14 DAY TRIAL // Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a very dangerous condition that manifests itself during sleep, through the collapse of superior airways. This causes people to go for several seconds without breathing, which can have devastating consequence on the brain and organs in the long run. In a paper published in the February 15 issue of the respected Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, researchers show that people suffering from severe OSA tend to report a lower number of nightmares than those experiencing only mild symptoms, or none at all.
According to researchers behind this investigation, this difference could mean that the apnea acts on the cognitive experiences that favor nightmare recall, suppressing them, and therefore inhibiting recollection. In the new investigation, team members found that people who were experiencing severe OSA, defined as an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of 30, reported infrequent nightmares. The AHI measurement refers to the number of pauses in breathing a patient suffers over the course of an hour of sleep.
When gaging the number of instances in which people remembered the nightmares they experienced, experts learned that 71.4 percent of the test subjects that responded positively did not suffer from OSA. In the case of severe apnea patients, only 20 percent remembered nightmares.
“The results were somewhat surprising, since nightmares are frequently reported by patients with sleep apnea. It is plausible that patients who successfully utilize continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy see an increase in the frequency of nightmares, as treatment increases the amount of REM [rapid-eye movement] sleep per night,” University of Colorado Medical School System Associate Clinical Professor Jim Pagel, MS, MD, explains. He has also been the principal investigator on the new study, and is currently the director of the Sleep Disorders Center of Southern Colorado, in Pueblo.
For the purpose of this study, the word nightmare was defined as a number of coherent dream sequences that appeared to be real and that became increasingly disturbing for the one experiencing them as they unfolded. The theme of this type of dream is most often distressing, with an emphasis placed on immediate physical harm. Anxiety, fear and terror are the emotions most often associated with them. It is estimated that between two and eight percent of the general population deals with nightmares on a regular basis, e! Science News reports.