Nightmares are a good predictor of future dementia – new study
Abidemi Otaiku does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
We spend a third of our lives asleep. And a quarter of our time asleep is spent dreaming. So, for the average person alive in 2022, with a life expectancy of around 73, that clocks in at just over six years of dreaming.
Yet, given the central role that dreaming plays in our lives, we still know so little about why we dream, how the brain creates dreams, and importantly, what the significance of our dreams might be for our health – especially the health of our brains.
My latest study, published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine journal, shows that our dreams can reveal a surprising amount of information about our brain health. More specifically, it shows that having frequent bad dreams and nightmares (bad dreams that make you wake up) during middle or older age, may be linked with an increased risk of developing dementia.
In the study, I analysed data from three large US studies of health and ageing. These included over 600 people aged between 35 and 64, and 2,600 people aged 79 and older.
