Dreams Blog

Experts believe that most, if not all, people have encountered sleep problems that are worse than nightmares or bad dreams. This scenario includes feeling a sense of terror that leaves the person numb with the heart pounding at fast speeds.
This is a scenario where a person can’t move a muscle and that he is struggling for breath because something is pressed heavily against the chest.

This phenomenon is termed Sleep Paralysis or a more technical term would be hypnagogic sleep paralysis.

It is one of the common experiences doctors around the globe believe to happen to a person at least once in a lifetime. However, there are several individuals who experience repeated incidents in a week.

This phenomenon usually happens during the REM period of sleep where the brain becomes active and the dreamer starts experiencing vivid dreams.

Irregular sleeping schedules contribute to this kind of situation that’s why experts suggest sleep for at least six to eight hours a day.

A group of researchers revealed in their study that bad dreams are actually our brain’s way of processing emotions. They added that regulating these emotions can be the major function of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – the stage wherein most dreams happen to people.

Drs. Tore Nielsen and Ross Levin wrote in the journal Current Directions in Physical Science that the so-called “nightmares” happen when regulating the emotions goes wrong thus sometimes waking us up in the middle of the night. Nightmares are those bad dreams that consist of frightening images that usually startles us out of sleep.

The researchers added in the study of dreams that it is normal for everyone to have bad dreams, considering the fact that most dreams are not really positive ones. Dr. Levin said that bad dreams are usually the “default dream” because people are in some way dealing with negative emotions throughout the day.

He added that there are parts of our past memories that become part of our dream and can be exaggerated to look even more negative and frightening.

The researchers stated that about 85 percent of adults experience at least one nightmare per year. This usually happens when the individual undergoes moments of high stress.

The doctors concluded that results from study of dreams resulted to more effective solutions and therapies.