Frequent nightmares accelerate biological aging and raise mortality risk more than smoking or obesity, experts warn.
United States: Being scared to death may not be an empty metaphor when it comes to nightmares.
The new study in the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) annual meeting shows that people with frequent nightmares seem to triple the chances of early death.
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Those people also exhibit symptoms of severe biological age acceleration, as their organisms bear marks and effects of increased wear and tear more than suggested by their age of birth, researchers state.
Most probably, it can be explained by the fact that nightmares often put pressure on a sleeping body, researchers added.
'I have nightmares quite frequently…'@EamonnHolmes reveals his most common nightmares, following reports that frequent bad dreams can triple the risk of early death and accelerate biological ageing.
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According to the lead researcher, Dr. Abidemi Otaiku, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London in the U.K., “Our sleeping brains cannot distinguish dreams from reality,” US News reported.
“That’s why nightmares often wake us up sweating, gasping for breath, and with our hearts pounding – because our fight-or-flight response has been triggered,” he noted.
“This stress reaction can be even more intense than anything we experience while awake,” he added.
In the study, researchers combined the results on more than 2,400 children aged between 8 and 10 and 183,000 adults aged between 26 and 86 who participated in American health research.
The telomeres were used to measure the biological age of the participants and how long they were, consisting of small segments of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes and stop them from unspooling, just like the plastic caps on shoelaces.
Telomere length has been set as one way of measuring how fast the record of a person is aging in relation to those cells as opposed to how a person actually is aged, researchers indicated.
The results indicate that adults who reported instances of nightmares on a weekly basis had an increased tendency to die earlier compared to those who did not prior to age 70 at the track of 19 years of follow-up by over three times, US News reported.
Researchers said these nightmares were the better predictors of early death compared to other risk factors such as smoking, being obese, and having poor diets, as well as being physically inactive.
Researchers also found faster biological aging among children and adults who had more nightmares.
About 40 percent of the risk, which makes the participants prone to death, is attributed to this accelerated aging, the researchers estimate.
Furthermore, “Nightmares lead to prolonged elevations of cortisol, a stress hormone closely linked to faster cellular aging. For those who frequently experience nightmares, this cumulative stress may significantly impact the aging process,” Otaiku noted.
“Additionally, nightmares disrupt both sleep quality and duration, impairing the body’s essential overnight cellular restoration and repair,” Otaiku continued.
“The combined effects of chronic stress and disrupted sleep likely contribute to the accelerated aging of our cells and bodies.”