Taking a nap during the day makes the brain younger – 06/20/2023 – Equilibrium

Finding time for a nap every day is good for our brains and helps keep it bigger for longer, say researchers at University College London in the UK.

The team showed that the brains of individuals who nap regularly are 15 cubic centimeters larger – which is equivalent to delaying aging by between three and six years.

However, scientists recommend keeping nap time to less than half an hour a day.

Experts say sleeping during the day can be difficult in many careers, with a work culture that often frowns on the practice.

“We’re suggesting that everyone could experience some benefit from napping,” says psychologist Victoria Garfield. She described the findings as “very new and exciting”.

Napping is critical to development when we’re babies, but it becomes less common as we age — and it’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity after retirement. About a quarter of people over 65 report napping during the day.

Garfield says that starting this habit of getting a few minutes of sleep is “a very easy thing” to do compared to other health measures like losing weight and exercising, which are “difficult for many people.”

The brain naturally shrinks with age. Now, scientists want to understand whether naps can help prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s. This is a subject that still needs further research.

Overall brain health is important to protect us against dementia. This condition, marked by memory and reasoning failures, is linked to disturbed sleep.

The researchers suggest that poor quality nightly rest damages the brain over time, causing inflammation and affecting connections between nerve cells.

“Thus, napping regularly can protect against neurodegeneration and compensate for poor sleep”, evaluates researcher Valentina Paz.

However, Dr. Garfield says she is not willing to find a comfortable place to nap at work and prefers to invest in other ways to take care of her own brain.

“Honestly, I’d rather spend 30 minutes exercising than napping. But I’ll probably recommend my mom do this. [tire as sonecas].”

How to find the answer?

Studying naps can be quite a challenge.

Naps can improve health, but the reverse is also true – that is, not taking care of health can make an individual so tired that he needs to rest longer.

Thus, the researchers decided to test a different technique to prove that napping can be beneficial.

They used a gigantic natural experiment based on the DNA – the genetic code – that we are born with. Previous studies have identified 97 stretches of the genome that make us more likely to sleep or stay awake all day.

So the team took data from 35,000 people aged 40 to 69 who took part in the UK Biobank project and simply compared the genetics of the “sleepers” and the “awakes”.

The results, published in the journal Sleep Health, showed a difference of 15 cubic centimeters in brain size between the groups – which equates to a range of 2.6 to 6.5 years of aging. The average total gray matter volume was about 1,400 cubic centimeters in the study.

“I like short naps on the weekends, and this study has convinced me that I shouldn’t feel lazy by doing so, as I may even be protecting my brain,” confessed Professor Tara Spires-Jones of the University of Edinburgh and president of the Association British Neuroscience.

She said the study brings “interesting” findings by showing a “small but significant increase in brain volume” and “adds data that indicate the importance of sleep for brain health.”

The researchers reinforce that the work did not assess having a complete sleep throughout the day, but focused on shorter sessions of 30 minutes.

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