Power naps can keep your head from shrinking: study

After-sunrise snobs have something to shout about. A study of 378,932 UK residents found that napping during the day improves brain function and health.

Researchers used data from the UK Biobank to conduct the study, which was published in the journal Sleep Health and reported yesterday by the New York Post.

“Daytime sleepiness has been associated with cognitive function and mental health in observational studies—but it is unclear whether these associations are causal,” the authors note. “Using Mendelian randomization, we studied the relationship between normal daytime sleep and cognition and brain structure.”

The sleep report was coordinated by scientists at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay; University College London; Massachusetts General Hospital; and Harvard Medical School.

“Our results were total brain volume, hippocampal volume, reaction time and visual memory,” the researchers said.

And the bigger the brain, the better.

According to the US National Institutes of Health, brain volume declines with age—by as much as 5 percent per year after age 40.

The sleep study analyzed sleep frequency—showing that sleep length and duration also affect cognitive function.

Longtime experts and biohackers have said that in an increasingly busy world, adequate sleep is needed.

Billionaire biohacker Brian Johnson emphasizes that sleep, healthy eating, and avoiding unhealthy habits are a great way to start living a long, healthy life.

In his $4 million quest for immortality, Johnson says he prioritizes sleep above all else.

“There is nothing more important to me than sleep,” Johnson told Decrypt. “I plan my meals, my social events, my work schedule, everything around sleep, which is the complete opposite of what society does now.

In November, a separate international study of 60,000 people in the UK found that people with less regular sleep were more likely to die before the age of 75.

“Sleep regularity was a significant predictor of cardiometabolic, cancer, and other causes of death in competing-risk proportional hazard models,” according to the report by the Illinois-based Sleep Research Association.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.