Page 92 - JCBP-3-2

Journal of Clinical and
Basic Psychosomatics Impact of sleep on psychosomatic health

control group (P < 0.05). The relationship held even when who spent three or four nights in the polysomnography
psychological and stress parameters were controlled. laboratory, that the dreams they reported after awakening
Pereira and Elfering studied the mediating role that from REM sleep were accompanied by a multitude of
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sleep quality may play on the relationship between job negative feelings: Fear, terror, alienation, and helplessness.
stress and psychosomatic complaints of employees. In this The dream content tended towards traumatic events
and near-death experiences or death-related situations.
regard, two working hypotheses were addressed: on the one Another observation is that some patients showed a lack
hand, whether there is a correlation between workplace of emotional involvement in their dreams. While they
stressors, sleep quality, and psychosomatic complaints,
and on the other hand, whether sleep quality mediates may not experience typical nightmares, they have dreams
where they feel completely detached from the images they
the relationship between stressors and psychosomatic see. In these dreams, they do not appear as themselves and
symptomatology. Sleep quality was measured both remain “uninvolved” in the events. This observation is also
objectively (in terms of sleep onset duration, sleep echoed in the work of Tantam et al., who stated that the
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efficiency, and sleep fragmentation using the actigraphy six psychosomatic skin pathology patients analyzed tended
technique) and subjectively through a questionnaire and to be less involved in their own dreams, having more of an
a patient sleep diary. Stress level was also measured by a observer than a participant role. In another study, Monday
scale at the beginning and end of the study (Frese and Zapf et al. compared a group of 12 patients with psychogenic-
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scale) and psychosomatic symptoms by the Mohr scale. The induced bronchial asthma with 12 control subjects in
first resulting conclusion was that workplace stressors were terms of dreams spontaneously reported after awakening
significantly correlated with psychosomatic complaints or immediately after intentional awakening from REM
and sleep fragmentation (defined in the study as the sleep and found a tendency of asthmatic patients to use
number of nocturnal awakenings lasting at least 5 min or much shorter sentences to describe dream narratives,
more followed by at least 15 min of uninterrupted sleep), much less emotional involvement or more frequent
but not with the other objective measures of sleep quality presence of nightmares than in healthy patients. An
(P < 0.05), partially proving the first working hypothesis. intuitive observation, but one that nevertheless needed to
The second conclusion was that the negative effects of be demonstrated through study, is that the words spoken
workplace stressors on the occurrence of psychosomatic by patients during REM sleep and recorded by researchers
illnesses are mediated by sleep fragmentation, as the correlate with the dream content that the patient narrates
bootstrap test of the indirect effect for the link between the upon awakening from sleep. 52
two items yielded a regression coefficient B equal to 0.15,
which was significantly different from zero (with a 90% Building on these observations about dream content,
confidence interval between 0.0036 and 0.3662). These numerous studies have documented the effects that
aspects prove that objective sleep-related elements, such dream content in REM sleep primarily, but also during
as sleep fragmentation in this study, have the capacity to NREM sleep, has on different organ systems. As a general
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induce exacerbation of psychosomatic symptomatology in direction, Hersen states that nightmares, in relation to
individuals on whom stress or other aggression factor acts REM sleep, have the ability to induce autonomic nervous
chronically. system activation, with all the consequences resulting from
this activation. 54-56 Shapiro et al. identified the effect of
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3.3. Dreams and psychosomatic disorders bronchoconstriction that strong emotions during dreams
An interesting relationship was found between the psycho- have on airway diameter in asthma patients, and Monday
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physiologic phenomenon of dreams and psychosomatic et al. stated that conflictual material emerging from
pathology, both in terms of the content of the dreams dreams during REM sleep (and also during other sleep
stages) could contribute to nocturnal attacks of bronchial
reported by patients with these diseases and the possible asthma. Nowlin et al., observed that nocturnal attacks of
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effects that this content has on symptomatology and in angina pectoris occur most often during REM sleep, and
terms of the broad effects that dreamlessness and lack of dreams reported by patients on awakening often contain
ability to express emotions, in general, have on the balance anxious ideas or the sensation of sustained physical effort.
between psyche and body. In addition to clinical changes, biochemical changes
The unanimous direction of the studies consulted related to the content of patient-reported dreams have also
regarding the content of dreams reported by patients with been observed: Plasma-free fatty acid levels as an indicator
psychosomatic pathologies was that of a negative experience of catecholaminergic activity 15 min after awakening from
in comparison to healthy individuals. Warnes describes REM sleep were significantly associated with patient-
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in his study of 10 patients with psychosomatic pathology, reported dream anxiety in the study by Gottschalk et al.
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Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 86 doi: 10.36922/jcbp.4997