Frequent and Unintentional Daytime Napping Linked to Higher Dementia Risk

A longitudinal study of 995 U.S. older adults found that frequent and unintentional daytime napping was associated with an increased risk of developing dementia over 10 years. Using data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, researchers followed participants from 2013 to 2023 and found that frequent nappers had a 48% higher hazard of incident dementia than non-nappers (HR 1.48), while unintentional napping was associated with a 39% higher hazard (HR 1.39). Napping for 30 minutes or less was also associated with a higher dementia hazard (HR 1.40), whereas the association with naps longer than 30 minutes was no longer statistically significant after additional adjustment for sleep-related variables. Neither infrequent nor intentional napping was significantly associated with dementia. These findings suggest that frequent and unintentional daytime napping may serve as potential indicators of dementia risk, although further research is needed to determine whether napping contributes to dementia development or reflects underlying health changes. Source: https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/