Many people consider dreams to be a therapeutic experience that helps them rethink their problems from a new perspective. Dreams serve an important purpose in sorting information in the human mind. While pleasant and positive dreams energize, restore, and improve mood, nightmares do the exact opposite. According to a report published on Only My Health, although we may not be able to prevent nightmares and while the occasional bad dream shouldn’t cause significant distress since they can help relieve anxiety and stress levels, it is important to address frequent nightmares that disrupt sleep and affect quality of life.
There are many reasons behind these disturbing and recurring nightmares, ranging from stress and sleep disorders to certain health conditions. Factors such as lifestyle, consumption of certain foods, or poor bedtime routines ultimately lead to discomfort at night. Generally, however, nightmares can be addressed at home.
### Causes of Nightmares
Nightmares are dreams with negative themes that evoke stress, sadness, or fear for the dreamer, and they are more common in children than in adults. If not dealt with, they can lead to insomnia, decreased productivity during the day, and poor sleep quality. Common causes of nightmares include improper sleep positions, unhealthy eating habits, stress, and underlying health conditions.
### Worrisome Indicators
Scientists have confirmed that nightmares, like positive dreams, are essential for a person's survival, as they help sort out deep-seated fears and issues that are often avoided despite their importance. People should be concerned about nightmares when they occur too frequently, leading to insomnia at some stage, which may in turn result in many health issues such as obesity, heart disease, depression, and hypertension. Other worrying indicators include decreased daytime productivity, mood swings, and a decline in cognitive functions.
### Home Remedies
It is advisable to consult a specialist for illnesses and disorders. However, for other causes like anxiety, stress, and poor sleep habits, the following home remedies may be effective:
- **Avoid Spicy Foods:** Diets high in spices, pickles, or hard-to-digest foods generally affect sleep continuity, as metabolism increases and the body needs to work harder to digest food, which raises brain activity and disrupts REM sleep cycles, increasing the likelihood of nightmares.
- **Eat Smaller, Earlier Meals:** Certain foods and fruits can help avoid nightmares or promote good sleep, such as bananas, kiwis, walnuts, and almonds. Eating late can disrupt the body’s sleep cycle, as it needs to digest food. When sleep cycles are disrupted, a person may recall their dreams, including nightmares, more often.
- **Exercise and Relax During the Day:** If a person feels that rising stress levels are destroying their dream life, they should take necessary steps to prevent this. Starting the day with exercise or walking in the morning and taking short breaks throughout the day can help fully relax the body.
- **Reduce Horror Movie Watching:** Some people watch horror films late at night, which is not suitable for dream content while sleeping, as it may keep some awake at night or cause nightmares during sleep.
- **Visualize a Better End to the Nightmare:** A person can relax and calmly review the entire nightmare while realizing it is just a dream and cannot happen in reality. Eventually, they can imagine a better ending. For example, if there is a monster chasing them in the dream, they might try to befriend it instead of running away in fear.
- **Control Lucid Dreams:** When a person imagines a better ending to their dream during the day, they can repeat the experience in a lucid dream, meaning during instances when they realize they are dreaming. In case of recurring nightmares, transitioning from merely viewing to controlling the course of events in the nightmare, or when the mind becomes aware that it is just a negative dream, will allow the person to change the narrative as they see fit.
