Don’t tell anyone, but we’ve been known to steal a catnap in the middle of the work day. We can still get our work done and have a nice refreshing nap. Everybody wins. Or maybe not. New research from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has found that daytime napping is associated with various adverse health outcomes and higher all-cause mortality. In particular, the researchers pointed to risks associated with longer naps, greater intra-individual variability in daytime napping, and naps around noon and in the early afternoon.
The study sample comprised 86,565 non-shift working participants in the UK Biobank with an average age of 63 years, who were monitored by actigraphy (a method of measuring sleep patterns and activity levels using a small, watch-like device) for seven days. During an 8-year follow up, 2,950 participants died, and researchers found that participants with a longer nap duration and a higher percentage of naps between 11 AM and 1 PM, and between 1 PM and 3 PM, were associated with greater mortality.
The links between napping and poor health are not entirely clear, but the assumption is that napping – or at least certain types of napping – can interfere with effective sleeping at night, and that in turn can lead to a higher risk of anxiety, depression, obesity, heart disease, injury, and other serious conditions.
You don’t have to give up on napping, but keep them short and out of the midday so as not to interfere with your overall sleep patterns.
Go Deeper:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/is-your-daily-nap-doing-more-harm-than-good
https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/48/Supplement_1/A152/8135607?login=false
https://www.cdc.gov/cdi/indicator-definitions/sleep.html#:~:text=Insufficient%20sleep%20is%20linked%20to,guidance%2C%20and%20traffic%20safety%20education.