It’s a nightmare if you don’t meet people

Get out and meet people—or you might have nightmares.

Lonely people seem to have more bad dreams and nightmares than people who are more social, researchers have found.

Spending a lot of time alone can raise your stress levels, and you could worry more about problems, say researchers from Oregon State University.  All this worry and mental churning can affect the quality of your sleep and make you more prone to bad dreams and nightmares—and this, in turn, can affect your overall health, and increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.

The bad effects of loneliness were tracked by the researchers who surveyed around 1,600 people aged from 18 to 81.  Mental churning affects the quality of sleep which, in turn, causes more worry and poor mood in the daytime.

The remedy is simple enough: get out and meet people, the researchers.  Evolution is on your side as we’re supposed to be social creatures.  “Interpersonal relationships are very much a core human need.  When people’s need for strong relationships goes unmet, they suffer physically, mentally and socially,” said Colin Hesse, one of the researchers.

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