Finding time for a little snooze good for the brain: Report

Finding time for a little snooze during the day is good for our brain, a report by the BBC said on Tuesday (June 20) quoting researchers at the University College London (UCL). The researchers said that nappers' brains were 15 cubic centimetres larger- equivalent to delaying ageing by between three and six years. But they recommended keeping the naps to less than half an hour.

Researchers also said that sleep during the daytime was hard in many careers with work culture often frowning on the practice.

Speaking to the BBC, researcher Dr Victoria Garfield suggested that everybody could potentially experience some benefit from napping. Dr Garfield added that the advice to nap is "something quite easy" to do in comparison to weight loss or exercise which are "difficult for a lot of people".

Poor sleep damaging brain over time: Researchers

The UCL researchers suggested that poor sleep is damaging the brain over time by causing inflammation and affecting the connections between brain cells. "Thus, regular napping could protect against neurodegeneration by compensating for deficient sleep," another researcher Valentina Paz said.

The report said that Dr Garfield is not about to find a comfy spot to snooze at work and preferred other ways of looking after her brain, such as exercising.

Napping is beneficial

As per the report, researchers used a technique to prove that napping is beneficial. They used a gigantic natural experiment based on DNA. They took data from around 35,000 people from the ages of 40-69, taking part in the UK Biobank project and simply compared those genetic "nappers" and "non-nappers".

The results of this experiment showed a 15 cubic centimetre difference, which is equivalent to 2.6 to 6.5 years of ageing.

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