A double-edged sword: the association of daytime napping duration and metabolism-related diseases in a Chinese population
Previous studies suggest that daytime napping is associated with the risk of diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver. There is less knowledge about the relationship between daytime nap duration and other metabolic diseases. The author Zhao and colleagues conducted a study titled “A double-edged sword: the association of daytime napping duration and metabolism-related diseases in a Chinese population” published in the “European Journal of Clinical Nutrition”. The summary of findings is below:
Objectives:
To investigate the effect of daytime nap duration on different metabolism-related diseases.
Method:
A total of 3236 participants underwent laboratory tests, physical examination and face to face interview. They were segregated into 4 groups depending upon the nap duration. Logistic regression models were used to study the odds ratios (ORs) of napping duration with four metabolism-related diseases. The interaction between nap, gender and age were investigated through stratified analysis.
Findings:
The study reports that a daytime nap of more than 1 hour is independently associated with a higher prevalence of diabetes, especially among females older than 50 years. On the other hand, the daytime nap of half an hour was associated with a lower prevalence of fatty liver and dyslipidemia in males less than 50 years old, and central obesity in females less than 50 years old.
Although the mechanism for this finding is not yet clear, investigators hypothesized that reduction in the total amount of physical activity and calorie consumption, aggravated symptoms of insomnia and disruption of circadian clock due to long time sleep would be the connecting factors.
Overall, these findings encourage the inclusion of short naps for healthy lifestyle behaviour.
Limitation:
Authors acknowledge future studies to strengthen these findings.
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