the unexpected and mysterious
Sudden nocturnal death, while relatively uncommon, can occur as a result of a variety of factors, including stroke, seizure, sedative overdose, and, most frequently, sudden cardiac arrest, physicians say.
Nightmares can be triggered by many factors, including: Stress or anxiety. Sometimes the ordinary stresses of daily life, such as a problem at home or school, trigger nightmares. A major change, such as a move or the death of a loved one, can have the same effect.
It can may make you feel scared, anxious, or upset. But nightmares are not real and can't harm you.
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).
Nightmares about falling were followed closely by dreams about being chased (more than 63 percent). Other distressing nightmares included death (roughly 55 percent), feeling lost (almost 54 percent), feeling trapped (52 percent), and being attacked (nearly 50 percent).
1. Being chased. Being chased is one of the most common nightmares. If you dream that you're being chased by something, whether it's an 8-foot-tall rabbit or a shrouded figure, then it's an indicator that you're running away from something or someone in real life.
The nightmare can cause the sufferer to awaken in a heightened state of distress, resulting in perspiration and an elevated heart rate. Often it takes time to recover from the negative emotions invoked by the nightmare and the person may have difficulty returning to sleep.
"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."
Upon waking up from a nightmare, it's normal to be acutely aware of what happened in the dream, and many people find themselves feeling upset or anxious. Physical symptoms like heart rate changes or sweating may be detected after waking up as well.
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.
If you don't have heart or lung disease, sleep apnea, or take medications that affect the brain, your risk of sudden nocturnal death is relatively low, says Dr. Chugh. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle—including by eating healthfully, exercising regularly and getting plenty of sleep—can help keep it that way.
Causes of sudden death
The most common cause of sudden cardiac death is ventricular fibrillation, which is a kind of arrhythmia that causes the heart muscle to be unable to contract as usual. This situation makes regular heartbeats impossible, consequently preventing the pumping of blood throughout the body.
In humans, a disease called fatal familial insomnia (FFI) can lead to sleep deprivation that ends in death. It is a degenerative brain disorder that starts with mild insomnia and progresses to a complete inability to sleep and sometimes dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.
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.
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].
Some survivors report having unusual and vivid dreams after their brain injury, which may leave them feeling confused upon waking. Nightmares can be experienced more regularly, especially if someone is experiencing trauma related to the brain injury incident.
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).
Typical signs and symptoms include:
Experiencing dreams with disturbing or upsetting themes, such as death, threat to physical safety, war, or personal conflict. Sitting upright in bed after a dream. Waking feeling anxious. Waking with an increased respiration rate.
The results indicate that although pain is rare in dreams, it is nevertheless compatible with the representational code of dreaming. Further, the association of pain with dream content may implicate brainstem and limbic centers in the regulation of painful stimuli during REM sleep.
Most experts believe that lucid dreams are the rarest type of dreams. While dreaming, you are conscious that you are dreaming but you keep on dreaming. According to researchers, 55 percent of people experience these types of dreams at least one time in their life.