Spooked Sleeping? Identifying Nightmares and their Causes

All of us get nightmares every now and then. But when people encounter nightmares every night, it’s not good. Nightmares can spook people from getting good sleep. If you are constantly having nightmares, why don’t you take a look at some of the facts about them as featured in an article at http://health.usnews.com?

• You must learn to distinguish between nightmares and night terrors. Night terrors also known as sleep terrors, happen earlier in sleep, during a non-rapid eye movement (REM) stage and occur when you wake up with a faster heart beat while panicking or yelling. Folks with night terrors can be destructive when they wake up — by fighting or jumping from windows — and yet, they often don't remember the episode later. Contrary to this, nightmares occur primarily in the last third of the night, when your REM sleep is the strongest. Sometimes nightmares wake us up, and sometimes they don't, but we can almost always remember the nightmare's plot to some extent.

• Nightmares are also known as post-traumatic dreams and we actually don’t know where they came from. Stress and anxiety can also lead to nightmares.

• Nightmares have also been linked to certain medications, specifically those that affect neurotransmitter levels, such as antidepressants, narcotics, or barbiturates.

• If the nightmares are regularly disturbing your sleep, then you should probably visit a sleep clinic, where specialists can diagnose if your only problem is nightmares, or if you have something more serious, like sleep apnoea.

• The best way to avoid nightmares is to deal with any underlying anxiety problems.

Read more here:

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2013/01/30/how-to-identify-and-manage-nightmares?page=2

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