 who have bad dreams once a week are four times more likely to experience cognitive decline over the followin){kind=link}
Dr Miriam Stoppard looks into fascinating research from Birmingham University that shows distressing dreams might be connected to cognitive decline in later life
Now here’s an interesting one â people who have nightmares in middle age run the risk of dementia in later life.
This surprising news comes from a Birmingham University study and suggests nightmares may be an early warning sign of dementia long before it sets in.
Dr Abidemi Otaiku, of the university’s Centre for Human Brain Health, said: “We’ve demonstrated for the first time that distressing dreams, or nightmares, can be linked to dementia risk, and cognitive decline among healthy adults in the general population.
“This is important because there are very few risk indicators for dementia that can be identified as early as middle age. While more work needs to be done to confirm these links, we believe bad dreams could be a useful way to identify individuals at high risk of developing dementia, and put in place strategies to slow down the onset of disease.”