We dream 4-6 times a night, but we only remember our dreams about 3-4 times a week. Quite simply because we can only remember dreams in which we have woken up. If we stay asleep until the dream is over, it will be immediately forgotten.
But if all of a sudden these dreams turn into nightmares or even hallucinations, or they wake you up in the wee hours of the morning, it may be important to talk to your doctor.
These nightmares can be caused by taking beta blockers to treat high blood pressure. This class of drugs can indeed alter the balance of certain chemicals in the brain and cause nightmares.
They can also be due to abnormal heart rhythms. A recent Dutch study showed that people with irregular heartbeats had three times more nightmares than others due to poor oxygenation of the blood and therefore of the brain.
Finally, in migraine sufferers, nightmares can herald the imminent arrival of a migraine attack.
According to Dr Nicholas Oscroft, a sleep specialist at Cambridge Hospital, these recurring dreams should not be taken lightly as they can be an early sign of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. “These are indicators that can appear ten years before the first signs of the disease” emphasizes the doctor.
The most common reason is eating too much fat the night before, which prevents digestion from proceeding properly. In the early morning, acid reflux wakes you up while you are in the middle of REM sleep (the last phase of the sleep cycle in which dreams appear).
But these awakenings at dawn can also be a sign of the onset of depression.
In fact, you don’t dream more often, but you wake up more often in your dreams, so you remember them more easily. If you have eliminated the simplest causes of an overheated bedroom or chronic pain (painful periods, for example), this may be caused by a “rebound effect” during a period of withdrawal from anti-anxiety drugs or antidepressants. . These drugs significantly reduce the periods of REM sleep and when we stop taking it our brain “catches up” by lengthening the periods of sleep during which we dream.
