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Frequent and Unintentional Daytime Napping Linked to Higher Dementia Risk in Older Adults
(publichealth.jhu.edu)
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2026
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So as long as I intentionally nap, I'm good right?
Found a time traveller.
Well, that seems like a VERY critically important decimal point. lol
WEirdly that is 36.5 days into the future. hmm.
edit: Oh, duh. 365 days in a year, the nines repeat meaning it is 0.1 years, so naturaly 36.5 days.
Nobody tested for daylight saving time change I see.
If Daylight Savings wasn't stupid enough already, it also starts and ends on different dates around the world ... 😑
The last time OP was this early, the Big Bang wasn't even a theory.
Napping seems like an indicator something funky's going on with yo sleep
Or there's a particularly good sunbeam shining on the couch. Could be that.
It is a quest!
In my case, if I eat around noon, I have to take a nap around 1, I just get super sleepy after lunch and will nod off whether I want to or not, even standing up. Always have. I’m probably meant to be somewhere that does siestas. I do well in heat, too.
If I don’t have food it doesn’t happen, so it’s definitely the food and not my sleep.
I've had something similar going on, but I recently learned about "digestive walks". The sleepiness comes from a massive blood sugar spike after eating a meal, but if I do some light exercise, like a 10 to 15 minute walk, right after eating, it pulls the energy straight from the bloodstream, before the sugars have a chance to do damage.
The upshot is no after meal tiredness, better cholesterol, it's easier to manage my weight, and there's much less risk of becoming diabetic. (It's apparently helpful for those who already have diabetes as well.)
What u eating allthetime to get thay? Year-round Thanksgiving lupper? 🤣
Is it carb heavy?
King-sized portions?
Literally any food does it. Doesn’t matter what it is or how much. Its just having anything in my belly around noon makes me sleepy as hell.
When and wat do u eat breakfast? Like when do u break ur overnight fast
Picking apart my diet and habits to try and find a cause for this that agrees with your prior hypothesis is.. umm..
Its always been like this, like I said, regardless of how the reat of my diet and day are structured, its just a thing my body does.
Got it, later. Keep in mind im just as open to the likelihood i have no idea, its just a curious state ive not heard of. People have covered all the other usual suspects like apnea and such so you do you.
Apnea is extremely prevalent and underdiagnosed in particular and its not really ever inconsistent with "its how ive always been" because thats the point—they were always undiagnosed until someone nudged them to take a closer look.
Best
PS - if your parents have the same tendency it may be hereditary/genetic. Be curious about it, as easy as it is to simply sleep it away it might be your body trying to tell you something important
If your body was getting sufficient sleep its unllikely you would feel so tired by midday even if there's a dietary issue at play as well but ill leave it at that. You are your body's pointperson on whats best for You
I ('ve) accepted that
I don’t have sleep apnea.
Again, its not being tired at mid-day. If I don’t eat, I don’t get sleepy at all. I almost never eat lunch at work anymore because when I do, I go down for a nap. It’s a direct causal relationship, or at the very least I can’t find any other reason for it. Lots of people have weird quirks to their biology. Probably most of us.
Its most likely just my parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for the “rest and digest” calming reflex) goes into overdrive that time of day because I tend to have a lot of energy to burn between waking and noon, and eating tells my body it can rest by stimulating the vagus nerve. Not worth doing further digging, no.
Interesting, I've never heard of any situation like yours. I still feel like its worth exploring altho I have no idea what I would do if i was in your sitch.
Maybe some other Lemming resonates with it and jumps in but very strange in any case.
I guess the only last crucial question I can envisage is:
- do you honedtly recall your childhood having the same "problem" (i dont know that its actually a problem for you subjectively, only that you've noted an interesting example in which your body is physically deviant in its reaction to lunch leading to fatigue requiring actual filler sleep)
Like in your school days: did you eat at around 11-12:30ish and need naptime medically as an accomodation from the school for you to get thru the school day? Or did you just fall asleep in class and get chronically scolded by teacher?? Even when a teenager and much younger? When did it "start"?
If not, what changed
Sleep apnea for me. Once I got a CPAP I finally felt like my body was healing overnight and I miraculously had energy to do stuff and not just nap during the day.
South Europe took that personally
I like everything about the concept of siestas ezcept it seems like they might screw with the quality of sleep and ease of falling asleep at acrual nightime.
It'd probably better if they just used that as chill time and have some tea or something (like the Brits). I dont see how its devaluing of night sleep can end well, at least in the long term anyway
I like everything about the concept of siestas ezcept it seems like they might screw with the quality of sleep and ease of falling asleep at acrual nightime.
Their dinnertime and bedtime are much later than ours in North American. Lived in Mexico a few decades ago and we were eating dinner 8-9pm and going to bed around 11pm. I don't know if it's changed much though but their culture has been like that for decades before I lived there.
The thing is, make it short. 30 min is the sweet spot, one hour might be pushing it (for me).
Sample size of one, but it's worse for my sleep to check the phone while in bed than to nap a bit after lunch.
That's correlation, not causation. So, they might have precursors of the dementia that leads to unintentional naps...
So, if you are in the very early stages of dementia, it may start causing you to fall asleep unintentionally. Got it.
Yeah that was my first thought. Correlation is not causation
Could just be B12 deficient. I get the sleeps when i have low B12 (also even more irritable than usual) Effects go away directly i get the jab. B12 is used for nerve stuff on the body so there might be a causal pathway there.
Using my highly rigourous studay with a sample size of 1 I therefore conclude the study shows "untreated B12 deficiency corrrlates with higher dementia risk" job done, cure found, all go back to bed!
What do I do to get Lower Dementia?
Death. Death solves all health issues.
Health issues, relationship issues, world problems; death solves everything!
Uh oh