Scientists reveal worrying link if you have regular nightmares

Whether you can nod off anywhere or you toss and turn all night, sleep plays a major part in our health.

It's common knowledge that we need around seven to nine hours a night, and not getting enough can be bad for us.

The average person spends a third of their lives asleep - yet, some of us still bolt awake at 3am for seemingly no reason.

Six years of that precious sleep time is spent dreaming.

While exactly how and why we dream is unclear, one study has suggested that having nightmares could be linked to a common brain syndrome.

Bad dreams could be more problematic than we imagined (Oleg Breslavtev/Getty Images)

Abidemi Otaiku, an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Neurology at the University of Birmingham, shared the surprising findings from his 2022 study.

Published in The Lancet's eClinicalMedicine journal, the study showed having 'frequent bad dreams and nightmares' that wake you up during middle age or older may be linked with an increased risk of developing dementia.

Dementia is a term for several diseases that affect memory, thinking, and the ability to perform daily activities.

Three large US studies of health and aging, made up of thousands of people, were analyzed. They were followed for between five and nine years depending on their age.

Otaiku analyzed the data to find out whether 'participants with a higher frequency of nightmares at the beginning of the study were more likely to go on to experience cognitive decline and be diagnosed with dementia'.

The study suggested nightmares could be a cause of dementia (Tech Images/Science Photo Library)

The study found that middle-aged participants who experienced nightmares every week were four times more likely to experience cognitive decline, which can lead to dementia.

Older participants were twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia.

The connection between nightmares and future dementia was also a lot stronger for men than for women. Older men who had nightmares every week were five times more likely to develop dementia, compared with older men reporting no bad dreams.

But in women, the increase in risk was only 41 percent.

Otaiku wrote: "Overall, these results suggest frequent nightmares may be one of the earliest signs of dementia, which can precede the development of memory and thinking problems by several years or even decades – especially in men.

"Alternatively, it is also possible that having regular bad dreams and nightmares might even be a cause of dementia.

"Given the nature of this study, it is not possible to be certain which of these theories is correct (though I suspect it is the former)."

I guess that's one more worry that might keep you up at night...