Nightmares linked to faster biological ageing and early death
Scary dreams disrupt our sleep and elevate our levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which may have serious consequences for our health over time
By Chris Simms
22 June 2025
There are things we can do to prevent nightmares, such as not watching scary movies
Andrii Lysenko/Getty Images
Having nightmares on a weekly basis seems to accelerate ageing – and could even triple the risk of early death.
“People who have more frequent nightmares age faster and die earlier,” says Abidemi Otaiku at Imperial College London.
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Along with his colleagues, Otaiku analysed more than 183,000 adults, aged 26 to 86, who had taken part in several studies. At the start, the adults self-reported how often they had nightmares, and were then tracked for as little as 1.5 years to as long as 19 years.
The researchers found that those who reported having nightmares on a weekly basis were more than three times as likely to die before they turned 70 than those who said they never or rarely had nightmares.
There is a clear association, says Otaiku, whose team also found nightmare frequency to be a stronger predictor of premature death than smoking, obesity, poor diet or lack of physical activity. He will present the results at the European Academy of Neurology Congress 2025 in Helsinki, Finland, on 23 June.
