This Sleep Occurrence May Indicate Your Risk Of Dementia

Your sleep patterns can tell you a lot about your health, including a possible risk for cognitive decline.

Dreams are normal occurrences for everyone, and most people report having occasional nightmares. However, the frequency of your nightmares, and how old you are when you experience them, might reveal information about your risk for dementia.

Research shows that experiencing frequent distressing dreams and nightmares ― meaning, specifically, frightening dreams that cause you to wake up ― may be linked with a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

A 2023 analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine concluded that sleep disturbances should be considered when evaluating someone at risk for dementia. Previous research has discovered a possible link between distressing dreams and a higher risk of dementia in people with Parkinson’s disease. And a 2022 study published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine found that some associations may also exist in the general population.

The 2022 study, authored by Dr. Abidemi Otaiku, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College London, evaluated 605 middle-aged adults at a cognitively normal baseline over a maximum of 13 years. Researchers also examined 2,600 older adults, with a mean age of 83, at a dementia-free baseline for a maximum of seven years.

The data suggested that the group of middle-aged adults who reported a higher frequency of nightmares ― classified as once a week or more ― were associated with having a higher risk of cognitive decline. Likewise, for the older adults, the study found that more nightmares were linked to higher risks of “all-cause dementia,” meaning the syndrome can be caused by a number of different diseases.