The sheets are damp with sweat. You’re cold, but your heart is racing as if a killer just chased you down a dark street. It was just a nightmare, you tell yourself; there’s nothing to be afraid of. But you’re still filled with (26)_____.
Given how unsettling and haunting nightmares can be, is there a way for dreamers to (27)_____, or even turn off, these bad dreams as they happen?
Research is (28)_____, but some studies suggest that people who can master lucid dreaming—that is, the ability to be (29)_____that a nightmare is happening and possibly even control it without waking up—may hold the (30)_____.
Nightmares are part of the human experience, especially for kids. Doctors (31)_____ don’t consider occasional nightmares a problem. They can just be symptoms of a sleep disorder that can (32)_____ from an unpleasant experience, stress, or certain drugs.
To treat the disorder, there are a number of medicines and therapies that are backed by (33)_____ research, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which analyzed the available research on the treatment of nightmare disorder in a recent (34)_____ published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
However, nightmares are complicated, and researchers are still struggling to understand them, said Dr. Rachel Salas, an expert on sleep disorders and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. What we do know is that people (35)_____ to have different kinds of nightmares at different points during the sleep cycle.
