IF someone who's often plagued by nightmares, you might dread falling asleep despite needing to rest.

These vivid and terrifying dreams have long been a subject of study, as scientists strive to understand what causes them and how to ease them.

Research conducted last year could give new hope to nightmare sufferers, as the team behind it identified two non-invasive techniques to curtail nighttime terrors.

For up to four per cent of adults, what should be a peaceful time of recovery and rest is invaded by chronic nightmares, according to the Geneva-based researchers.

These people often wake up during the night and have lower quality of sleep.

Scientists have linked struggling to get decent kip to a number of health conditions such as asthma, lower immunity to bugs, weight gain and heart disease.

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Thirty-six patients diagnosed with a nightmare disorder participated in the study, and researchers asked them to rewrite their most frequent nightmares in a positive light.

“There is a relationship between the types of emotions experienced in dreams and our emotional well-being,” Lampros Perogamvros – a psychiatrist at the Sleep Laboratory of the Geneva University Hospitals and the University of Geneva and the study's senior author – explained.

“Based on this observation, we had the idea that we could help people by manipulating emotions in their dreams."

He said the study – which was published in  the journal Current Biology – showed that it was possible to reduce the number of negative and emotionally charged dreams in people suffering from nightmares.

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Researchers also tried another non-invasive method of reducing bad dreams.

They asked participants to do an 'imagination exercise', in which they linked a positive version of a nightmare to a specific sound.

They then asked them to wear a headband at night that would play the sound to them while they were in the REM stage of their sleep – this is when most nightmares occur.

Participants were split into two groups. The first were only asked to rewrite their dreams with a positive spin, while the second group did this and also listened to their selected sound while they slept.

Both groups experienced a decrease in nightmares over the two weeks of the experiment.

But the half that received the combination of therapies had fewer nightmares, even three months after the study.

They also experienced more joy in their dreams, researchers wrote.

“We were positively surprised by how well the participants respected and tolerated the study procedures," Lambros said.

“We observed a fast decrease of nightmares, together with dreams becoming emotionally more positive.

"For us, researchers and clinicians, these findings are very promising both for the study of emotional processing during sleep and for the development of new therapies.” 

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Previous studies have linked having bad dreams as a child and developing cognitive impairment or Parkinson's disease later in life.

And a dream expert revealed what the four most common nightmares can mean.

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