Are naps good for our health?

Having an afternoon nap is a daily ritual for many. The Spanish usually enjoy a siesta and Japanese workers indulge in a lunchtime sleep, known as hirune, or "afternoon nap". Some office workers recommend a power nap to quickly boost alertness. Us Brits tend to favour an hour or so napping in the comfy chair after Sunday lunch or the big Christmas family meal. We tend to catch forty winks or indulge in a catnap.

Since retiring, so many have asked me whether I'm having a regular lie-in in the morning. No, not really - however I'm rediscovering the health benefits of napping during the day. 

A study by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of the Republic in Uruguay in 2023 analysed data from 35,000 people, aged 40 to 69, who had taken part in a study by UK Biobank, a biomedical database ad research resource. The brains of people who napped several times a week were more than 15 cubic cm (0.9 cubic inches) larger than the brains of people who never had a daytime nap.

This equates to delaying ageing of the brain by between three to six years, says lead author Victoria Garfield, a senior research fellow at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL. "The big finding was that daytime napping is, quite robustly, causally linked to having a larger brain volume," says Garfield. 

"Anything you can do to preserve your brain size for as long as possible is a good thing," says Garfield. "It's a really positive message that having a nap could help the brain."