Warning issued to anyone who’s having ‘horrific’ dreams at the moment as it could be sign of something serious
If you’re having more nightmares, you could be suffering from a disease, according to a study.
That’s right. If the boogey man is coming for you more than usual, you might need to look deeper at what’s at play.
There's usually a spike in people having unusually vivid dreams around this time of year. For most of us this is completely normal, but for some it could be the sign of a serious health problem.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London have called for doctors to ask about nightmares in a bid to detect a disease in patients.
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The researchers surveyed 676 people with a condition which causes the immune system to attack its own organs and tissues, as well as 400 healthcare providers to find the link.
What they found was that three in five patients with the disease had a spike in distressing and vivid nightmares before they went on to have hallucinations.
The study, published in eClinicalMedicine, found that using the term ‘daymare’ in place of hallucination was better for patients, with one patient telling them it ‘just made sense’.
They added: “It’s like not necessarily scary, it’s just like you’ve had a dream and yet you’re sitting awake in the garden.
“I see different things, it’s like I come out of it and it’s like when you wake up and you can’t remember your dream and you’re there but you’re not there, it’s like feeling really disorientated, the nearest thing I can think of is that I feel like I’m Alice in Wonderland.”
The researchers also noted that one in three patients with other rheumatology related issues also had the same problem.
Lead author Dr Melanie Sloan, of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, said: “It’s important that clinicians talk to their patients about these types of symptoms and spend time writing down each patient’s individual progression of symptoms.
“Patients often know which symptoms are a bad sign that their disease is about to flare, but both patients and doctors can be reluctant to discuss mental health and neurological symptoms, particularly if they don’t realise that these can be a part of autoimmune diseases.”
The disease that they found was linked to these spikes in nightmares was lupus.
You might have heard of lupus thanks to the awareness Selena Gomez has been bringing to the condition.
Researchers began by asking patients about when they began to experience 29 neurological and mental health symptoms, and they then listed the order of when they typically occurred.
Less than one in four people reported hallucinations, but many said they didn’t experience this until much later in their struggle with the condition.
According to the study, one patient described their nightmares as ‘horrific, like murders, like skin coming off people’.
They explained how they believed this happened when they became ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘the more stress my body is under then the more vivid and bad the dreaming would be’.
According to the NHS, lupus symptoms can include joint and muscle pain, extreme tiredness, rashes after being in the sun, headaches, mouth ulcers, hair loss, weight loss and more.
You could also have changes in the colour of your fingers and toes if you are stressed or cold which is Raynaud’s disease.
According to Lupus UK, around 50,000 people in the UK have the condition.
Professor David D’Cruz, of King’s College London, said: “For many years I have discussed nightmares with my lupus patients and thought that there was a link with their disease activity.
“This research provides evidence of this, and we are strongly encouraging more doctors to ask about nightmares and other neuropsychiatric symptoms – thought to be unusual, but actually very common in systemic autoimmunity – to help us detect disease flares earlier.”
Topics: Science, Health, NHS, Mental Health
Britt Jones