Nowadays,
in our community, many people has problems for sleep or worryes
relative with it. In fact, a lot of our patients take any drug or any
kind of medicine like valerian, tilleul tea… trying to fall sleep.
Bit by bit, research had been demonstrated that sleep and have a
restorative sleep is very important for a healthy lifestyle, and with
the collaboration of the media(TV programmes, radio…), our society
has more awareness of it.
Therefore,
it is logical think that a distress in this restorative sleep could
be counter-productive for health and may result in a deterioration on
it. In some cases, this is so detrimental for the patients even as
for constitute an independent risk factor for suicide, so it shows
the article which I have selected. In the study, they have observed
that people who has nightmares has a larger risk for suicide than
other people.
It
is strange think that something so normal and “simple” like sleep
could result so important in our lives and in our health, and
something, like nightmares, which everyone has a few of them
occasionally, are so harmful. As I already said, nowadays many
patients has problems for sleep but, we understand them as they merit
or maybe we underestimate their concern?
I
propose you few questions:
Do
you think that society is aware about the important of sleep? And in
our degree?
Did
you think that nightmares could have a detrimental effect?
And
what about of the results in war veterans? Are you surprised? Are the
results representative or maybe there is a bias in the study?
Finally,
apologize for the delay, I have been busy this week with the exams.
Please, be specific in your comments for ease a milieu of discussion.
You
can check the link of the article below:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5353666/
Good afternoon!
ResponderEliminarThe relationship between nightmares and an increased risk of suicide is a concept quite new to the general public, so I believe this is a nice topic to reflect on. As we all know, sleep is a crucial part of our lives as it restores out energy levels and is really what gets us going through the day.
When a patient says that he or she has trouble sleeping, we should never underestimate it and should always try to find whatever is causing that sleeplessness. It may be that the patient is concerned about something that’s going on and only needs, as you said, some teas or infusions to calm down before going to sleep. On the other hand, it can be a prodromal of a more serious medical problem, such as depression or some kind of psychiatric disorder that needs to be addressed rapidly.
We live in a society that is always on the go and more and more we see the effects of sleep deprivation in our daily lives. It gets more and more difficult to stay focused and to have a productive life, as you don’t have a restorative sleep due to your busy lifestyle. Nightmares can be a reflection of our preoccupations and main concerns so it is of common knowledge that if you have trouble sleeping and to add to this you experience nightmares, you’re more likely to feel tired all the time and to have other psychological problems.
War veterans are more likely to suffer from PTSD and therefore to experience nightmares on an almost daily basis, as they remember the events that occurred while they were departed in their sleep, which can prove to be devastating and can increase their risk of committing suicide. In consequence, the results don’t amaze me to say the least. Provided you have PTSD you may have flashbacks and depressive symptoms related to your past experiences, which can influence greatly on your overall quality of life. I don’t think the results are biased as this is a study and therefore the researchers can’t or shouldn’t take sides in order to reach their conclusions.
Hi everyone!
ResponderEliminarI think society is aware of the importance of having a restful sleep and what its lack implies. Whether in one career or another, at one job or another, sleeping a minimum of daily hours should be mandatory.
However, being aware of this need can be counterproductive. Many people who have trouble sleeping are not due to nightmares but it is a conciliatory insomnia. That is to say, problems falling asleep but, once they do, everything flows normally. The vast majority of times it is due to the huge amount of worries we carry or to the activating activities we do just before going to sleep, without any basal medical problems. However, getting obsessed with sleeping less hours causes us to enter into an endless vicious circle that is what makes this conciliatory insomnia something chronic and makes it more serious than it was in the beginning.
In my opinion, cases of war veterans with PTSD and sleep problems should not be compared to the rest of the population. In these, nightmares could be a risk factor of suicide, in the rest of the population I would question it.
Raquel.
Hello!
ResponderEliminarWell, in my opinion, sleeping time is the most important part of the day. Mainly because most of the result of what we do and what we are, is due to the fact of having had a restorative or a non-restorative sleep.
Even though nowadays people give more importance to the time spent on daily successful actions, it shouldn't be the only focus of our life. I mean, if we don't sleep an adequate number of hours -according to our age and our work-, we are going to be susceptible to fail ill and have more handicaps in our personal and professional lifes. We must know that it is during the sleeping phases when we assimilate all we have learnt during all the day. From my point of view, when we don't have a reparative sleep we enter into a vicious cycle: having more stress, insomnia and increasing our nightmares frequency. These nightmares are related with our daily points of confrontation, difficulties, repressed fears...which are kept in our subconscious and arise over the dream. These repressed fears, confrontations between what we want and what we get, difficulties... are increased when we don't rest all the time we need. It's also associated with the risk of having more diseases (arterial hypertension, depression, anxiety and epilepsy) and also there is a high relation between insomnia and accidents (cars and working accidents) and suicide too.
Finally, related with our professional career as a medicine practitioners, we are a more susceptible to suffer all these changes in our biological schedule trying to spend more time studying or doing night shifts. So, we should take into account all these advices and we must also try to explain them to all our patients
Noemí.
Hi!
ResponderEliminarSleep plays a vital role in well-being throughout our life. Getting enough quality sleep protects physical and mental health and improves quality of life. The way we feel while we're awake depends in part on how well we sleep.
During sleep, our bodies are working to repair the tissues and our brains are preparing for the next day.
Sleep deprivation may cause trouble making decisions and controlling our emotions. It alters our mood and it can really make us feel depressed.
If there is something that constantly disrupts the sleep cycles, like nightmares – which in this case can be produced by past traumatic experiences – , it will surely have a detrimental effect in overall health, particularly in mental health. I believe that an increase in the amount of nightmares can really increase suicide rates, and this particular group of people (war veterans) have a higher risk.
Tiago
Hello everyone!
ResponderEliminarIn my view, people are totally aware about the importance of having good sleeping habits (regardless their job, degree, etc). However, most people don’t sleep enough for different reasons: work, babies, etc; ignoring doctors’ advice of sleeping around 8 hours per day. I guess that in this case, the situation is very similar to tobacco or alcohol consumption: everybody knows that it’s not healthy, but a lot of people don’t care about that because they think the possible consequences will never appear (or they will appear after a long time).
Regarding to nightmares having a detrimental effect, I think that normally they don’t have a detrimental effect by themselves. Sometimes, if they are very frequent, they can be troublesome in little children that finish being afraid of sleeping due to them. But, not in the common population.
In the study, researchers demonstrated that there is an association between nightmares and suicide, but they didn’t clarify if they have a primary effect, or whether they are an indicator of some other underlying risk factor. In my opinion, the hypothesis of nightmares being an indicator is more reasonable than the other one.
Lastly, I guess that it’s normal that War Veterans have higher rate of nightmares and sleeping problems than the general population. They also have a higher rate of suicide. But, both higher rates are associated with the fact they are also more susceptible to suffer PTSD (which can cause nightmares and suicide). In my opinion, (I totally agree with Raquel) War Veterans should be studied apart from the general population, because maybe in them nightmares could be an important risk factor of suicide or an indication of severity in PTSD.
Cheers!
Hi!
ResponderEliminarIn my opinion I think that everyboddy is actually aware of the importance of such an important as sleep is, when it is afected. I mean, everyone knows that it is important to sleep, but when you have some problems to sleep correctly nd that affects your day routine is when you realize how something so simple is completely necessary to your life. In our particular case we know how the lack of sleep can affect the human body, but do we sleep the necessary amount of hours we need? I don´t think so. We know the theory but sometimes it is imposible to do it, not only due to time but stress or anxiety too.
I belive that nightmares can affect our daily routine because we are not having a restorative sleep during that episodes, and if it is repeated I think that may create an stresful thoughts which can make fall a sleep more difficult for you.
Finally what tha article talk about the veterans it is not surprising because I think that we all have seen a movie or a TV serie in which something like that is exposed. I can't even imagine what this people have seen, what wars really look like... Sometimes I can't fall a sleep because an exam makes me anxious, imagine someone who has seen the horror of war though his own eyes. It is completely normal that they can't avioid the images they have seen or the continous nightmares related to it. It makes sad to think not only what thay have been through but the lifetime trauma it leaves them, and the poor choice of treatment we can offer them.
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarGood morning! Even though people knows the significance of sleeping, I think most of them don't know the relationship between nightmares and suicide risk. It is true that the sleep's quality affects to our daily mood, so this information shouldn't surprise us. Like I said previously, people knows the advantages of a good sleep, however, few people have healthy sleep habits. Many people sleep five or six hours, or use the mobile before sleep, use the bedroom inadequately...etc. In this way it's easy to have a bad quality of sleep.
ResponderEliminarRegarding war veterans, due to they suffer a lot of painful and stressful experiences and these things are expressed by our subconcious, maybe their "traumas" appear in their dreams, making nightmares and improving their stress level, making improve the suicide risk too.
Hello everyone!
ResponderEliminarI ´m glad to read that you have chosen this article, Carlos, and the reason is that I´ve always believed that our dreams truly reflects (maybe using symbolic plots which must be interpreted) our state of mind. I even think that there could be related anyway with some other phenomena. So although this item captivates me and I could be talking about it for too long, I´ll focus on the points you exposed.
We all know how important is to have a restorative sleep and as many studies have showed, sleep has lots of functions: to settle what we have learned that day, to rest and to prepare the organisms for the next day, etc. I also think it is a fact that sometimes it is something hard to achieve. But other times, it seems as if we had forgotten how crucial it is, and we don´t look after good sleep habits.
Asking to your question, I don´t really think that nightmares have a detrimental effect, but which causes them, it do have. These causes that could be stress, phobias, past traumatic experiences or whatever which could disturb us, things that should be solved by psychological therapy, for example. I believe that this kind of things shouldn´t be forgiven or underestimated and the results of the study don´t surprise me, I think it´s reasonable and makes me feel sad, because I suppose it to be a hard process which may could be avoided if we pay attention. Finally, I also think that war veterans should be separated from the rest of population in the study, because they show special conditions which may affects more his mental state, causing nightmares and predisposing to suicide as consequence.
Good afternoon to everyone
ResponderEliminarThank you for your comments. I am glad with the diversity of opinions that you have post this week. Let me summarize the main ideas of the debate.
The most common opinions had been that having a restorative sleep is a very important factor to have a healthy lifestyle and avoid medical problems. However, although most of the comments are that people is aware of this, only a few implement it on dayly basis. This could be due to a busy lifestyle, job stress, family… Besides, nightmare could lead to sleep trouble.
The real debate have been in two main points. First, if nightmares are a really risk factor (as the article said), or if they are only indicators of some base illness wich causes the suicide rise. In second place, if veterans should or shouldn’t be included in this studio, as they have special conditions, like a higher amount of PTSD, nightmares… In this issue, the most popular opinion has been that it should be included, and also this colective has a bigger risk of suicide.
Finally, in my opinion, this is an important point, and we need to be aware, discuss and study more about this field, given the severity of the consequences that could arrive for our patients.