Sleep trackers love to report your REM sleep, the stage most linked to dreaming. A new study of nearly 96,000 adults suggests that stage may be worth paying attention to. People who got more of it had a lower risk of many diseases over the next several years. The study cannot show that REM sleep is the cause.
What the Researchers Did
The team used data from the UK Biobank, a large health database in Britain. In the final analysis, 95,559 participants wore a wrist accelerometer, a movement sensor, for seven days and nights. A deep-learning program called SleepNet estimated how much time each person spent in REM, deep and light sleep from that movement data.
The researchers then followed participants’ hospital records for a median of 8.9 years and looked at more than 1,000 disease categories. They excluded diagnoses in the first months of follow-up to reduce the chance that illness was already shaping sleep.
What They Found
More REM sleep was linked to a lower risk of 83 diseases. Deep sleep was linked to a lower risk of 7 conditions. Total sleep time mattered too: for many conditions, the lowest risk fell in the range of roughly 6 to 8 hours, and sleeping under 5 hours stood out for the most adverse links.
The work appeared on Sept. 17, 2026, in PLOS Medicine, and a news release followed on Sept. 23.
The Catch
- It is observational. The authors say they cannot rule out other factors, such as overall health, that could explain the links, and that cause and effect cannot be shown.
- The stage data is an estimate. A wrist sensor is not a sleep lab. Compared with lab testing, the method read REM about 17 minutes shorter on average.
- One week of sleep is a snapshot. It may not reflect how people sleep year-round.
- The group is not typical. UK Biobank volunteers are mostly white, healthier and better off than the general public, so results may not apply to everyone.
- It only counts hospital diagnoses. Milder conditions managed outside the hospital would not show up.
What to Take From It
Nothing here says you can add REM sleep on purpose or that doing so would lower your risk. What the study adds to a long line of research is another reason to treat sleep as a health habit and not a luxury. If your own sleep is poor or you feel unrefreshed for weeks, a doctor is the person to ask.
Our earlier posts cover related ground: a small study on short sleep and weight gain, and a study linking 10 minutes of daily exercise to deeper sleep.
This article is for general information, not medical advice.
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