New research has been published in the United States of America that serves as a fresh warning to people who get sleepy during the daytime.

Pretty much everyone has been there – and if they say they haven’t they are lying – when you’ve come back from lunch and all your eyes want to do is shut for a little bit.

The yawns start and the urge for a little snooze takes over. So what do we do? Get a coffee or cup of tea, usually, to power through the rest of the afternoon before we can inevitably doom scroll until 2am when we get home.

Well, there may be a more serious side to feeling knackered and needing to sleep during the day.

Not just that, it is also if you are feeling a lack of enthusiasm to complete the activities at hand.

A new study has been published in the online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

In the paper, released on Wednesday (6 November), it warns that people who get sleepy in the day are at risk of developing a particular kind of syndrome.

Study author Victoire Leroy, MD, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, said: “Our findings emphasise the need for screening for sleep issues.

“There’s potential that people could get help with their sleep issues and prevent cognitive decline later in life.”

The syndrome is a pre-dementia syndrome, which can cause really troubling issues later in life.

People with the syndrome have a slow walking speed and say they have some memory issues; although they do not have a mobility disability or dementia.

Called motoric cognitive risk syndrome, the condition can occur before dementia develops.

The study found that people with excessive daytime sleepiness and a lack of enthusiasm to get things done were more likely to develop the syndrome than people without those sleep-related issues.

The research does not prove that these sleep-related issues cause the syndrome, it only shows an association.

A total of 445 people with an average age of 76 were involved in the study; none of which had dementia. Those involved filled out questionnaires for sleep at the start of the study. They were asked about memory issues and their walking speed was tested on a treadmill at the start of the study and then once a year for an average of three years.

The sleep assessment asked questions such as how often people had trouble sleeping because they wake up in the middle of the night, cannot fall asleep within 30 minutes, or feel too hot or cold and whether they take medicine to help them sleep.

The question to assess excessive daytime sleepiness asks how often people have had trouble staying awake while driving, eating meals or engaging in social activity. The question on enthusiasm asks how much of a problem people have had keeping up enough enthusiasm to get things done.

A total of 177 people met the definition for poor sleepers and 268 met the definition for good sleepers. At the start of the study, 42 people had motoric cognitive risk syndrome. Another 36 people developed the syndrome during the study.

“More research needs to be done to look at the relationship between sleep issues and cognitive decline and the role played by motoric cognitive risk syndrome,” Leroy said. “We also need studies to explain the mechanisms that link these sleep disturbances to motoric cognitive risk syndrome and cognitive decline.”