Dream sleep linked to lower risk of 83 diseases across nearly 100,000 adults |
Most sleep studies ask people how long they slept and take them at their word, but this time researchers strapped accelerometers to nearly 100,000 wrists for a week and measured which phases of sleep people spent time in, as well as total duration.
The results, published in PLOS Medicine and drawn from the UK Biobank, followed participants for a median of 8.9 years. More REM sleep, associated with dreaming, was linked to a lower risk of 83 health conditions, including heart failure, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and several forms of dementia. More deep sleep was protective too, but against just seven conditions, including type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.
That significant gap suggests REM sleep may be doing far more for long-term health than deep sleep, which is the usual focus of most research. Meanwhile, more time in light sleep and frequent waking during the night were both linked to higher disease risk, including depression and substance dependence.
“Repeatedly going to bed awake and anxious about sleeping can make the brain associate the bed with frustration and alertness,” said Scott Nass, MD, a family medicine physician not involved in the study.
The study also nudged the optimal sleep window to 6–8 hours, slightly shorter than the 7–9 more commonly recommended. But duration may tell only half the story — how much sleep is spent dreaming could matter more than the overall total.
For more on what sleep experts now recommend, jump to “More dream sleep linked to lower risk of 83 diseases, including diabetes.”
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