Excessive napping could be a sign of dementia, study finds

Frequent napping or regularly napping for extended periods during the day may be a sign of early dementia in older adults, a new study revealed.

Elderly adults who napped at least once a day or more than an hour a day were 40% more likely to develop Alzheimer's than those who did not nap daily or napped less than an hour a day, according to the study published Thursday in Alzheimer's and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

"We found the association between excessive daytime napping and dementia remained after adjusting for nighttime quantity and quality of sleep," said co-senior author Dr. Yue Leng, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, in a statement.

The results echo the findings of a previous study by Leng that found napping two hours a day raised the risk of cognitive impairment compared with napping less than 30 minutes a day.

The new study used data gathered over 14 years by the Rush Memory and Aging Project, which followed over 1,400 people between the ages of 74 and 88 (with an average age of 81).