Taking naps is turning out to be the most preferred hobby of the Internet generation. Your sleep pattern tells much more than just how lazy you are. It actually indicates how fit or disease-free you are.
If you are one of those people who dozes off for hours during the day, you’re probably suffering from an underlying health condition.
For a really long time we believed that naps were good for our health, but turns out it was all just a myth. Long naps, like those for an hour or longer, point towards ill-health. However, shorter naps (sometimes called power naps) of 30 minutes at most are still a positive habit as they energize the person for the rest of the day.
A new study from Cambridge University found that people who frequently take day-time naps of an hour or longer tend to die younger than those who forgo it.
The team discovered that it’s most likely an underlying health condition that is causing fatigue and inspiring the naps.
The researchers followed around 16,000 British men and women aged 40 to 79 over the course of 13 years. People were categorized in three groups according to their napping habits – people who napped for more than an hour, people who napped for less than an hour and people who did not take naps at all. Other factors like gender, socioeconomic status, alcohol and mental illness were controlled by the researchers.
At the end of the study, it was discovered that people who napped for more than an hour had a 32% greater chance of dying earlier than those who did not nap.
As per Medical Daily reports, the cause of those deaths varied but included heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness.
Although the researchers are yet to find the link between long naps and possible risk of death at a younger age, they are certain about the correlation between nap time and mortality.
This means you are more likely to die sooner if you sleep like Kumbhkaran than you’d die if you were Virus from 3 Idiots who believed in 7.5 minutes long power naps.
Sleep well but not so much.
