People Who Take Naps During The Day Have Better Brains, Says Research
Naps don't just help you feel less sleepy. They help your brain stop shrinking, too.
Kosim Shukurov | Shutterstock There's nothing quite like a nap. Lazing away an hour in the afternoon feels positively decadent and makes you pine for the days of childhood when you didn't know how good you had it with that daily nap habit.
Sadly, as we get older, naps become an occasional luxury instead of a daily requirement, and work, chores, and life take precedence over some afternoon shut-eye. But it turns out naps are more than just cozy and refreshing. Research has actually found that we should make time for delightful habit because naps help your brain.
A study found that people who take naps have healthier brains.
In some ways, the findings from a 2023 study by University College London and the University of the Republic in Uruguay aren't all that surprising: Naps are really good for you. Who'd have thought?! But there's one benefit in particular that really has the potential to be life-changing as we age.
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The study found that daily napping actually slows the shrinkage of the brain.
You're probably thinking, "my brain will never shrink, I'm too smart for that," but you'd be wrong. Everyone's brain begins shrinking after roughly 40, by about 5% per decade. The shrinkage is most pronounced in the hippocampus and frontal lobe, the areas responsible for learning and memory.
That is, in part, responsible for the cognitive decline that happens in most of us to one degree or another. Even if it never becomes problematic, like it does in conditions like dementia or Alzheimer's Disease, the brain shrinks with age — it's natural.
By studying people aged 40 to 69 who were daily nappers, the researchers found that going for a regular mid-afternoon sleepytime actually slows this shrinkage process down and could have an effect on conditions like Alzheimer's as well.
Science has long known that napping improves cognitive function, but this study actually points to a true causal link between napping and brain size. That is, it indicates that if you make a daily nap part of your routine, you can reasonably expect your brain to age more slowly than average.
The study also found that daily nappers had aged between 2.6 to 6.5 years less than others.
The study focused, in part, on people who had a genetic predisposition toward being a habitual napper. There are some 97 DNA markers that point to this predisposition, and in an analysis of 378,932 people in the U.K., they compared and contrasted people who did and did not have one of these markers.
The study also had several subjects wear measuring devices on their wrists to determine their physical activity and gauge other factors that might have made their data inaccurate or inconclusive, like, say, having medical conditions that naturally make a person nap more, for instance.
The data showed that people who did have those genetic predispositions toward napping tended to have not only larger brain volumes but brains that showed between 2.6 and 6.5 fewer years of aging than comparable brains without the genetic markers.
The study is limited by certain demographic factors — mainly that nearly all subjects were white and had European ancestry — so its findings can't be said to be universal. But they do align with what science has previously determined about naps and their impact on cognitive function.
The study's authors noted that they hoped the findings would help destigmatize the idea of taking a nap each day and inspire people to get some more rest. They suggested following the long-held recommendations for naps, which say that sticking to about 30 minutes earlier in the day provides the best cognitive benefit without disrupting nighttime sleep.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.