Is long-term dreaming harmful to the body?

Almost everyone dreams, but the frequency of dreaming varies greatly. Many people quickly forget their dreams, but some people remember their dreams very clearly. Long-term dreaming during sleep may also mean poor sleep quality. Many people, if they have a lot of dreams at night, will find that they wake up the next morning feeling groggy and lacking energy. This should be regarded as the first direct impact of long-term dreaming on the body.

First, let us understand dreaming and sleep cycles: During each night's sleep, a sleep cycle is completed every 2 hours or so. If you sleep for 8 hours, you will cycle through four sleep cycles. Each sleep cycle begins with drowsiness, then gradually deepens until deep sleep, and then transitions to non-rapid eye movement dreaming sleep.

According to the EEG pattern during sleep, we divide the sleep cycle into five stages:

The first stage is falling asleep, which is the transition period between wakefulness and sleep. People can easily wake up in this stage. We usually call it a resting state or a semi-sleeping state. It lasts about 10 minutes.

The second stage is light sleep. It is easy to wake up during this period. Those who have difficulty falling asleep often wake up on their own. We usually call it falling asleep. It lasts about 20 minutes.

The third stage is middle sleep, during which consciousness disappears and it is difficult to wake up. We usually call it deep sleep or deep sleep, which lasts about 40 minutes.

The fourth stage is deep sleep. During this period, the sleep is deep and it is very difficult to wake up. We usually call it "sleeping dead". It lasts about 20 minutes.

The fifth stage is rapid eye movement. During this period, the eyeballs move rapidly, about 50-60 times per minute. We usually call it the dream state. It lasts about 5-10 minutes.

During the entire sleep cycle, most of the dreams we have occur during the rapid eye movement stage. Most of the dreams we remember are also the dreams from the last sleep cycle, and most of the dreams from the previous cycles are "forgotten".

From this we can see that dreaming is a normal physiological and psychological phenomenon that occurs during sleep. Everyone dreams every night, and dreaming is beneficial to people and has no harm. This is because:

First: The brain uses dreams to clear out the garbage produced by daytime brain work;

Second: The brain uses dreams to organize what it has learned during the day and help the corresponding functional areas to remember, which is beneficial to improving memory;

Third: The brain uses dreams to help us regulate our emotions, thereby improving our physical and mental health;

Fourth: Under normal circumstances, we only use 5-10% of the brain's functional areas, and 90-95% is in a dormant state. At night, we use dreams to keep the dormant areas functional.

Fifth: The brain's functional areas are under self-control during the day, but at night, the self-control weakens. At this time, the functional areas integrate, diffuse, and discharge, so bizarre dreams appear;

Sixth: Some parts of our body are not very sensitive, such as the pain in the internal organs. Dreaming at night can allow us to perceive the source of pain from the changing dreams, and then improve the maintenance of these areas. Some people say that they dream a lot, but in fact it is the result of their own excessive attention to dreaming. That is, they are causing trouble for themselves and putting themselves into anxiety, tension and fear.