Next time you sleep for more than 8 hours, think twice.
For most of us, nap time is the best part of our day. Hitting the bed after a hectic long day is the best feeling ever. A good night's sleep works miraculously in regaining the energy and makes us feel stress-free and bright. But where a proper 8 hours of sleep helps in reducing fatigue, increasing alertness, improving mood and cognitive performance, a longer nap does more harm than good to your body. While a long sleep once in a while makes you feel all rejuvenated, turning this into a long-lasting and frequent habit could possibly bring about serious health issues. Some of which are listed below.
Irregular sleeping patterns
A longer nap especially during the daytime affects your sleep at night which again makes you sleepy the next day. It is a vicious cycle that continues, if you don't control it and ultimately create an irregular sleeping pattern. An irregular sleeping pattern causes several health disorders starting from digestive issues to insomnia to weight gain, etc.
Poor Cognitive function
Where brief naps that last 15 minutes or less may improve cognitive functioning, longer naps have the opposite effect. Sleeping longer than a quarter of an hour may make you a victim of sleep inertia, it is a feeling of disorientation or grogginess for a period of time after waking. This can lead to temporarily being unable to perform high functioning tasks or tasks involving memory recall.
Serious Health conditions
Lack of proper sleep and also much sleepy behaviour, both have adverse effects on our health. Studies have shown that naps lasting more than 60 minutes a day increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 50 per cent and metabolic syndrome by 50 per cent. Along with that, another research has also found that naps lasting longer than an hour significantly increased the risk of cardiovascular disease by 82 per cent.
Shorter life expectancy
While much research is being needed to fully prove this fact, some studies have shown that for longer naps the risk of all-cause mortality increased by 27 per cent. While on the other hand, short daytime naps increased risk by only 7 per cent.
Obesity
Lastly, if you are on a diet and want to lose weight, before concentrating on anything else, you should work on your sleep cycles. A recent study shows that people who slept for 9- 10 hours every night were 21% more likely to become obese over six years than were people who slept between 7-8 hours. Even after accounting for the food intake and exercise this value didn’t change.
