Everyone will have dreams, which are the stage of normal sleep state, but if you often have nightmares, you should be careful. A British study found that people who often had nightmares in childhood had a nearly 80% higher risk of developing cognitive impairment diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or Parkinson’s disease in old age than those who did not have nightmares.
Long-term tracking of 7,000 people
The study was conducted by the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Since 1958, researchers have tracked about 7,000 newborn babies born in a certain week in March of that year, and asked them whether they had frequent nightmares when they were 7 and 11 years old. Their cognitive abilities were then assessed when they reached the age of 50.
nearly double the risk
The results showed that about 3.8% of these people suffered from cognitive impairment and Parkinson’s disease. Among them, those who often had nightmares at the age of 7 and 11 had a 76% higher risk of cognitive impairment in the future than their peers who had fewer nightmares ; and nearly 7 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. Overall, those who had frequent childhood nightmares had an 85 percent higher risk of developing cognitive impairment or Parkinson’s disease by age 50, compared with those who had fewer nightmares. Relevant research has been published in “Lancet”.
Relationship to be clarified
The researchers pointed out that the results of this study show that the higher the frequency of nightmares in children, the more likely they are to develop cognitive impairment in old age, especially the risk of Parkinson’s disease is not low. However, he emphasized that nightmares are only related to cognitive impairment, but more research is needed to determine the causal relationship. One of the reasons may be genetics, and frequent nightmares can also damage sleep quality, which in turn can damage health.
Experts believe that if you often have nightmares, you may need to seek help and deal with them as soon as possible, so as to reduce the risk of illness in the future.
