Nightmares: The body's message of toxicity

Nightmares are undesirable dreams that may cause sleep disturbances. They occur most often during rapid eye movement and usually cause waking up in the middle of the night. They can be triggered by several factors including developmental, genetic, psychological and organic. Mechanisms proposed are disruption of infantile amnesia and disturbances in the normal process of emotional regulations for both sleeping and waking cycle. Here, we are discussing that chronic nightmares can be a sign of toxicity due to different factors such as carbon monoxide, smoking toxicity as well as mold and fungal contamination in houses. This is an important consideration where neurologist can recommend physiological instead of psychological treatments or counseling for patients to prevent their nightmares by simply checking their blood level for toxic agents. Unfortunately, those minor symptoms are usually ignored or misunderstood to psychology related issues and by time, more severe complications develop which could have been easily avoided.