One type of sleep linked to lower risk of 83 diseases, study finds

A study published in PLoS Medicine on September 17 links specific sleep patterns to lower risk for many diseases. Researchers from Peking University and Capital Medical University in Beijing found that more REM sleep—when most dreaming occurs—was associated with a lower risk of 83 diseases. More deep sleep was tied to reduced risk of seven diseases. The analysis used wrist accelerometers from more than 95,000 UK Biobank participants, who were followed for a median of 8.9 years. The researchers cautioned that some associations could reflect “reverse causation,” where illness changes sleep rather than the other way around.