Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-5011975-20130218020044/@comment-6507517-20130223094305

Dream Hacked wrote: Growlie26 wrote: The napping is good. I have another question, is it ture that sugar gives you nightmares? No. But drinking alcohol or caffeine, which can disrupt sleep, might. Same goes for eating fatty or spicy foods before bed, which can cause indigestion, leading to fitful rest and possibly scary dreams. We don’t know why disrupted sleep can bring on nightmares.

There is one connection between sugar and nightmares: Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, can trigger temporary brain-chemistry changes, which may cause strange dreams. If you’re hypoglycemic (telltale signs include shakiness, sweating, or confusion), it’s actually important to eat a bedtime snack to maintain your blood sugar level through the night. While you sleep, your brain doesn't just turn off. It goes through several sleep stages, including REM, or Rapid Eye Movement, sleep. Why do they call it that? Because during this stage of sleep, your eyes move back and forth under your closed eyelids. During REM sleep, you have dreams and sometimes those dreams can be scary or upsetting.

About every 90 minutes your brain switches between non-REM sleep and REM sleep. The amount of time spent in REM sleep increases with each sleep cycle through the night. The longest periods of REM sleep occur towards morning. If you wake during this REM stage, it is easier for you to remember what you were dreaming about. That's why your most vivid dreams — and nightmares — occur in the early morning hours.