The first signs of dementia and Parkinson’s disease could be in the content of nightmares, a leading neuroscientist has revealed.
According to eminent brain health expert Dr. Rahul Jandial, dreaming about violent or threatening scenes (such as being chased, killed, or fleeing from a threat) could indicate early brain deterioration seen in a number of neurological conditions.
Those most at risk are people whose disturbing dreams cause them to act out physically in their sleep, such as hitting, kicking, and even strangling their partner.
For example, a staggering 97 percent of people who exhibit these behaviors while sleeping will develop Parkinson’s or another neurological condition within 14 years, studies show.
Acting out dreams, which may include fleeing from a threat, clapping, singing, or throwing punches, is often a harbinger of brain disorders.
In cases where the cause of REM behavior disorder is unknown, 97 percent of people who suffer from it will be diagnosed with a brain disorder within about 14 years.
The problem of these types of nightmares, which often provoke physical actions, has been called REM behavior disorder by experts, which is believed to affect between 0.5 and 1.25 percent of the general population, i.e. to about 4.2 million people.
In Dr. Jandial’s new book, That’s Why You Dream, he investigates the meaning and benefits of dreaming.
He describes a 55-year-old male patient at the Los Angeles VA hospital who sought his help with nightmares that had just appeared.
He had begun acting them out, screaming in his sleep, even punching his roommate in the face.
Dr Jandial said: “We didn’t know it then, but this unique combination of symptoms (men in their fifties acting out their dreams) years later develop a type of brain disease called synucleinopathies. Not just sometimes, but almost always.
Dr. Jandial’s new book explains why we dream about certain people and what our dreams mean for our health
Synucleinopathies is a general term for diseases such as Parkinson’s and some dementias, which are characterized by a buildup of a protein in the brain called alpha-synuclein.
This compound participates in the regulation of hormones in neuronal regions.
In synucleinopathies, including Parkinson’s disease, Lewy body dementia (which causes personality changes), and a little-known condition called multiple system atrophy, the protein builds up and forms clumps that can disrupt the normal functioning of cells and cause damage to brain cells.
It is not known exactly how such groups lead to dream enactment behavior. But its ability to predict synucleinopathies is astonishing.
These disorders, on average, appear between 10 and 15 years after the onset of the dream behavior disorder.
People with REM behavior disorder often have vivid, violent dreams that involve an imminent physical threat to themselves or a loved one.
Case studies have described people becoming violent: hitting, kicking and wrestling with their partners and running in their sleep to escape the dream aggressor.
However, the behavior is not always violent. People with this disorder have reported singing or clapping their hands in their sleep and even engaging in peaceful activities such as fishing.
Daniella Berg, a neurologist at Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital in Germany, said American scientist that among the first clues of Parkinson’s, ‘RBD is special’.
“It is the most powerful clinical prodromal marker we have.”
Prodromal in medicine generally refers to the early symptoms of a disorder that appear long before more advanced, disease-specific signs.
Since meeting that patient at the VA, Dr. Jandial has seen several more patients like him with the sleep disorder, leading to neurological diagnoses.
Actor Alan Alda, who starred in the television series M*A*S*H, revealed that unusual dreams helped lead to his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
Actor Alan Alda was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2018. A major clue for him was his violent dream-acting behavior. Alda knew this could be an early symptom and asked his doctor to test him.
The link between dream enactment behavior and Parkinson’s is still developing, but Alda had read an article about it in 2015 that led her doctor to test her for the brain disorder as a precaution.
Mr. Alda saying in 2018: ‘By acting out your dreams, I mean I was having a dream where someone was attacking me and throwing a sack of potatoes at him, and what I was really doing was throwing a pillow at my wife.
“The doctor said, ‘Why do you want a scan? “You don’t have any symptoms.”…And I said, “I want to know if there’s anything I can do, I want to do it.”
RBD and Parkinson’s disease are related to brain stem dysfunctionwhich is essential to regulate sleep and movement.
Dr. Jandial said: “Given that dream reenactment and new onset nightmares are clinical harbingers of Parkinson’s, arriving years, even decades, before the first movement symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease appear, pay attention to “Dreams and dreams could offer doctors a rare window for truly early intervention.”
Intense nightmares are common in the later stages of the disease.
Almost 80 percent of Parkinson’s patients suffer from terrible nightmares.
Neurological disorders are not the only types of disorders that can be predicted by REM behavior disorder.
In a study of heart patients, the types of dreams people had suggested how well they were recovering after a routine procedure to open narrowed arteries.
The researchers followed the patients for six months after they were discharged from the hospital and rated them on a six-point scale: cured, improved, unchanged, worse without rehospitalization, worse with rehospitalization, worse without hospitalization, and death.
“Men who dreamed of death and women who dreamed of separation were significantly more likely to have experienced worse clinical outcomes, regardless of the severity of their initial heart disease.
“This suggests that the dreams somehow offered a clue about his prognosis.”