Higher REM Sleep Linked to Lower Risk of 83 Diseases: Study

More REM and deep sleep were associated with lower risks of several diseases, while sleeping less than five hours a night was linked to higher risks across multiple conditions, according to a study published in PLOS Medicine.

Researchers analysed data from 95,559 UK Biobank participants who wore wrist-based activity monitors continuously for seven days and nights. A deep-learning algorithm was used to estimate their sleep stages, including REM, deep and light sleep, along with total sleep duration, night-time wakefulness and sleep irregularity.

Participants were followed for a median of 8.9 years, with health records used to examine associations with more than 1,000 diseases.

The study found that greater REM sleep was associated with a lower risk of 83 diseases. An increase of about 48 minutes of REM sleep was linked to a 26% lower risk of heart failure, 46% lower risk of dementia and 80% lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. Greater amounts of deep sleep were associated with lower risks of seven conditions, including type 2 diabetes and major depressive disorder.

In contrast, irregular sleep patterns and spending more time awake after initially falling asleep were associated with higher risks of several conditions, including anxiety and substance use disorders. Total sleep duration showed a non-linear relationship with disease risk. For many conditions, the lowest risk was seen among people sleeping between six and eight hours per night. People who slept less than five hours had increased risks of 37 conditions.

The researchers identified 156 significant associations between sleep patterns and newly diagnosed diseases after statistical correction. Sleep duration also showed significant non-linear associations with 86 disease outcomes, with 69 having the lowest-risk range within six to eight hours.

However, the study was observational and cannot prove that sleep duration or sleep stages directly cause or prevent these diseases. The findings suggest that both sleep quantity and quality may be important aspects of health, particularly among middle-aged and older adults.

REFERENCE: Jingsong Luo, Ruiyi Liu, Jie Yin, Wangnan Cao, Shengzhi Sun, Rui Chen. Accelerometer-derived real-world sleep stages and risk of incident diseases: A UK Biobank cohort study and phenome-wide association analysis. PLOS Medicine, 2026; 23 (9): e1005213 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1005213