Neurologists at the University of Birmingham have found that bad dreams in childhood are associated with an increased risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases in old age. Study published magazine Lancet.
Children between the ages of 7 and 11 who regularly have bad dreams and nightmares may be almost twice as likely to develop cognitive impairment by age 50. Additionally, they may be seven times more (640%) at risk of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease by the age of 50.
The scientists used data from a study that tracked the lives of children born in 1958. When the children were 7 and 11 years old, their mothers answered a series of questions about their health, including whether they had had bad dreams in the past three months.
“We got data on 7,000 children divided into three groups. The first never had nightmares, the second had occasional nightmares, and the third always had nightmares. The results were clear. The more often the children had bad dreams, the more likely they were to develop neurodegenerative diseases.
In future work, the team hopes to confirm the study’s data as well as identify the exact causes of this addiction.