How does your body react when you have nightmares?

• April 23, 2024

The discomfort that constant nightmares produce has to do with the brain activity and the signals that it emits to the body while we sleep. In the field of medicine, they are known as night terrors.

It is one of the sleep diseases called parasomnias, which usually occur in children, who manifest fear or terror. It seems that something scares them, so they defend themselves with sudden movements, "says Dr. Ulises Jiménez, of the School of Medicine of the UNAM.

In the second phase of the dream known as deep sleep, there is no awareness of the environment, it is more difficult to wake up; it is precisely in this phase where night terror manifests itself.

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It is not advisable to awaken the terrified sleeper, the only solution is to let the sleep episode last, says the head of the Sleep Disorder Clinic of the UNAM.

If it is a child who suffers these episodes frequently and interrupts his / her sleep, the indication is to go to the doctor, since it can present affectations in the nervous system that will impede its optimal development.

During sleep we secrete hormones that allow us to restore the tissues we use during the day. Sleeping bad affects the development of infants, because in general the maturation of the central nervous system is altered when there are sleeping sickness at an early age, "explains Dr. Jimenez.

Currently there is no treatment or cure that can prevent nightmares, but at the Sleep Disorder Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM, they provide safety and self-care measures to sleep better.

Video Medicine: Why Do We Dream? (April 2024).