"Acting out" dreams is a really bad sign

Here's a surprising bit of health news:   people who start "acting out" dreams (physically moving in bed as part of a dream) can be on the way to Parkinsons.  As explained in the Washington Post:

In 1986, Schenck and his colleagues first described RBD in four men and one woman, ages 60 or older. Most had long histories of injuring themselves or their bed partners with aggressive behaviors while asleep. One patient had attempted to strangle his wife while dreaming of fighting a bear, while another knocked over furniture during his dream of being a football player. The researchers noted that RBD is distinct from sleepwalking, which originates from non-REM sleep.

Dream enactment behavior has also been documented in severe obstructive sleep apnea, as it causes people to abruptly stop breathing for brief periods during sleep and partially awaken. Since these breathing cessations are most common and severe in REM sleep, they may act out their dreams, mimicking the symptoms of RBD, Schenck said.

About 39 million U.S. adults have obstructive sleep apnea, according to the National Council of Aging, but how many of these adults enact their dreams is not known.

Similarly, those with PTSD may show signs of reliving their trauma through dream enactment. Approximately 70 percent of patients with PTSD report sleep disturbances, and up to 70 percent have recurrent nightmares. However, no data exists on the prevalence of dream enactment behavior in PTSD, Schenck said.

For those with RBD, the risk of Parkinson’s is staggeringly high. Individuals ages 50 and older with idiopathic RBD — that occurs spontaneously with no other health complaints or recent medication changes — have a 130 times greater likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease compared with someone without the sleep condition.

“There’s nothing like this. … 80 percent of people who have this condition develop Parkinson’s disease 15 to 20 years later,” said Ronald Postuma, director of neurology at McGill University Health Centre.

RBD is 10 times better than any other clinical marker — for example, abnormal motor exam or loss of sense of smell — at predicting the eventual onset of Parkinson’s. RBD is strongly associated with other synucleinopathies, too, a group of diseases that includes Lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy.

Remarkable.

I woke myself up moaning due to a nightmare sometime in the last 6 months, but that's about the closest I've ever got to this behaviour.  Let's hope it stays that way.