* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Saturday, September 6, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    ITV Studios Launches New Entertainment Label – Global Bulletin – IMDb

    ITV Studios Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Label

    TS Entertainment bringing Malibu Jack’s to former Owensboro mall – Lane Report

    TS Entertainment Launches Malibu Jack’s at Former Owensboro Mall Location

    Jenny Han Dropped a Major ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg Revealing [SPOILER] – yahoo.com

    Jenny Han Just Unveiled a Huge ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg That Changes Everything [SPOILER]

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer With Emotional Song ‘Bones’ – yahoo.com

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer with Emotional New Song ‘Bones

    Country music star apologizes after drunken show ends with cops taking him down: ‘I’m not OK’ – PennLive.com

    Country Music Star Apologizes After Drunken Show Ends in Police Intervention: ‘I’m Not OK

    Comanche Nation Entertainment closes casino near Devol – KSWO 7News

    Comanche Nation Entertainment Closes Casino Near Devol in Surprising Move

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Coherent Joins LLNL’s STARFIRE Diode Technology Working Group to Advance Inertial Fusion Energy – GlobeNewswire

    Coherent Partners with LLNL’s STARFIRE Team to Drive Breakthroughs in Inertial Fusion Energy

    Gene Associated With Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers Identified – Technology Networks

    Breakthrough Discovery Uncovers Gene Behind Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers

    Monkey Island LNG Picks ConocoPhillips’ Liquefaction Technology – Hart Energy

    Monkey Island LNG Selects ConocoPhillips’ Advanced Liquefaction Technology for Next-Gen Energy Solutions

    Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. (CRDO) Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Estimates – Yahoo Finance

    Credo Technology Group Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Expectations

    The Economist is hiring a science and technology correspondent – The Economist

    Exciting Opportunity: Become Our Next Science and Technology Correspondent!

    Blockchain lender Figure Technology seeks to raise up to $526M in IPO (FIGR:Pending) – Seeking Alpha

    Blockchain Lender Figure Technology Sets Sights on $526M in Thrilling IPO Launch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    ITV Studios Launches New Entertainment Label – Global Bulletin – IMDb

    ITV Studios Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Label

    TS Entertainment bringing Malibu Jack’s to former Owensboro mall – Lane Report

    TS Entertainment Launches Malibu Jack’s at Former Owensboro Mall Location

    Jenny Han Dropped a Major ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg Revealing [SPOILER] – yahoo.com

    Jenny Han Just Unveiled a Huge ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg That Changes Everything [SPOILER]

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer With Emotional Song ‘Bones’ – yahoo.com

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer with Emotional New Song ‘Bones

    Country music star apologizes after drunken show ends with cops taking him down: ‘I’m not OK’ – PennLive.com

    Country Music Star Apologizes After Drunken Show Ends in Police Intervention: ‘I’m Not OK

    Comanche Nation Entertainment closes casino near Devol – KSWO 7News

    Comanche Nation Entertainment Closes Casino Near Devol in Surprising Move

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Coherent Joins LLNL’s STARFIRE Diode Technology Working Group to Advance Inertial Fusion Energy – GlobeNewswire

    Coherent Partners with LLNL’s STARFIRE Team to Drive Breakthroughs in Inertial Fusion Energy

    Gene Associated With Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers Identified – Technology Networks

    Breakthrough Discovery Uncovers Gene Behind Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers

    Monkey Island LNG Picks ConocoPhillips’ Liquefaction Technology – Hart Energy

    Monkey Island LNG Selects ConocoPhillips’ Advanced Liquefaction Technology for Next-Gen Energy Solutions

    Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. (CRDO) Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Estimates – Yahoo Finance

    Credo Technology Group Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Expectations

    The Economist is hiring a science and technology correspondent – The Economist

    Exciting Opportunity: Become Our Next Science and Technology Correspondent!

    Blockchain lender Figure Technology seeks to raise up to $526M in IPO (FIGR:Pending) – Seeking Alpha

    Blockchain Lender Figure Technology Sets Sights on $526M in Thrilling IPO Launch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Health

Love to nap? Here’s more evidence it’s good for your brain

July 29, 2023
in Health
Love to nap? Here’s more evidence it’s good for your brain
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

nap

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A study published last month in the journal Sleep Health found that regular napping is linked to larger brain volume and could indicate anti-aging properties of napping.

While past research looked at people’s brains and sleep habits and made correlations, this study—with global collaboration including Harvard Medical School—took it one step further in analyzing participants’ genes to locate specific traits associated with napping. The Allegheny Health Network Center for Sleep Medicine thinks it’s a step in the right direction for learning more about sleep and cognition.

It is estimated that one in three U.S. adults does not get adequate sleep (an average 7 to 8 hours a night), and that around 18% of Americans have a sleep disorder. Teens need more sleep than adults, to accommodate a developing brain. Chronic poor sleep can decrease immune function and increase risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and other health conditions.

However, power naps—characterized as an intentional 15- to 30-minute nap, typically in the afternoon—can temporarily relieve the burden of a sleep deficit, and some studies have shown they have benefits for cognition.

The new study’s researchers asked people aged 40 to 69 about their power-napping habits: Did they nap regularly, sometimes or rarely? They then combed through participants’ genomes to find similarities. The study sample came from more than 300,000 people who had registered with the UK Biobank, a vast consortium of participant genetic and medical data. The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, of which Pitt is a partner, is a similar cohort-based program but said it does not yet have the data to conduct a similar study, an NIH spokesperson said.

In those who napped regularly, they found specific genes consistent across the cohort that were associated with napping behavior, suggesting that some sleep habits are ingrained.

“Although our question is not necessarily unique, our approach is,” said Hassan Dashti, assistant investigator in anesthesia, critical care and pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital Research Institute, a professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and an author on the study.

Variables such as disease, depression, sleep disorders and poor sleep quality might impact a person’s propensity to nap, making it hard to parse out the true reason for napping in a scientific study. But looking at genes, which a person has over their lifetime, can help rule out some of those confounders. “Relying on genetics is a powerful tool because now we can control for those variables,” said Dashti.

In addition to the napping genes shared among those who snoozed regularly, the researchers also found that those who reported napping had larger total brain volumes compared to those who only napped sometimes or not at all.

Brain volume has been a measure of overall brain health and propensity for aging in previous studies, as the aging brain tends to shrink. In this study, researchers estimated that the brain size of those who napped was protective against the equivalent to 2.6 to 6.5 years of aging.

“Napping does have a protective effect on overall brain health,” said Dashti.

The study also looked at markers of cognition, such as reaction time, visual memory and the size of a participant’s hippocampus—a region deep in the brain largely responsible for memory. Researchers did not find correlations between regular napping and these functional measures of cognition, which they said surprised them, as previous research has found benefits to napping on these measures.

Daniel Shade, medical director of the AHN Sleep Disorders Center and a board-certified sleep medicine specialist, said like any study, this one had some strengths and some flaws.

“Brain volume is nice as an anatomical finding, but it’s not a functional finding,” he said, meaning the results don’t signal that a larger brain is linked to functional changes like better reaction time or memory. “I was surprised not to see [that].” Shade was not involved in the research. He said the study was a great foundation to build upon scientific knowledge of links between sleep, napping and dementia, which more than 7 million Americans suffer from. “This is starting to show directions of where we need to go with research,” he said.

Being both a researcher and a clinician in a sleep clinic, Shade thought the genetics component was a novel addition to the study, and that it reflected in part what he sees in the clinic. “Some people have a daily nap and that’s just them, and others can’t nap,” he said. “If you don’t need to nap, you shouldn’t.”

Dashti echoed this: “Even with these findings, I would never recommend people to start napping if they don’t need it. However, if you feel the need to, napping is OK.”

It’s important to recognize, said both researchers, that power naps can’t erase chronic bad sleep.

“If you consistently sleep six hours, you’re going to accrue a sleep deficit,” said Shade. “Short naps will increase attention for a period of a few hours, but what [they] won’t do is compensate for a preexisting sleep debt.”

When we stay awake for long hours and lag on proper sleep, a chemical in our bodies called adenosine builds up, causing us to feel sleepy (caffeine is an adenosine blocker). This behavior, said Shade, also promotes a sort of proinflammatory response, as proteins called cytokines ramp up production. Napping can reduce this sleep pressure, temporarily alleviating the urge to sleep, which accrues throughout the day.

And while the genetic analysis gave more evidence that this protective napping behavior is ingrained in some people, it could also be true that people who nap regularly are able to do so based on other proffered benefits.

“They have the gene, but they also have the opportunity,” said Shade.

“Daytime napping is a privilege and a luxury,” said Dashti. “These people have a comfy bed, and they have time in the day to nap.” And this could signal that those populations are enjoying other health benefits, too.

Using the UK Biobank, study participants were only white Europeans, so there’s an opportunity to replicate the study in a more diverse cohort. Shade also suggested the possibility of a longitudinal study, looking at people’s napping habits over a period of many years and tracking who gets dementia and who doesn’t.

He was also interested to see the napping and memory aspect of the study explored further. “It would be great to see a functional correlation, but that’s probably their next step,” said Shade.

Researchers reiterated that feeling extremely sleepy throughout the day, sleeping long hours at night (typically 10 hours or more) or taking longer naps of around 2 hours could be a sign of an underlying problem that should be checked by a sleep specialist if these problems persist. Naps should be intentional, 15- to 30-minute periods.

“We don’t want to use a nap as a mechanism to compensate for poor sleep,” said Dashti.

More information:
Valentina Paz et al, Is there an association between daytime napping, cognitive function, and brain volume? A Mendelian randomization study in the UK Biobank, Sleep Health (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.sleh.2023.05.002

2023 PG Publishing Co.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Citation:
Love to nap? Here’s more evidence it’s good for your brain (2023, July 29)
retrieved 29 July 2023
from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-nap-evidence-good-brain.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Medical Xpress – https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-07-nap-evidence-good-brain.html

Tags: evidencehealthHere’s
Previous Post

Is venting good for your health?

Next Post

People on ART with low levels of HIV viral load found to have almost zero risk of sexually transmitting the virus

Blending art, culture and native plants at Wakamatsu – Mountain Democrat

Discover the Harmony of Art, Culture, and Native Plants at Wakamatsu

September 6, 2025
The Two-Body Problem for Women in Science – Nautilus | Science Connected

The Two-Body Problem for Women in Science – Nautilus | Science Connected

September 6, 2025
How AI and Automation are Speeding Up Science and Discovery – Berkeley Lab News Center (.gov)

How AI and Automation Are Accelerating Breakthroughs in Scientific Discovery

September 6, 2025

American Trust Investment Services Serves as Exclusive Placement Agent in $9 Million Follow-On Offering for Nova LifeStyle, Inc. – Morningstar

September 6, 2025
Coherent Joins LLNL’s STARFIRE Diode Technology Working Group to Advance Inertial Fusion Energy – GlobeNewswire

Coherent Partners with LLNL’s STARFIRE Team to Drive Breakthroughs in Inertial Fusion Energy

September 6, 2025
EA SPORTS™ and New York City FC Extend Partnership to Power the Future of Football Fandom in NYC – New York City FC

EA SPORTS™ and New York City FC Join Forces to Transform Football Fandom in NYC

September 6, 2025
News – Ancient DNA Pinpoints Culprit Responsible for World’s First Pandemic – Archaeology Magazine

Ancient DNA Reveals the True Cause of the World’s First Pandemic

September 5, 2025
Fears of US recession as economy adds just 22,000 jobs – The Times

Fears of US recession as economy adds just 22,000 jobs – The Times

September 5, 2025
Musiq Soulchild Surprises Fan’s Bride With “Dontchange” Wedding Serenade – yahoo.com

Musiq Soulchild Captivates Wedding Guests with Heartfelt Serenade of “Don’tchange

September 5, 2025
States fight feds over future of school mental health services – Courthouse News Service

States Clash with Federal Government Over the Future of School Mental Health Services

September 5, 2025

Categories

Archives

September 2025
MTWTFSS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930 
« Aug    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (809)
  • Economy (827)
  • Entertainment (21,704)
  • General (16,879)
  • Health (9,868)
  • Lifestyle (840)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (829)
  • Politics (834)
  • Science (16,038)
  • Sports (21,326)
  • Technology (15,808)
  • World (808)

Recent News

Blending art, culture and native plants at Wakamatsu – Mountain Democrat

Discover the Harmony of Art, Culture, and Native Plants at Wakamatsu

September 6, 2025
The Two-Body Problem for Women in Science – Nautilus | Science Connected

The Two-Body Problem for Women in Science – Nautilus | Science Connected

September 6, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version