Can Dehydration Cause Nightmares?

Can Dehydration Cause Nightmares? (Find Out!)

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Yes, dehydration can cause nightmares for a couple of simple reasons. For one, it will almost certainly mean your sleep is less deep and more restless—this often makes dreams more vivid, at the least. Dehydration also increases stress hormones which also disrupt your sleep.

 

As you can see, then, anything which disrupts a deep sleep has a good chance of causing nightmares.

Being dehydrated is a really simple and common reason why we don’t sleep deeply or through the night, and thus it is also, indirectly, a common cause of nightmares.

Let’s look further into this.

Can Dehydration Cause Nightmares?

 

 

Does being dehydrated give you bad dreams?

Yes, is the simple answer.

It isn’t absolutely guaranteed to do so, and it naturally depends a lot on how dehydrated you are.

If you’re just a little dehydrated, you might just wake up in the night needing a few sips of water.

This might mean a bit more dream recall than you’re used to, but not much more than this.

If you are going to bed seriously parched, then the fact is that your sleep is going to be profoundly disrupted.

One of the main reasons we remember dreams on some nights and not others is simply down to how well and deeply we slept.

Most dreaming, or vivid dreaming, occurs during the REM stage of sleep—the deepest part of the cycle.

We don’t always achieve this stage of the sleep cycle, if our sleep isn’t restful enough.

Being dehydrated can cause this—and it can also mean that we are more likely to wake from REM sleep.

This is when most dream recall happens—and dream recall is often the simplest reason we feel we have had bad dreams.

So, what happens when we go to bed without drinking enough water?

 

What happens if you go to sleep dehydrated?

As I said, it is perhaps the simplest and most basic form of selfcare to keep hydrated throughout all parts of the day.

Sleep is a rather delicate thing for many of us, and it can be harder and harder to sleep deeply for a whole host of reasons.

Being dehydrated when you go to sleep will mean that your body is still actively trying to let you know that you’re thirsty, rather than letting your brain shut down for sleep.

When the body is active like this, your sleep will be far less restful.

Keeping hydrated also keeps the brain working as it is supposed to, and if you’re dehydrated, there’s a very high chance you’ll end up with a headache or other bodily discomfort.

All of which can affect the deepness of your sleep.

This will lead to frequently waking up in the night, or simply never attaining a particularly deep sleep to begin with.

Both of which can cause nightmares.

How to stop this from happening, then?

 

How to stop nightmares from dehydration

The answer may seem obvious: drink more water.

For some good reasons, though, we do not all find it so easy.

What you don’t want to do is simply drink a ton of water right before you go to bed.

This will just mean you are waking up in the night to go to the bathroom.

This will lead to perhaps an even clearer dream recall than if you were dehydrated.

So, what you want to do is drink as much water as you can throughout the day.

Try and set yourself a couple of small goals, like finishing a liter of water before midday, before the evening, and then in the evening.

Try to get into the habit of drinking more water or actively hydrating things, as opposed to something which might be a liquid but doesn’t actually hydrate you very well.

One good idea would be to get some sort of hydration solution.

The final question concerns night terrors.

 

Can dehydration cause night terrors?

In adults, it is not very likely.

If you don’t already suffer from night terrors, then it’s very unlikely that being dehydrated will cause nightmares.

That said, it’s not impossible.

In children, though, it is far more common and likely.

You may well find that your child’s night terrors improve if you make sure they are better hydrated throughout the day and before bed.

But for your own purposes, you don’t have much to worry about.

 

Staying hydrated is one of the simplest and most important ways that you can keep healthy.

Our bodies need far more water than anything else, so you can naturally expect many side effects from not staying hydrated.

Nightmares and restless sleep are almost bound to occur if you aren’t drinking enough water, and the only fix is to drink more water.

You can obviously use other drinks if you are averse to plain water, but you need to know you’re being properly hydrated, whatever it is—soda pop can’t always do this!

 

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