{"id":3002,"date":"2026-05-13T15:30:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/is-napping-a-sign-of-a-deeper-health-problem\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T15:30:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:30:24","slug":"is-napping-a-sign-of-a-deeper-health-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/is-napping-a-sign-of-a-deeper-health-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Is napping a sign of a deeper health problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tHealth\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\tIs napping a sign of a deeper health problem?\t<\/h1>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\tAnna Lamb\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/address>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n\t\t\t5 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\tNew study finds link between certain sleep patterns and higher mortality in older adults\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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If Grandpa occasionally dozes off in front of the TV or squeezes in a power nap after lunch, it\u2019s probably no big deal. But if he can\u2019t keep his eyes open at the breakfast table, even after a full night of sleep, that could be a red flag, according to researchers at Mass General Brigham.<\/p>\n

In a new study<\/a> published in partnership with Rush University Medical Center, excessive napping by older adults is linked with higher mortality rates, signaling a possible connection to underlying disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that older people tend to nap a lot. And we do a lot of work on age-related diseases, so we were thinking napping could predict mortality in older adults,\u201d said Chenlu Gao<\/a>, a researcher in the MGB Department of Anesthesiology, and lead author of the study. Gao is also a research fellow in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this great opportunity to collaborate with the Rush Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center, who have a comprehensive data set,\u201d said Gao. \u201cUsing this data set, we found that there is a connection between daytime napping and mortality in older adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rush Memory and Aging Project, which began in 1997 as a cohort study looking at the cognition and neurodegeneration of older adults in northern Illinois, proved invaluable to Gao\u2019s research. In 2005, the Rush project began having participants wear wrist monitors for 10 days to measure rest-activity data \u2014 allowing researchers to extract extensive information on nap length, frequency, timing, and day-to-day variability.<\/p>\n

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Chenlu Gao. <\/p>\n

Veasey Conway\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhat is great about this study is that it objectively measured daytime napping patterns, not just via self-report,\u201d Gao said.<\/p>\n

At baseline, there was little connection between mortality and subjects who napped within or below the \u201caverage\u201d amount for their age group \u2014 just under an hour for participants in this study whose ages fell mostly in the early 80s range.<\/p>\n

\u201cShort naps, or within one hour per day of napping, are most likely benign or not associated with additional risks,\u201d Gao said. \u201cOur participants, on average, nap about 50 minutes per day, and they take on average about two naps per day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“Short naps, or within one hour per day of napping, are most likely benign or not associated with additional risks.”<\/p>\n

Chenlu Gao<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

By 2025, researchers had access to as much as 19 years\u2019 worth of follow-up statistics from 1,338 total participants \u2014 all in retirement and older than 56. They found that both longer and more frequent naps were associated with higher mortality in the age group observed. Notably, each additional hour of daytime napping per day was associated with a roughly 13 percent higher mortality risk while each extra nap per day was associated with a 7 percent higher mortality risk.<\/p>\n

Gao wants to make one thing clear: These findings do not suggest that the naps cause poor outcomes, but rather that they may serve as a warning sign for underlying disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think naps are more like a reflection of health conditions,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you think about when you get the flu, you tend to be very tired during the day. Maybe you take several naps, but you also have other visible symptoms, so you know the nap is because of the flu. For some older adults who nap a lot during the day, their conditions may not have those very visible symptoms, so they don\u2019t know they have the conditions causing them to feel really tired.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while the study is limited in determining a causal relationship between napping and health, Gao said there could be other factors that explain the associations between the two.  <\/p>\n

\u201cI would imagine that those who are socially more active and also physically more active tend to be less depressed, less anxious, would be napping less,\u201d said Ruixue Cai, another researcher at the MGB Department of Anesthesiology and the second author of the paper. \u201cAnd just anecdotally, when we talk to older adult participants in our other studies, a lot of them say that they were really lonely and bored during the day because they\u2019re retired, and so they would go take a nap.\u201d<\/p>\n

The data revealed another red flag to researchers \u2014 napping in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause for a healthy person, after a night of sleep, they should feel pretty refreshed and able to stay awake in the morning hours, but for people who are not so healthy, they may struggle with sleepiness even in the morning hours,\u201d Cai said.<\/p>\n

According to the study, morning nappers had a 30 percent higher mortality risk compared to those who nap in the early afternoon.<\/p>\n

However, the occasional napper \u2014 regardless of age \u2014 should not be alarmed when they feel like getting some quick shut-eye, Gao said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think those are fine,\u201d she said. \u201cWe usually suggest limiting the naps to 20 minutes, and finish before 2 or 3 p.m., just so it doesn\u2019t affect nighttime sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gao emphasized this new data is no substitute for clinical advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are studies that try to implement long-term nap interventions to see if that will influence health. This is a really good future direction,\u201d she said. \u201cFindings from these studies would tell us how long-term nap habits influence health and inform clinical nap guidelines, beyond our current findings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health Is napping a sign of a deeper health problem? Anna Lamb Harvard Staff Writer May 13, 2026 5 min read New study finds link between certain sleep patterns and higher mortality in older adults If Grandpa occasionally dozes off in front of the TV or squeezes in a power nap after lunch, it\u2019s probably …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":52,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staying-healthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}