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Science

Bad Dreams in Middle Age Could Be Sign of Dementia Risk, Study Suggests (theguardian.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
People who experience frequent bad dreams in middle age may experience a faster rate of cognitive decline and be at higher risk of dementia as they get older, data suggests. If confirmed, the research could eventually lead to new ways of screening for dementia and intervention to slow the rate of decline. From a report: Most people experience bad dreams from time to time, but approximately 5% of adults experience nightmares -- dreams distressing enough to wake them up -- at least once a week. Stress, anxiety, and sleep deprivation are all potential triggers, but previous research in people with Parkinson's disease has also linked frequent distressing dreams to faster rates of cognitive decline, and an increased risk of developing dementia in the future.

To investigate whether the same might be true of healthy adults, Dr Abidemi Otaiku at the University of Birmingham turned to data from three previous studies that have examined people's sleep quality and then followed them over many years, assessing their brain health as well as other outcomes. This included more than 600 middle-aged adults (aged 35 to 64), and 2,600 people aged 79 and older. Their data was analysed using statistical software to find out whether those who experienced a higher frequency of distressing dreams were more likely to go on to experience cognitive decline and be diagnosed with dementia. The research, published in eClinicalMedicine, found that middle-aged people who experienced bad dreams at least once a week were four times more likely to experience cognitive decline over the following decade than those who rarely had nightmares. Among elderly participants, those who frequently reported distressing dreams were twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia in subsequent years.
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Bad Dreams in Middle Age Could Be Sign of Dementia Risk, Study Suggests More

Bad Dreams in Middle Age Could Be Sign of Dementia Risk, Study Suggests

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  • Oh shit!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @07:03PM (#62903169) Journal

    I keep dreaming that Microsoft never dies.

  • With all the alcohol and weed I ingest on a daily basis, I never dream! Ha!

    • It sounds rather like you're not so much having a bad dream, as a bad reality.

    • With all the alcohol and weed I ingest on a daily basis, I never dream! Ha!

      I imagine you're joking, but if not... You probably are dreaming but sleeping long enough afterward (after leaving REM state) to not remember them.

      • Which is really good sleep.

      • It was suppose to be a joke but I guess a lot of people are too uptight for it.

        Also, even if it is true, it's pretty judgemental to think that someone cannot be having a good life while enjoying alcohol and marijuana. I mean, as someone that's a homeowner with zero debt (other then the mortgage, which if sold would net me 200k) and a decent job with better benefits then most the planet, I would say my life is pretty comfortable.

        And yes, if you have a couple drinks (not shit-faced, just a couple drinks) and

  • It is naught that I refuse to appreciate the great volume of scientific fact that has been distilled from studies such as this, but it's like we're running out of great things to study, and all of academia is grasping desperately for the brass ring of relevance.

    We used to laugh at the grants for research into the sex life of a fire fly, yet now, those seem quite high brow.

    • I wonder about dreaming a lot, where the dreams are either neutral or actually fun and exciting??

      I dream a lot...

      What's really fun is when they turn "lucid" and you realize you are in a dream and then the fun/magic really starts and you can do anything.

      Anyway...wonder if that's a good sign if your dreams aren't bad and aren't nightmares...?

  • I have a reoccurring dream where there are wars in Europe, high inflation and gas prices and massive layoffs and a crashing stock market. Wonder what that means? I hope I do not have dementia. I know a guy who does though.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      I hope I do not have dementia. I know a guy who does though.

      I know exactly who you mean. The guy who said the FBI planted secret documents in his private residence, but he wants them back because they're his since he declassified them, but he can't say when he declassified them because he might need those planted documents in his criminal prosecution.

      It makes perfect sense. If you have dementia.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

        I hope I do not have dementia. I know a guy who does though.

        I know exactly who you mean. The guy who said the FBI planted secret documents in his private residence, but he wants them back because they're his since he declassified them, but he can't say when he declassified them because he might need those planted documents in his criminal prosecution.

        It makes perfect sense. If you have dementia.

        That guy is probably going have even worse dreams as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just issued a "strongly worded" 29 page ruling (PDF) [nyt.com] granting the DOJ access to the 100 documents with classified markings (quoting from NYT article (below):

        The Justice Department “argues that the district court likely erred in exercising its jurisdiction to enjoin the United States’ use of the classified records in its criminal investigation and to require the United States to submit the marked classified documents to a special master for review,” a three-judge panel wrote. “We agree.”

        The panel consisted of two Trump appointees — Judges Britt Grant and Andrew L. Brasher — and Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee.

        Mr. Trump “suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was president,” the appeals court wrote. “But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified.”

        The court went on to say, “In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal.”

        Appeals Court Restores Justice Dept.’s Access to Sensitive Files Seized From Trump [nytimes.com]
        DOJ can resume criminal probe of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, appeals court says [cnn.com]

  • Some of the dreams (the pieces I can remember) of late (within the past year or so) have been truly weird. They make no sense as to location (places I've never been) or the people involved.

    I have woken up in the night, but not because the dream is bad (i.e. I'm about to be stabbed). I just wake up. Then fall back asleep a short time later (I think. I'm not checking the clock).

    This is where science would come in handy. Wear a skull cap to record your dreams then play them back at a later time to see wha

    • I read somewhere that the dreams you tend to remember are the ones that happen just before you wake up. So maybe there's some self-selection going on here. So maybe the people that were the focus of the research were the types that easily woke up after a bad dream. Maybe they had lots of "good" dreams as well but they simply slept through it, because, well, why would anyone want to wake up from a good dream?

    • Re:Does weird count as bad? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @09:58PM (#62903567) Journal

      Me too. It's as if somebody installed a Dall-E bot in my head. Sometimes a dream is very detailed even, weaving actual memories together in weird-ass ways: shit that doesn't belong together is forced together anyhow: a starving Microsoft cat shows up at my door meowing for milk (yes, I speak cat in the dream). I give it milk, then it shits out fidget spinners. I don't even like fidget spinners. I try to touch one, but the cat pulls out an asterisk light-saber to defend it. "Oh, you're an ASCII cat" I say and then pull out an EBCDIC light-saber to compete. How does one tell the difference? I don't know, it's a fucking dream.

      My sleeping head seams to have more patience for details and creativity than my day self. I'm kind of jealous of my night head, minus the weird shit.

      • Heh, I have a funny/interesting story of relating to your jealousy. As a full, hard-left brained person (math degree FFS), I’ve never had any natural talent in any of the arts, particularly music and drawing, though I deeply love and admire both. One night years ago, after having eaten a large amount of magic mushrooms and laying in bed drifting out at the end of the night, I would see these wonderfully detailed and colourful “comic book” type images moving through my head. Pretty common w

  • or can't remember them?
    I only dream a few times a year & always something dreadfully mundane, going back my childhood.
    I was a precocious reader & devoured books of all kinds well into my 40s plus so much TV & movies yet NEVER a single dream about any of it, not Star Trek, Star Wars, WW2, nothing I can recall, not even once.

    • That's what I was going to ask. I rarely remember a dream at all. When I do it's as detailed and vivid as anyone else's, from what I can tell.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by haruchai ( 17472 )

        Are those dreams you remember obvious dreams or do you think they're real, until you wake up?
        Except for extremely rare cases, mine are difficult to tell apart from waking life. I usually have to rely on recognizing a very improbable scenario or when the dream is taking place in the wrong city, country or season.

        • Almost all of them seem real. I rarely ever have a dream recognizable as such, and when I do, it's usually indistinct and fleeting even while I'm having it (at least, that's how I remember it when I wake up.) I've heard of this lucid dreaming thing but I've never realized I was dreaming and stayed that way long enough to try it.

    • I'm not a doctor, but I read that as "then you're okay".

      The study here seems to have focussed on dreams that woke you up (and so can be remembered, at least to some degree). You're unlikely to remember a dream unless you wake up shortly after it, otherwise your gradual "rise" from REM sleep will give your brain a chance to forget it.

      Again, not a doctor here, but if there's really a link, it's probably that you need plenty of healthy sleep - and if you don't get it, then you're at risk of a variety of issues

    • What if you don't dream? or can't remember them?

      Then you fit into the baseline, people who did not report bad dreams. There are always chances to have dementia one day, what the article says is that larger chances were observed in people reporting bad dreams.

    • People who want to remember dreams can do the following

      1. Keep a notepad by the bed
      2. When going to sleep, remind yourself to write down anything you can remember if you wake up in the night
      3. rinse and repeat

      It may take a bit, but you will eventually get into the habit of recording your dreams when they are still fresh in your memory

  • Correlation but not causation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Babel-17 ( 1087541 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @08:21PM (#62903365)

    If we found that people who went broke were more prone to dementia, would it be a low bank balance that caused it, or the stressors in their life, and/or not being able to purchase healthy food?

    The bad dreams might actually be healthy to have, and it's actually a matter of the distress that causes our mind to want to have them that causes the dementia.

    Another way of looking at it might be that while there's a correlation to people who have scars and people who've had a lot of infections, it's not the scars that cause infection, if anything they are part of the process of the body healing.

    But yeah, it might be good for doctors to look into giving extra attention to people who report a lot of bad dreams, they could be a warning of there being problems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      If it was a strong enough association then we might use low bank balance as a screening factor.

      The assumption that bad dreams cause dementia is yours. The summary mentions using it as a risk factor for screening in the second sentence.

    • Or, perhaps it is the Dream Police exacting their punishment on your waking self

  • I dreamed I had an elevated risk of getting dementia. Do I have time to get my affairs in order?

  • Overheating (Score:3)

    by evil_aaronm ( 671521 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @10:25PM (#62903615)
    If I have memorable dreams, they're almost always from overheating: the room is too warm for whatever blankets I'm using. And I've experienced this to the point that when I start having a bad dream, my watchdog process wakes me up enough to kick the blankets off of me, tell myself it's all imaginary, and to go back to sleep. In the morning, I don't even really recall what the dream was, just that I had one and had to adjust for body temperature. That said, I could still be suffering from dementia and just not know it. No one close to me has suggested as much, so I'm not so worried about it. Yet.
    • But it seems to me that most often disturbing dreams are associated with fatigue and the general level of stress in life. We've all been living on a powder keg since 2020, and the level of anxiety is on the rise. I see serious discussions of a nuclear strike on the news. What should I be thinking? I don't have a bunker like it was in the 80s.. I can only ignore what is happening and treat the nerves with available methods - https://thirdshroom.com/product-category/magic-mushroom-gummies/ [thirdshroom.com] And yes .. After s

  • When I was 45 I had nightmares that I'd get dementia.

    Oh no.. .a self-fulfilling prophecy!

    Aaaarg!

  • Well, if you're 45 and "sleep poorly" when you sleep, in the US it probably means not enough time to do so and too many things on your mind when you do.

    Let's take two, one-off theories:
    1) bad dreams can be a reflection of a non-stop economic/health/family situation where you are trying hard to just keep all of the balls in the air, maybe the kids go to college and you're trying not to think about living too long and requiring long-term care
    2) bad dreams are a symptom of poor health or poorly cared for healt

  • I can't remember the last time I had a dream.

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