Regularly finding time for a little snooze (小睡) is good for our brain and helps keep it bigger for longer, say University College London researchers. The team showed nappers’ brains were 15 cubic (立方的) centimetres larger — equivalent to delaying ageing by between three and six years. However, the scientists recommend keeping naps to less than half an hour. “We are suggesting that everybody could potentially experience some benefit from napping,” Dr Victoria Garfield told me. She described the findings as “quite novel and quite exciting”.
Napping has been shown to be critical to development when we are babies, but it becomes less common as we age and then goes through a recovery after retirement, with 27% of people over 65 reporting having a daytime nap. Dr Garfield says advice to nap is “something quite easy” to do in comparison to weight loss or exercise which is “difficult for a lot of people”. But many said a daytime sleep was hard in many careers, with work culture often frowning on the practice.
The brain naturally becomes smaller with age, but whether naps could help prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s will still need extra research. Overall brain health is important for protecting against dementia and the condition is linked to disturbed sleep. The researchers suggest poor sleep is damaging the brain over time by causing inflammation (炎症) and affecting the connections between brain cells. “Thus, regular napping could protect against neurodegeneration (神经性疾病) by compensating for insufficient sleep,” researcher Valentina Paz said.
However, Dr Garfield is not about to find a comfortable spot to snooze at work and prefers other ways of looking after her brain. “Honestly, I would rather spend 30 minutes exercising than napping, I’ll probably try and recommend that my mum does it.”
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