Allow me to present my theory about the cause and possible prevention of nightmares (bad dreams or “bangungot” in Filipino term)
THE NIGHTMARE THEORY
Nightmare is our body’s way of communicating to us that there is something wrong with our current sleeping condition/position, and that needs to be resolved immediately. This is similar to feeling pain when we are about to get burned by a hot object, and reacting to the stimuli. If we don’t feel the heat or pain, then we will get burned and injured all the time. Therefore the nightmare serve as one of our body’s pain signal or trigger during sleep.
Our dreams serve as a medium for us to have nightmares. Therefore nightmares ONLY occur when we have dreams. Nightmares are supposed to make us conscious. It initiates or triggers our body to correct these “wrong sleeping conditions”, sending highly emotional signals to our brain to react accordingly. Sometimes a pleasant dream may turn into nightmares immediately.
In almost all cases, nightmares are accompanied by a faster heart beat and the need to breath faster, triggered by a highly emotional or fearsome dream event.
The Reason?
Our body at that point is lacking oxygen. The faster heart beat and the need to breath faster is our body’s reaction to compensate for this lack of oxygen. Similarly this happens when you run or do a heavy physical activity, your heart beats faster to deliver more oxygen to the body. It will even wake you up in most cases for you to be able to correct your sleeping position and clear your air passage way. This is also why it feels better to have a glass of water after a nightmare.
Therefore for most cases, the LACK OF OXYGEN during our sleep triggers the nightmare. This lack of oxygen can be triggered by an illness (normally pneumonic ) and incorrect sleeping position or sleep apnea.
Incorrect sleeping positions includes sleeping up straight with a full stomach. Your bloated stomach tends to push your diaphragm to make you breath slower and harder. When you sleep up straight, there is also a tendency for your neck to twist sideways during the course of your sleep, which makes your air passageway smaller. Men has the tendency to have more incidence of nightmares, because they tend to eat and drink more prior to sleep. Also their adam’s apple can make the air passage smaller, and the same reason why men tend to snore more often than women do due to their difference in throat structure.
But why are nightmares emotional or terrifying, and sometimes repeats itself?
Simply because it is these emotions and fears that makes our hearth beat faster. Do you notice that that when you are a child, your nightmares are about the things that you fear most? We dream about ghost, weird creatures and dark places. When we grow older as we conquer these fears, the nightmares are heavier on emotions like the death of a love one, and daily stresses and worries in life that we would want to avoid. Sometimes the presence of a dead close relative in our dreams may bring us into a highly emotional state. Others dream of flying or other personal most unbelievable event that you may imagine such as UFOs or end of the world scenarios. Dreams that would trigger us to run or panic is most common as these reactions causes us to breath heavier and faster. Nightmares repeats itself if we cannot overcome those emotions, so the brain will look for these “trigger emotions”.
Why do people die during their sleep?
When your hearth beats faster than normal due to a nightmare, it may trigger your heart to overwork causing the hearth attack or strokes or Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome. Heart attacks are normally caused by heavy emotions and heavy physical activities. Brugada Syndrome in predisposed individuals are at higher risk due to their hearth condition.
On the other hand, the damage in pancreas associated to death due to nightmares maybe due to the over eating done prior to sleep.
Possible Prevention:
- Improve sleep quality and breathing during sleep, via correct sleeping positions and accepted sleeping and breathing tools/equipment
- Avoid heavy dinners before going to bed. Avoid sleeping with a full stomach.
- Take prescribed medicines accordingly.
I hope I was able to help shed light on the possible reasons for having nightmares.