The type of sleep you're getting each night could be influencing your risk of more than 80 diseases, a new study has found. Researchers from Peking University and Capital Medical University in Beijing found that getting more REM sleep—the stage of sleep where most dreaming occurs—at night was associated with a lower risk of 83 diseases. Meanwhile, greater deep sleep—the most physically restorative stage of sleep—was associated with a lower risk of seven diseases.
The findings were published in the journal PLoS Medicine on September 17. Newsweek has contacted the study leads via email for comment and is awaiting responses. "Sleep is crucial for physical and mental health and for regulating physiological and behavioral processes, so it is not surprising that poor sleep is associated with the development of so many diseases," Nour Makarem, co-director of the Chronic Disease Unit at Columbia University, told Newsweek.
"This study adds to the evidence showing that not getting enough deep and REM sleep and having insufficient, irregular, and fragmented sleep increase risk of disease, including cardiometabolic, neurodegenerative, and mental health conditions among others." During REM sleep, our eyes move rapidly in various directions even though they are closed, and this stage is strongly linked with vivid dreaming. It is considered a particularly important stage of sleep as it is thought to benefit our cognitive functions, by supporting emotional regulation, contributing to brain development, improving mental health and enhancing learning and memory. Meanwhile, deep sleep is when brain activity slows down significantly.
This is when tissue repair takes place and the glymphatic system removes metabolic waste as well as many other functions. The researchers analyzed data from wrist accelerometers worn by more than 95,000 U.K. After wearing the wrist accelerometers for a week, the participants were then followed for a median period of 8.9 years until the onset of a health condition or death.
The experts found that increased REM sleep duration was associated with a lower risk of dozens of diseases including: heart failure, hypotension, parkinsonism (the umbrella term for brain conditions that cause slowed movements and tremors), multiple sclerosis, as well as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The findings also indicated that increased deep sleep duration was associated with a lower risk of diseases including type 2 diabetes, major depressive disorder, sleep apnea, and Parkinson's disease. Although, the researchers note that the links to some of these health conditions could be down to "reverse causation," meaning the symptoms of the condition result in changes to sleep patterns, rather than the other way round.
For example, this could be behind the association with depression, as a symptom of depression is disrupted sleep. The experts also found that greater light sleep duration was associated with higher risks of conditions like depression, but lower risks of heart failure and cellulitis, while being awake for longer throughout the night was associated with an increased risk of abdominal pain, anxiety and depression. Sleeping for longer overall was also associated with a lower risk of around 50 conditions, including type 2 diabetes.
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