Nightmares can be stressful when they happen, but could they actually have long-term health implications? New research suggests there may be a link between disturbed sleep in childhood and the development of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s in older adults (https://longevity.technology/lifestyle/unsettling-dreams-the-surprising-link-between-nightmares-and-dementia/).
Everyone has bad dreams sometimes, and it’s not like we have a lot of control over them. That’s especially true when we’re children and don’t have a lot of say in how we live our lives in general. That’s part of what makes a potential link between nightmares and neurodegeneration so scary.
In some ways, it makes sense that bad dreams can have a big impact. We all know that sleep is essential to recovery, so disturbed sleep will have poor implications. Plus, we already knew that adults with poor sleep can develop health problems. The latest study, however, looked specifically at children, and it showed similar results.
This study was a longitudinal study in the truest sense, beginning when its participants were born in 1958. In 1965 and 1969, when the children were aged 7 and 11 respectively, their parents were quizzed about whether their children had experienced nightmares in the previous three months. Most of the children, around 78%, didn’t have any reported sleep problems. Nearly 18% appeared to have occasional bad dreams, but for just under 4%, the nightmares were persistent.
By 2008, when the participants were 50 years old, five out of 262 had developed Parkinson’s. Analysis suggested that they were seven times more likely to have done so if they had experienced more bad dreams as children. They were also 76% more likely to be diagnosed with a cognitive impairment. Another major study suggested that middle-aged adults with a history of nightmares were more likely to undergo cognitive decline, including making the development of dementia twice as likely.
The next question is if nightmares can cause neurodegeneration, how can we stop having nightmares? One study suggests that listening to positive sounds while you’re asleep may be able to help. Swiss researchers experimented with redirecting participants’ thoughts during the day, encouraging them to divert memories of their nightmares into good images, which they could then carry into their sleep.
Of course, showing a correlation is not the same as saying bad dreams are a definite cause of neurodegeneration, but it’s certainly an area that deserves further study.
