New research suggests that naps lasting longer than an hour or repeated several times a day could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
A two-way link
If the relationship between the diseaseAlzheimer and disturbed sleep patterns is well established, including fragmented sleep that can promote its development, a study recently published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia investigated the potential impact of daytime naps on long-term brain health.
The data used came from a project involving more than a thousand elderly people followed for fourteen years, who had been required to wear motion tracking devices for two weeks each year (naps corresponded to prolonged periods of inactivity during the day) and whose cognitive decline had been regularly measured using various tests.
While the frequency and duration of naps gradually increased with age, it turned out that these were almost doubled in people with Alzheimer’s disease.Alzheimer compared to healthy subjects. The study authors also found that the link between daytime naps and cognitive decline was bidirectional, with people without cognitive problems at the start of the study 40% more likely to develop the disease.Alzheimer within six years if they took more than one nap per day or its duration exceeded one hour per day.
The researchers further found that the association between excessive daytime napping and dementia persisted after adjusting for nighttime sleep quantity and quality.
D’importantes implications
Although it is impossible to infer a causal direction from this particular set of data, such results suggest that too long or too frequent naps can potentially accelerate brain aging and also be an early sign of dementia, which underlines the importance of closely monitoring daytime sleep patterns in the elderly.
« Our hope is to draw more attention to daytime sleep patterns and the importance for patients to note whether their sleep schedule changes over time. “, has explained When Hu, co-author of the study. ” Changes in sleep are key in shaping internal brain changes linked to circadian clocks, cognitive decline and dementia risk. »