Oversleeping Could Be Giving You Nightmares, According To Science

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It might feel good to log a few extra Z’s when time allows, but new research suggests that if you extend a night’s rest beyond the nine-hour mark, you could be predisposing yourself to having more nightmares.

This new study from the University of Oxford is one of the largest ever to focus on nightmares in the general population (rather than honing in on people struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example). The research team recruited around 850 people who already showed an interest in sleep studies and had them complete a survey. The questions on the survey focused on things like how many nightmares they experienced within the past two weeks and how bad they were, if they struggled with PTSD, if they had experienced a divorce or legal problem recently, if they were a natural worrier, how much they typically slept and how much alcohol they typically drank.

Among the survey results, the team found a connection between sleeping more than nine hours a night and experiencing nightmares. The lead study author hypothesizes that this link could be due to more time spent in REM sleep (since there’s more time to remain there), which is the stage of sleep where nightmares typically occur.

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These nightmares lead to disrupted sleep, which can then lead to higher levels of stress and worry the following day. And not so surprisingly, the research team found that worry (about the future or making mistakes specifically) had the strongest association with high nightmare frequency and severity. Because your thoughts before you drift off to sleep are the ones that will feed into your dreams, of course. So it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends logging between seven and nine hours of sleep each night for optimal health. Any less, your body doesn’t rest and rebuild properly. And any more, well, you might end up with some unwanted bad dreams.