to sleep, perchance to dream

...but to die instead.

What i want to know is, how closely are our body mechanisms tied to our dreams? 

I was becoming increasingly upset about something in my dream (I, the villain, was being wrongly accused of something and began to hyperventilate as i tried to prove my innocence to the other creatures) and I suddenly awoke with serious palpitations. This was ensued by a lasting tightness in the chest. 

I'm pretty sure my heart is healthy but i thought back to what I learned about palpitations in Human Physiology yesterday anyway. Either way, I'm wondering if it was because i had just begun to "wake/become conscious of reality" and therefore everything became so much more real. 

Oh, and i just read that in one stage of your sleep "you are paralyzed from the neck down, your eye movements are jerky and rapid, your heart rate fluctuates, your breadth rate changes. Sometimes when you wake up from an especially intense REM episode you may be panting, your heart's pounding and you're sweating. " (http://www.spiritwatch.ca/brain.htm) You're paralyzed so you don't act out everything in your dreams. 

Enough for today. Something else happened today that scared me but I think i'll go eat instead....