• Question: why do we have nightmares? georgethedunn thanks

    Asked by georgethedunn to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 3 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      Hi george

      Nightmares are bad dreams which can be scary or sad. Sometimes they can be really bad and can wake you up.

      Dreams and nightmares occur during a phase of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. When we have a nightmare the amygdala in the brain is over stimulated. The amygdala is the fear centre of the brain and is very active during REM sleep.

      Nightmares can be triggered by a lot of things like medications, fever, alcohol and experiencing a traumatic event.

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      The reason we remember nightmares is because we have them during rapid eye movement (REM) and if you wake up during this deep-sleep phase, you’re jerked out of deep sleep into the real world very quickly. This means we can usually remember all the fear, anxiety, and horrors of what we were dreaming about, rather than any nice things we dreamt about!

      Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22201/62493-six-reasons-dreams#ixzz1zftTCrud

      There’s a few things that make us more likely to have a nightmare:
      anxiety
      stress
      diet
      drugs/medicine
      illness

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