Sciencepeeks

Sleeping is a vital activity to keep our mental and physical being healthy. Not getting adequate sleep can lead to many chronic diseases, one of them characterized as insomnia. Although “insomnia” is a commonly used word, it’s clinically diagnosed using polysomnography, which is a series of tests to understand different parameters of sleep. It is a gold standard for diagnosing sleep-related disorders. Insomnia is identified with hyperarousal symptoms i.e., irritability, risky or destructive behavior, elevated flight-or-fight response, and difficulty concentrating and sleeping. They are often divided into day and night-time symptoms. Studies have shown that personality traits like being self-critical, and suppressing emotions – basically unhealthy emotion regulation – along with neurobiological and genetic dysfunction are considered predisposing factors of insomnia. Mostly, stressful life events along with predisposing factors can lead to insomnia. Majorly, most of us get acute insomnia...

Haven’t you had those dreams that wake you up frightened in the middle of the night, breathing faster than usual and relieved that it was just a dream? It means that you probably had a nightmare. Many researchers distinguish a nightmare from a bad dream on the basis of the after effect, i.e., did it lead to awakening from sleep; however, it remains debatable. Nightmares are termed “scary dreams,” and dreams are often described as a combination of things happening around you and some past memories. Therefore, nightmares are referred to as just dreams involving an off-putting emotional response (the most frequent being fear, although people also report anger or sadness as the main emotion in their nightmare). They usually arise in the REM (rapid eye movement) part of sleep. Illustrated by Drishya Unnithan It's known that our sleep has five stages divided into REM and non-REM cycles. In the REM part, the brain is active and we have dreams full of narratives, characters, and plots. And...