During this period, the participants with frequent bad dreams were more than three times as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. Intriguingly, a significant proportion of the diagnoses happened during the first five years of the study. Those who reported having frequent bad dreams at the beginning of the study were twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s compared with those who had them less than weekly. The participants who reported bad dreams at least once a week were then followed at the end of the study for an average of seven years to see whether they were more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.ĭuring this period, 91 people were diagnosed with Parkinson’s. At the beginning of the study, the men completed a range of questionnaires, one of which included a question about bad dreams. I analysed data from a large US study that contained data over 12 years from 3,818 older men living independently.
Specifically, it showed that developing frequent bad dreams or nightmares in older age could be an early warning sign of imminent Parkinson’s disease in otherwise healthy people. This made me wonder, might the dreams of people who don’t have Parkinson’s predict future health outcomes, too? My latest study, published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine journal, shows that they can. Studies suggest that between 17 per cent and 78 per cent of people with Parkinson’s have nightmares weekly.Ī study I conducted in 2021 found that people newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s who experience recurring dreams with “aggressive or action-packed” content, have more rapid disease progression in the years following their diagnosis, compared with those without aggressive dreams.Īs such, my study, alongside similar studies, strongly suggests that the dreams of people with Parkinson’s can predict future health outcomes. Recent studies have shown that people with Parkinson’s disease have bad dreams and nightmares more often than people without the disease. Yet for about 5 per cent of people, highly memorable and terrifying nightmares (bad dreams that make you wake up) happen on a weekly or even nightly basis. In other words, we dream.įor most people, dreams are mainly pleasant, sometimes negative, often bizarre, but rarely terrifying. BIRMINGHAM, England: Every night when we go to sleep, we spend a couple of hours in a virtual world created by our brains in which we are the main protagonist of an unfolding story we did not consciously create.
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