to compensate for a poor night of sleep. Power naps for older adults could be an early sign of dementia.
There have been mixed results from research on napping in adults. Some studies suggest that napping is beneficial to cognitive function, while others suggest it may be linked to cognitive impairment. Many studies are based on a single assessment.
People with cognitive impairment may not be able to reliably report when or how long they sleep.
I wanted to find out if changes in napping habits foretold other signs of cognitive decline, as an epidemiologist who studies sleep and neurodegeneration in older adults.
While napping does increase with age, excessive napping may be a sign of cognitive decline.
Mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia can be caused by sleep and daytime napping. As the disease progresses, patients are less likely to fall asleep and more likely to wake up during the night.
The Rush Memory and Aging Project is a longitudinal study looking at cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease.
The participants wore a device that tracked their mobility for 14 years. naps were seen as periods of inactivity.
At the beginning of the study, 75 percent of participants did not have any cognitive impairment. Some of the participants had Alzheimer's and some had mild cognitive impairment.
There were differences in napping habits between those who developed Alzheimer's by the end of the study and those who did not.
The participants who did not develop cognitive impairment had longer nap times. This rate doubled after a mild cognitive impairment diagnosis, with naps increasing to 25 extra minutes per year, and tripled after an Alzheimer's diagnosis, with nap durations increasing to 68 extra minutes per year.
Older adults who napped for more than an hour a day had a 40 percent higher chance of developing Alzheimer's than those who did not.
The findings were the same even after we controlled for factors.
Longer naps are a normal part of aging, according to our study.
People with dementia have more frequent and longer naps, according to research from my colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco.
By comparing the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease with those of people without cognitive impairment, they found that those with Alzheimer's had fewer brain cells that promote wakefulness.
The changes in the brain appeared to be linked to the tangles in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's.
Our study did not show that increased daytime napping causes cognitive decline, but INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals Monitoring daytime napping could help detect cognitive decline.
The University of California, San Francisco has an assistant professor of Psychiatry.
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