How Healthy Are Afternoon Naps?

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

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In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

No question/request too big or small 😎

❝Is it good for the health to take afternoon naps? Or is it better to just sleep at night?❞

It depends on you! There are potential benefits to napping, for example:

• Increased alertness
• Helps with learning
• Improved memory
• Boost to immunity
• Enhance athletic performance

Generally considered best is simply the famous 7–9 hours at night (yes, including at older ages): Why You Probably Need More Sleep

…and sleep efficiency does matter too: Why 7 Hours Sleep Is Not Enough

…which in turn, is influenced by factors other than just length and depth: The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

However, as we’ve said before elsewhere, often what is best is not necessarily what is attainable, so if you struggle to get the aforementioned sleep quantity and quality, then you might want to consider: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

There are more considerations, though, for example:

• How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration ← here’s why you should still get up at the same regular (and ideally, early) hour, even if you didn’t sleep well
• Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment ← and here’s why that regular hour should ideally be early, even if it’s not your genetic predisposition to be a “morning lark”; see also the study linked there that mentions “Gene distinguishes early birds from night owls and helps predict time of death”

One important thing to bear in mind: naps are not special

By this we mean: it might feel special to you at the time, taking a little slice of time for yourself, but scientifically speaking, it’s no more special than longer sleep, and in fact, it’s often less restorative, minute for minute, if you don’t time it perfectly.

The reason we mention this is because there is a sizeable (albeit revolving door) subculture of enthusiasts of polyphasic sleeping (i.e. sleeping more than once per day, by napping one or more times) with the goal of sleeping fewer hours in total by making sleep more efficient.

It does not work, except insofar as it can allow you to survive a crisis that is stopping you from sleeping properly. But this is sleep’s equivalent of “fight or flight”, it’s the body’s admittedly very impressive “emergency mode” that is not good to use on a daily basis!

Learn more: Adverse impact of polyphasic sleep patterns in humans—Report of the National Sleep Foundation sleep timing and variability consensus panel

(if you want to know just how bad it is… the top-listed “similar article” is entitled “Suicidal Ideation”)

For more on the woes of trying to force one’s body into polyphasic sleeping in order to sleep less in total, we covered this some years ago: Polyphasic Sleep… Super-Schedule Or An Idea Best Put To Rest?

One last thing: if you’re finding you need to nap a lot, then:

1. You probably should indeed nap
2. That is probably something you should get checked out, though

For example, researchers (Dr. Ruixue Cai et al.) tracked 1,338 older adults (aged 56+) for up to 19 years using wearable devices to objectively measure daytime napping patterns, and found that longer naps, more frequent naps, and naps taken in the morning were all linked to higher all-cause mortality in later life.

Specifically, each extra hour of daytime napping was associated with a 13% higher mortality risk, each additional daily nap with a 7% increase, and morning nappers had a 30% higher risk compared to afternoon nappers.

Now, these findings show correlation, not causation, meaning excessive napping likely reflects underlying issues such as neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease, or circadian rhythm disruption, rather than being a case of the naps being the culprit causing death.

So to recap the main point of this last bit: if you’re finding you have to nap a lot, you should probably get that checked out, because while not itself dangerous so far as best current science can say, it may be a sign that “something wrong is not right”.

You can read this paper here: Objectively Measured Daytime Napping Patterns and All-Cause Mortality in Older Adults

Want to learn more?

This is the book on sleep:

Why We Sleep – by Dr. Matthew Walker

Enjoy!