‘How long do your dreams last?’ or ‘Do you think people can remember their dreams?’ & ‘Are you suffering from any sleep disorders?’
If you’re also curious to know the answers to these questions, you are at the right place.
Dreams often leave us puzzled. It is difficult to understand the dream themes and the dream content at times.
How Long Do Dreams Last?
The length of a dream varies greatly. It is difficult to predict how long you might be dreaming. But experts have tried to study and provided an estimate as the answer to this question.
The study of the National Sleep Foundation mentions that a person can dream approximately four to six times in a night. This means a person spends around 2 hours a night dreaming.
How long do Nightmares last?
Nightmares are the bad dreams that often trigger negative emotions and can also disturb our sleep at night. According to the study conducted by The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 50-85% of men and women have reported having nightmares.
We don’t have an exact answer to how long a nightmare lasts. But dream experts say that we experience most nightmares in the last third phase of REM sleep.
How many dreams do you have a night?
You can never keep a count of how many dreams you have in a night. Why? Because you don’t remember your dreams. You only remember some fragments of your dreams that occurred in your REM sleep.
How long do lucid dreams last?
Lucid dreams are said to occur when you’re stuck between your REM sleep and being awake. Even though lucid dreams are rare, some people can have more lucid dreams than others.
Lucid dreams last as long as our non-lucid dreams i.e., 5-20 minutes long. For some, lucid dreams are only for a few seconds and some can experience lucid dreams even for an hour. This totally depends on your control over the brain.
How long does the average dream last?
A person is capable of dreaming only upto 90 minutes. If we sleep for around 8-9 hours, then we undergo 5-6 cycles of REM sleep.
The first two cycles of REM sleep hardly last for 5 minutes. Then after, in every cycle, this time period keeps on increasing. As we age, our time span of REM sleep keeps decreasing.
So, ultimately, when we calculate the time duration, we know that the average dream lasts for hardly 10-20 minutes. The dreams are shorter in the first part of the night and with time, it keeps getting longer.
Why are some dreams longer than others?
Some dreams are longer than others because of the REM sleep theory. So, if you’re in your third REM cycle of the night, you’ll have a longer dream than the second REM cycle of the night.
This is because the night progresses, the time span of REM sleep also increases and that’s why the dreams you see in the latter part of the night are longer than the dreams at the beginning of the night.
How long does the sleep cycle work?
Before getting into one REM sleep, a person undergoes three NREM sleep stages. In the first stage of NREM, which is just after a person falls asleep, the eyes move slowly and the body feels relaxed. This is the lightest form of sleep and lasts for around 5-10 minutes.
In the second NREM stage, it is difficult to wake a person. Only if you make some loud noise, a person wakes up but will still be drowsy. The brain responds very slowly.
Now, in the third stage of NREM, a person is in deep sleep. The eyes and muscles show no movement. Even if you do some activity in the same room as the person is sleeping, he would not be able to notice it.
If we talk about REM sleep, it lasts between 5-45 minutes. A dreamer wouldn’t wake easily in this phase. The eyes and muscles will show no movement but the body and brain remain active since we are dreaming.
Final Thoughts!
Well, no matter how long or short your dream has been, if you remember the content in it, you can identify some deep hidden messages from your subconscious.
So, the next time you dream, make sure you note down as many details as possible. This way you’ll be able to find the right interpretation and also act on it wisely.
If you want to know ‘What do dreams look like?’ then click here.
