Afternoon Naps Could Help Keep Your Mind Limber and Stave Off Dementia

A new study in General Psychiatry suggests afternoon naps could ward off dementia, indicating that people who took regular afternoon naps exhibited better mental capacity over time, reports ZME Science . The authors noted that about 10 percent of people over the age of 65 in the developed world will develop dementia. They looked at 2,214 "ostensibly healthy" participants aged 60 and up, who lived in several large Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian. Of this cohort, 1,534 regularly took afternoon naps, while 680 did not. Both groups slept on average 6.5 hours a night, and all received health checks and cognitive assessments beforehand to check for dementia. Nappers in the study showed significantly higher scores on cognitive tests, with the most significant differences in locational awareness, verbal fluency, and memory. The researchers hypothesize that inflammatory chemicals are the common factor between poor health outcomes and mid-day naps. Sleep helps regulate the immune system, and could be an evolved response to inflammation, as observed in patients with higher levels of inflammation.