꧁.✦ ݁˖ nightmares: the history, the how and the why

Nightmares have been around as long as we have, but the first proper recorded nightmare was from ancient Egypt, 2100 B.C. 

A man named Heni wrote a letter to his father who had been dead and pleaded with him to help with nightmares. Heni says that his deceased fathers servant, Seni, kept staring at him. He wrote of his mistreatment of Seni and begged his father to not allow Seni to harm him. 

a friend of mine posted a bulletin recently talking about nightmares, and despite him saying he didn't care about the science...I do, and I thought someone else might to. so here's all my research put in a long winded and completely unneeded blog post!

the why

Sleeping happens in stages, the dreaming part occurs in what's called REM sleep or rapid eye movement, a part of sleep that involves heavy breathing, rapid heart movement and a active brain...so much so your emotion receptors are almost the same as when you're awake in this stage. funnily enough your brains logical, decision making parts are dialed down, that's why dream logic makes sense in the moment.

nightmares are still technically a mystery to us, but that doesn't mean that we don't have our theories. the most wildly accepted one is called the threat simulation theory. 

this theory suggests that nightmares are caused by how we've evolved to deal with threat. in the Pleistocene era humans where constantly hunted, so this theory says hat period of time caused our brains ro rehearse getting hunted in our dreams so our ancestors could respond faster and more effectively in the morning to threat

the how

alot of things can cause nightmares more frequently. the most common trigger being listed as high stress before sleep. the reason why that causes nightmares should be pretty self explanatory from the why section

another reason is different medications, such as: nicotine replacements such as gum or patches, weed, blood pressure medications and anti depressants

PTSD or trauma is a pretty expected cause I belive, makes sense with the disorder 

one I found interesting was eating before bed as it awakens the brain more and makes vivid dreams and therefore nightmares alot more likely

conclusion 

i find it fascinating the lack of knowledge we have on nightmares. we know certain things can cause it, but we don't always really even know how. this was a hard topic to get decent information on but I really enjoyed doing it! if you have any topic you're interested in but don't want to research yourself, let me know! cause I might!