India, April 11 -- Many struggle to fall asleep, whether it's due to overthinking or simply because sleep doesn't come easily. But the trouble doesn't end there. New research says that if you've had a hard time falling asleep, you may be more likely to have nightmares. A study published in the Journal of Sleep Research revealed that sleep disturbances increase the likelihood of experiencing nightmares.

But here's the twist- one might assume that having a nightmare would automatically make sleep worse; maybe you wake up in a cold sweat and struggle to fall back asleep. But that's not actually the case.

The researchers asked the participants to sleep with wearable sleep-tracking technology to evaluate brain activity at night. The results ...