This is what happens to your body when you have a nightmare

If you have more than one nightmare per week, this becomes harmful and you may develop a fear of sleeping.

Because of their emotional content, nightmares force us to wake up and get out of that imaginary world.

In her article published by the French newspaper Lefigaro , writer Clemence Dubrana said that dreams echo the problems we live in on a daily basis in general. The nightmares we see often center around stressful, disturbing and even frightening situations; That's according to Beren Ruby, a researcher at Insrum at the Center for Neurosciences Research in Lyon.

The researcher emphasized that this activity is still very mysterious to science, adding: "We do not know exactly what happens in the brain during a nightmare." However, some psychological and physical manifestations can be the best evidence for these "bad dreams."

Failure to regulate emotions

The writer continues with Ruby, who explains that the brain, and the orbitofrontal cortex (orbitofrontal cortex in particular), is the center of emotions, which becomes more active at night to regulate the emotional intensity of dreams. According to a theory developed in 2007 by Canadian neuroscientists Ross Levine and Tori Nielsen, the nightmare represents a "failure" in this part of the brain regulating emotions, according to the author.

The writer adds that to illustrate this mechanism, Ruby was interested in the activity of dreams during the spread of the Corona pandemic; Where I noticed - after investigating the impact of the health crisis on dreams in 2020 - an increase in the number of nightmares since the beginning of the pandemic, an increase that is considered a result of the relatively emotional human system that was suffering from exhaustion, stress and anxiety as a result of the first closing period.

The writer states that if the content of these nightmares is very frightening at times, sleep psychiatrist Patrick Lemoine says that this is due to “a positive phenomenon that naturally exists to process information that causes suffering,” adding that “this phenomenon has been observed, especially in the period Childhood. When we were in school, we always suffered from minor grievances, which is why thanks to nightmares, children have the keys to understanding these incidents.

feeling anxious

The writer points out that at night, during sleep, the body is generally lethargic and away from any muscle tension, and that is why when we see a nightmare, the body is disturbed, which leads to waking up from sleep, which is what Lemoine says about: “The negative feelings that this dream generates It will systematically cause you to wake up, sometimes with a full-body jerk.” He continued: “The heart begins to beat irregularly, and we are also unable to breathe comfortably, and these sensations are sometimes accompanied by a feeling of anxiety.”

Vicious circle

The writer explains that if the nightmare is repeated more than once, it can have a fairly clear impact on sleep, as researcher Ruby says: “If you have more than one nightmare per week, it becomes harmful and you end up in a vicious cycle. It is expected that this will generate a fear of sleep in you."

According to the writer, the psychiatrist Lemoine stresses the need not to ignore the consequences of these dreams, recommending consulting a psychiatrist or a psychologist to understand their roots and reduce the tension resulting from them.