Dr. Zorba Paster: Observational study shows association between napping, better cognitive scores

Dementia – that’s the thing I fear most. And most people in my age group put that on the top of their list, too. I saw it with my mom, who had a sad, seven-year, slow slippage away due to Alzheimer’s. And I’ve seen it in countless patients over the course of my career.

We’re living longer, and unfortunately, the older we get, the greater the risk. Nearly 1 in 8 adults ages 65 and older experience some form of memory loss. Anything that can alter this is something worth doing.

That’s why any new study seeming to show things can improve catches my eye. This one has to do with napping. Now, I am a napper – that is, when I can be. I love to go out to our gazebo in the summer to take a snooze in midafternoon.

I always set my iPhone to either 20 or 40 minutes. I find if I do an hour, then I don’t sleep well at night. But when I get a shorter midday nap, I have more energy later in the day, better concentration and feel more festive.

Even in this time of COVID-19, if I’m at home, I try to take my 3 p.m. snooze. And perhaps that might help with dementia, according to this observational study out of China published in the British Medical Journal.

Researchers found that verbal fluency, working memory and better “awareness” were associated with napping. The study looked at more than 2,000 healthy people in Beijing, Shanghai and Xian. About 1,500 took regular naps, and the rest did not.

Both groups slept about the same amount every night, 6½ to 7 hours. All had regular mental IQ-type exams, looking at 30 items such as problem-solving, working memory, attention span and verbal fluency – all the things we do in life.

Regular afternoon naps were defined as being from just a few minutes to as much as two hours of sleep taken after lunch. All were asked how often they napped, from once a week to every day.

Results showed cognitive thinking and performance scores were better among nappers. Afternoon napping is considered part of a healthy lifestyle in many cultures. Not all, mind you. There are lots of people who think taking an afternoon nap means you’re lazy and slothful.

But napping reduces daytime sleepiness, with midday naps offering benefits such as memory consolidation, preparation for subsequent learning, executive functioning enhancement and a boost to emotional stability. How long the nap lasts also seems to play a role, with more frequent longer naps not being as useful as shorter, once-a-day naps.

What’s going on? One theory is that midday naps might reduce inflammatory chemicals in the brain, allowing it to rest and relax. We know inflammatory markers play a role in sleep disorders – perhaps napping reduces this.

My spin: This is an observational study, and we can’t establish cause and effect. But the more we look at sleep, the more we realize its importance. In this time of COVID-19, in our harried world, we think of what we’re eating and how we’re exercising. But sleeping and napping seem to be at the bottom of the list.

When it comes to dementia and Alzheimer’s, anything we can do to prevent it is worth considering. I have to leave now to take a short snooze. Stay well.

Dr. Zorba Paster is a family physician and host of the public radio program “Zorba Paster on Your Health.” He can be reached at askzorba@doctorzorba.com.