If you have ever jolted awake in horror after watching your teeth crumble and fall out, you are not alone.
Missing teeth
According to a SleepFoundation.org survey, around 20% of people say they have had dreams about their teeth falling out - and experts say there is more to it than random nighttime weirdness.
Dr Dylan Selterman, associate teaching professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University, explains that much of the research relies on self-reporting, which makes accurate data difficult to gather.
He told The Guardian: "Dreams are still an unsolved mystery of science.
"You’re asking people to reflect on something they’re not really paying attention to in their day-to-day lives."
Still, another study found 39% of people had experienced a "teeth dream" at least once, with 16.2% saying they were recurrent and 8.2% describing them as regular.
Dr Selterman added: "It could reflect some kind of underlying apprehensiveness, or it could reflect something about the way in which we think about our appearance."
He explained that teeth are symbolic markers in life - we lose our baby teeth as children and our adult teeth in old age. That makes them “a very vivid marker of ageing and growing”, meaning dreams about them falling out could signal an “experience of growth, maturation, or decline”.
Melinda Powell, co-founder of the Dream Research Institute in London and author of The Hidden Lives of Dreams, believes these visions can act as emotional alarm bells.
She said: "It’s important for us to pay attention to this type of dream, as we are being urged to consider what is out of balance in our lives."
Melinda, who worked for 12 years as a psychotherapist, added that these dreams often strike during times of stress or burnout.
In other words, your nightmare molar meltdown might just be your brain begging for a break.
Tagged in Dream Meaning