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Do You Have Nightmares? Here's What They Reveal About Your Health

Do You Have Nightmares? Here's What They Reveal About Your Health

 Nightmares Reveal About Your Health


The nightmare is an unpleasant or even frightening dream that wakes us up in the middle of the night with fear in the belly. Its horrible character makes us have the ability to remember it and remind us of striking details. Even if we tend to think that they are the result of our imagination, nightmares can prove valuable because they reveal certain aspects of our state of health and make it possible to detect certain diseases early.

The origin of nightmares

The nightmares mark us so much that we are often tempted to want to know the meaning that this will enlighten us. In general, the first reflex is to search on the internet to know its meaning.

According to Doctor Daniel Neu, head of the sleep laboratory and the chronobiology unit at the Brugmann University Hospital in Brussels, these interpretations are false and often the work of charlatans. To make a precise and serious interpretation of it, one must turn to the science of decoding dreams. According to him "it is possible to interpret the content of dreams, but only within the framework of a therapeutic approach with a patient. An event or an object will not have the same meaning for everyone, or at all times. "

When our nightmares lead to a sweaty awakening with the heart that beats, this can be a problem especially if it becomes systematic. During our dreams, our brain is active just as when we are awake, but if we live an emotional experience too strong our sleep can not resist and we awake in a state of anxiety exacerbated.

If this situation occurs every night, it can be indicative of an ubiquitous stress that disrupts your days and haunts your nights.
Besides stress, nightmares can be caused by a hearty and fatty dinner, fever, excessive alcohol consumption and sleep disorders.

The nightmares, early revealing of our evils

However, some persistent nightmares may reveal more serious illnesses.

This is revealed by Professor Jim Horne, a sleep specialist at Loughborough University, whose medical team studied the effect of beta-blockers on our dreams. It turns out that consuming beta-blockers to lower blood pressure causes unpleasant dreams because they can alter the chemicals in the brain and trigger nightmares.

The most interesting revelation concerns the link between nightmares and neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. People who tend to dream that they are being persecuted and attacked on a recurring basis may be subject to later illness. This can happen ten years before the onset of the first symptom. Dr. Oscroft, a sleep specialist at the Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, says that "struggling in his dreams is a sign of damage in the part of the brain that controls the safety switch of our dream. "

As for dreams whose scenes are extremely violent or even bloody, they can reveal certain mental pathologies such as psychoses.

Nightmares in pregnant women

Often, future mothers tend to have nightmares and this is not necessarily related to hormones. When pregnant, women have an even more developed dreamlike activity if it is their first child. Some dream that they are pregnant before they even know it.

The period of pregnancy is then split into two:

The first six months when the future mother idealizes her baby and her future maternity by making pleasant and pleasant dreams.

The last quarter essentially consists of recurring nightmares caused by anxiety related to childbirth, to the loss of a child or to the delivery of a child in poor health.

These systematic nightmares are often caused by this fear of the unknown who overwhelms the future mother and tends to make her anxious because she apprehends the pains and being a bad mother. The psychoanalyst Pascal Neveu explains that the majority of the time is "dreams of dismemberment, amputation, blood. The nightmares always show a physical attack on the mother and / or the baby. These are very violent images. "

It is advisable to calm these nightmares by creating a positive interaction with the baby and involving the future dad to imagine to two the joy that will arise from becoming parents.