Napping characteristics and incident dementia | Hacker News Reader

Napping characteristics and incident dementia

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40 pointsbookofjoe27 comments

Unintentional napping was associated with possible/probable dementia.

Intentional napping was not.

One could easily reverse cause and effect here.

Easily. I'm 80% sure that they did reverse cause and effect.

Yeah I feel like the results could be stated more clearly. At any rate this doesn't seem to associate risk with any chosen behavior.

It seems to me that perhaps the data better supports that dementia is correlated with unintentional and short naps. This makes it sound like they think it is causal, which I doubt.

Yes, ironically they even admit possible reverse causal effect along with many other causal variables. Frankly, this is not exactly stellar research in my view, at least with the rather reckless insinuations not supported.

This was how I read it as well. Having a neurological issue that causes you to fall asleep in the middle of the day would logically be a good thing to check for correlation with dementia risk. Separate from not needing to nap, but choosing to.

"unintentional napping"

I used to 'unintentionally nap' all the time since I was a teen.

Then I discovered I had sleep apnea. No more napping. And dementia has been linked to sleep apnea.

I wonder if this study is missing some quite big issues here.

> I wonder if this study is missing some quite big issues here.

Definitely seems like a possible "correlation is not causation".

I would find it hard to believe that sleep is somehow biologically harmful.

So, like your example, excessive or unintentionally napping is instead a sign of an underlying issue or poor health. Possibly the body trying to sleep to repair some damage?

My father in law had the same issue resolved by a CPAP machine. No more naps.

My sleep doctor was skeptical that I had sleep apnea during my initial consult because I indicated I don’t doze off unintentionally, even though I told her I consume 1000mg of caffeine a day to manage the sleepiness. I did tell her I took intentional naps on the weekends.

My sleep study revealed an average of 39 apnea events an hour and now I have a CPAP and am sleeping much better!

I feel like “unintentional napping” should not be called napping…

Napping for me means intentionally having a short sleep. I don’t know what unintentional napping is.

I wonder what unitentional napping means as well. I assume it's for example watching TV/reading a book on the sofa and falling asleep as opposed to wanting to fall asleep with a book or while watching TV.

I am a frequent intentional napper (< 30 minutes). Am I right in reading that I am at baseline risk?

See what I mean?

I think we need to understand what intentional vs unintentional napping is.

Is this not clear from the term?

"I'm going to go take a nap in bed."

"I fell asleep in a chair."

Yet I intentionally nap in the chair when I become overcome with lassitude

Where do you nap when overcome with langour or ennui?

I'm going to guess a chaise and a settee respectively...

No, we need to know how the study defined them, not how you interpret them.

In medicine, sometimes semantics are more important than you think.

It did?

> Among nappers, we further defined napping intention based on the question “In general, were these naps planned, or did you fall asleep without meaning to?” Nappers who answered “naps planned” were classified as intentional nappers, and those who answered “fell asleep without meaning to” or “both (some planned/some not)” were classified as unintentional nappers.

That's still very ambiguous. As defined, "unintentional napping" could be a narcolepsy or symptoms of sleep apnea.

I'd guess this goes back to not getting enough healthy sleep, which is a reason people nap.

Except intentional napping, which could be "yawn, I slept bad last night; I'm gonna go take a nap" is not a risk.

Poor sleep when intended could also be a reason for falling asleep without planning to do so.

Sleep apnea.

disclaimer: I didn't read TFA

drive-by comment: unintentional napping seems likely to occur more in those failing to get actual restful sleep on the regular. Don't we already know chronic sleep deprivation correlates with dementia/alzheimers risk?

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