Nightmare disorder may cause: Excessive daytime sleepiness, which can lead to difficulties at school or work, or problems with everyday tasks, such as driving and concentrating. Problems with mood, such as depression or anxiety from dreams that continue to bother you.
Because nightmares may have a significant impact on your quality of life, it's important to consult a medical professional if you experience them regularly. Sleep deprivation, which can be caused by nightmares, can cause a host of medical conditions, including heart disease, depression, and obesity.
"The good news is that nightmares aren't as serious as a heart attack," said Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who studies sleep's effect on cardiovascular issues. "But they're also not nothing."
Nightmares are associated with disturbed sleep, low well-being and affect daytime mood and behavior. Nightmare disorder is a very common comorbidity in nearly all psychiatric conditions. In borderline personality disorder (BPD), for example, up to 50% are troubled by frequent nightmares [5-7].
Nightmares can arise for a number of reasons—stress, anxiety, irregular sleep, medications, mental health disorders—but perhaps the most studied cause is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
While other parasomnias (sleep-disrupting disorders) can also cause nightmares, when it comes to sleep apnea, it's the lack of oxygen that contributes to bad dreams.
Stress, anxiety, fatigue, and irregular sleep are thought to be common causes of nightmares. (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2020). These presumed triggers are part of the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, which suggests our dreams and nightmares reflect what we're worried about.
According to current diagnostic classifications, nightmares are defined as frightening or disturbing dreams that awaken the sleeper while bad dreams are defined as frightening or disturbing dreams that do not awaken the sleeper (Hasler & Germain, 2009; Nadorff et al., 2014).
Otaiku found that the people who had nightmares every week were four times more likely to experience cognitive decline, which leads to dementia. It was even more dramatic in older men than women, with the men five times more likely.
Middle aged men and women who have troubling dreams at least once a week are at increased risk of cognitive decline years down the road, a new report suggests. Frequent nightmares in seniors may also signal an increased risk of dementia, the study found.
Night terrors and nightmares are different and happen at different stages of sleep. During a night terror you may talk and move about but are asleep. It's rare to remember having a night terror. Nightmares are bad dreams you wake up from and can remember.
Some research suggests that certain types of dreams may help predict the onset of illness or mental decline in the dream, however. For example, in people with Parkinson's disease, dreams containing negative emotions are correlated with future cognitive decline.
It's normal for both children and adults to have bad dreams and nightmares every now and again.
An estimated 2% to 8% of adults can't get rest because terrifying dreams wreak havoc on their sleeping patterns. In particular, nightmares can be an indicator of mental health problems, such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
The Link Between Sleep Apnea and Nightmares
Some studies have shown a correlation between nightmares and obstructive sleep apnea (the most common form of sleep apnea, which occurs when the airway is physically blocked).
A parasomnia is a sleep disorder that involves unusual and undesirable physical events or experiences that disrupt your sleep. A parasomnia can occur before or during sleep or during arousal from sleep. If you have a parasomnia, you might have abnormal movements, talk, express emotions or do unusual things.
Nightmares, dreams and other sleep disturbances are a common symptom of complex trauma with nightmares recognised as a principal feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The treatment of nightmares not only alleviates those symptoms but is shown to help reduce PTSD symptoms in general.
Nightmares seem to be more frequent in patients with major depressive disorders (MDD), bipolar disorders (BD), and schizophrenia than in the general population [26]. It has also been proposed that nightmares and psychotic symptoms represent a common domain with shared pathophysiology [27].
Night terrors are like nightmares, except that nightmares usually occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and are most common in the early morning. Night terrors usually happen in the first half of the night.
In REM sleep, our brain activity is near waking levels, but our body remains "asleep" or paralyzed so we don't act out our dreams while lying in bed. Since our brain is so active during this stage, it can sometimes scare us into waking up, essentially. As Girardin Jean-Louis, Ph.