Anyone suffering from recurring nightmares could be suffering health issue, expert says

Most people have a nightmare once in a while: the frustration of running late, the embarrassment of being naked in public, or being chased by some supernatural menace. On average, we go through four or five waves of dream activity in a night, with each dream lasting between 15 and 40 minutes. But usually these dreams – either good or bad – are forgotten soon after waking. Many of the "classic" nightmares, such as falling or suddenly losing your teeth, are symptoms of your mind working through issues in your real life – for example insecurity, or fear of losing sexual potency – and are nothing to really worry about. Science communicator Jorge Alcalde says that if you notice the same nightmares coming back again and again that could be cause for concern. Speaking on Spanish radio show Herrera en COPE, Jorge says that recurrent nightmares could e a warning sign: "A person who feels overwhelmed by frequent nightmares should report them, because it might indicate an underlying emotional issue, anxiety, stress, or depression," he explained. Abidemi Otaiku, MD, Clinical Research Fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute told the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) Congress in 2025 that regular nightmares could be a warning of significant health issues. In what he described as the first major study of its kind, Otaiku and his team found that adults who suffer weekly nightmares were more than three times as likely to die before the age of 75. That's compared to those who rarely or never have to wake up from those bad dreams. Recurring nightmares have been linked to conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with 80% of PTSD sufferers reporting them. They are also strongly associated with depression and anxiety disorders. Other sleep disturbances, such as sleepwalking and restless leg syndrome, can also be signs of some underlying issue, Jorge warns. One of the most extreme, and frightening sleep disturbances is sleep paralysis. One of the body's "safety mechanism" is a state of temporary paralysis, known as REM atonia, which prevents the sleeper from moving while they're dreaming. But in certain rare situations, a person can wake up before that paralysis fades away. The experience can be terrifying, and is thought to be the cause of supernatural experiences such as hauntings and alien abduction. Jorge explains that this experience is often accompanied by hallucinations because "your consciousness is not yet fully activated." The links between parasomnias, or sleep disorders, and neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's is a major topic of medical research at present. Currently, the debate centres on whether parasomnias are a cause or a consequence of these pathologies. "It is known, for example, that Parkinson's increases the likelihood of unusual behaviours in the body during sleep," Jorge said.. He added that the occasional nightmare is nothing to be worried about about, and that the last thing he wanted to do was to alarm hypochondriacs He stressed that there is no scientific certainty that occasional sleep disturbances have an explicit link with disease – unlike, for example, a blood test: "Nightmares are not a symptom of illness," he emphasised, but they are a possible sign that something can be improved in one's emotional state. A high frequency of nightmares is associated with heart disease, as they can cause waking with a racing heart and high blood pressure , and they have also been associated with sleep apnea, where the brain may experience nightmares of choking or drowning due to restricted oxygen.