So my 88 year old mom, who naps frequently, is now at risk for an early death?
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correlation is not equal to causation.
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Not getting enough sleep causes health problems, but also making up for lost sleep causes health problems?.. I guess we’re all just screwed every which way! (Though I’m with everyone else and rather suspect the napping is a symptom rather than a cause.)
I can’t nap, myself - either I fail to sleep entirely, or I wake up several hours later feeling groggy and more tired than when I started, so I’ve always envied people who nap easily. Maybe I need not be so envious…
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which then begs the question, if they forcibly stopped napping and just became sleep deprived would their life expectancy increase or decrease (I think the answer is obvious).
So maybe the napping is actually prolonging what is a shortened life span?
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Uh oh!!
We had better warn Costa Rica, italy, Spain, Greece, Mexico and the Philipines that they’re doing it wrong.
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I have heart disease, blood moves through my body way slower than most people. My cardiologist once showed me my heart cath next to an 85 year old. It ain’t right.
That being said, I can work all day and never get tired or go for a long run or bike ride without needing to nap but if I sit down in the middle of the day I’m out like a light.
Are they related? According to my doctor maybe maybe not, I was tested for sleep disorder and they found nothing so who knows.
I’m drifting in and out right now in my car in the oral surgeon’s parking lot waiting for my wife to get a tooth yanked out. She’s gonna be napping the rest of the day.
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Exactly. These sorts of articles also replace absolute risk with relative risk because the numbers are more dramatic that way. “A 50% increase in risk of cancer!”…. Meaning the risk in the population from this factor went from 0.00001 instances per capita to 0.000015. 
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Clearly, we need more studies.
This thread is making me sooooo tired…
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Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-ngh-snurk-huh? Wha?
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After I had stents put in I had so much more energy. I suspect the headline has things backwards: having heart problems makes you very, very tired.
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It’s certainly the case that folks who have sleep apnea tend to be overweight – so they’ve got a higher risk for bad stuff like diabetes and stroke and whatnot – but they are also getting crappier sleep so need to nap more.
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how very on fleek dreamboatskanky 
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You make a great point. Given the latter possibility, how does one even put together a viable control group for such a study? By knowing the subjects’ medical histories? That would require knowing whether or not any subject had an undiagnosed existing condition related to the napping. Being undiagnosed (read: unknown), I don’t see how a good study can be pulled off.
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Children who drink milk tend to have more cavities in their teeth.
(Because they’re drinking that milk with sugary cereal)
I can hear the ghost of my old psychology professor . . . “Correlation does not equal causation.”
The health conditions described can all cause fatigue. As can stress, which tends to contribute to hypertension.
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Right?!? If I stopped letting myself take naps when I wanted them, I might not live longer, but it would most likely feel longer!
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Worth it. I would rather die than not nap.
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OBJ:
Oh, BULLSHIT, junior.
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You might be able to do something clever if you had a large enough sample and one or more measures that correlate with sleep deprivation, to tease out the people who need more sleep but just don’t get it from the people who need more sleep and nap; but it’d be nontrivial; and you’d also have to contend with answering the question of how much napping is driven by the sort of sleep deprivation that might show up on cognitive measures or reported stimulant use; and how much by physical fatigue that makes lying down and drifting off attractive; but is mostly about feeling worn out rather than specifically being ill-slept.
Might also get something out of twins if there’s enough heritability involved in the potential causes of earlier or later death.
It’s either that or pass the Scientific Testing And Knowledge Enhancement act; and mandate that vampires must perform a battery of cardiac function tests and retain a small portion of the extracted blood for analysis in an approved clinical laboratory when feeding on a sleeping person to enhance our understanding of the population.
I could give up naps in order to live longer, but at what cost? To live in a world without naps…
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