Constant nightmares can indicate the development of dementia

 A British scientist has found that nightmares and bad dreams, which often wake a person up, may be associated with an increased risk of developing dementia.

This does not apply to children - the author of the study, neurologist Abidemi Otaiku, separately emphasizes that the increased risk of developing dementia may be associated with poor sleep in middle-aged or elderly people.

Otayku's work was published in the journal eClinicalMedicine.

The scientist analyzed data from three large American studies, which involved more than 600 people aged 35-64 and 2,600 people aged 79+.

None of them had dementia at the start of the study, and each was then followed: participants in the middle-aged group for nine years, participants in the "older group" for about five. In addition, they all filled out a series of questionnaires, including one about people's sleep and nightmares.

It found that those in the "middle group" who had nightmares every week were four times more likely to experience cognitive decline (a predictor of dementia) over the next decade; at the same time, dementia was diagnosed twice as often in the "older" group.

Moreover, the connection between nightmares and the disease is much stronger in men than in women. For example, elderly men who had nightmares every week were five times more likely to have dementia compared to those who did not report nightmares. In women, the increased risk was only 41%. In the middle-aged group, the situation is very similar.

"These results suggest that frequent nightmares may be one of the early signs of dementia, which may precede the development of memory and thinking problems by several years or even decades, especially in men," the scientist writes in his column. He also suggests that bad dreams may not be a sign, but even a cause of the disease.

In the future, the scientist hopes to study the connection between nightmares and dementia among young people.