Blogpost 4: Why do we have nightmares?

            This topic that we’ll be taking about is phenomenon that every human did experience since childhood, Nightmare is usually a dream that we are being disturbed and usually occurs before we awaken from REM sleep and most of the time this is our usual vivid dream. As we go on we digest into the root cause of Nightmares, we’ll know about the chances of having a nightmare and when does it occur in our sleep and causes of nightmares as well.

           An article “Sleep Health Disorder:Nigthmare” from “WebMD.com” by Louis R. Chanin explained a lot about nightmares and actually answered all of my questions. First is “When Do Nightmares Occur?”,  and according to the article Nightmares occur in the middle of the night or early morning, and the question “What Causes Nightmares?” until today is unknown. However, being to tired, not getting enough sleep, having an irregular routine of sleep, and having stress or anxiety may all increase the risk of having nightmares. Nightmares can be related to a child’s development , and is a normal part of changes in our lives. But more often nightmares are triggered if a child or a person is afraid of something,  could be a ghost, a creature or tragedy in life.

            Well it seems like I forgot to give a brief overview about nightmare. Nightmare is something that we see in our dreams that is really disturbing, could be a ghost, person that we are afraid of, a creature, or something that we saw in movies(this happens most of the time) or anything that we are being disturbed. Some genetic and psychological factors can also lead to nightmares. If a child had a family history of nightmares and it is most common in children, this includes mental retardation, depression, and certain diseases that affects the brain and can be associated with fevers, or can also occur after a trauma.

            I believe that most of us in our childhood did experience this kind of nightmares, like ghost, or any disturbing imagery specially when we are still awake at night and we see things in the dark and specially when we see some illusions or if we watched a horror movie after, we intend to bring all of this kind of stuff in our sleep, which I believe it is true.