"I Can Dream (Healthy), Can't I?"

 (Published in ENRICH magazine, 2022)

MANY OF US DREAM of having a healthy body and a healthy mind. Some of us actually do something to attain this dream, like exercising regularly and eating healthy.

It's not only our minds and bodies that work to keep us healthy, however. Our dreams also play a role in this process. Yes, our dreams.

It's hard grasping how the chaotic mess of ephemeral images, sensations and emotions called our dreams (that we mostly forget) can benefit our health in any way. We don't usually associate dreams with healthy living, do we?

On the other hand, the past few decades have seen a growing body of scientific evidence confirming that staying healthy also requires both a good night's sleep -- and dreams.

Our brains need to dream to relieve the relentless mental pressures and emotional pain inflicted upon it during our waking hours. It's now being accepted that dreams can help our bodies deal with physical health problems, as well. It's also been found that infrequent dreaming might indicate a personality disorder or a disease such as protein deficiency that could lead to muscle wasting.

Looked at in this perspective, dreams can be considered a type of "midnight medicine" for both the brain and body.  Our dreams help us stay physically and psychologically healthy.

There is a growing fund of sleep medicine knowledge among oneirologists (physicians that scientifically study the dream process), somnologists (sleep physicians specializing in sleep disorders), neuroscientists and other medical experts that believe dreams aren't mainly disguised manifestations of wish fulfillment or meaningless images unleashed by sleep.

It seems it’s a lack of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and a lack of dreaming (and not just poor sleep) that contribute to many of our health problems such as Alzheimer’s disease and a higher risk of obesity.

This startling argument is the contention of Dr. Philip Cheng, PhD, a clinical psychologist and research scientist at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Cheng asserts dreaming provides "essential emotional first aid for our brains and is a unique form of 'informational alchemy' that helps rest both our minds and bodies."

Dr. Cheng said one mental health benefit provided by REM-sleep (the deep sleep state where dreams occur) is it helps limit "the emotional tone of our memories." He explained REM sleep gradually decreases our emotional response to a stressful or traumatic event experienced during the day, thereby calming us down.

A startling claim is that dreams enable us to practice our response to stressful and potentially dangerous situations. If and when this situation does occur, we should be able to act faster and reduce our chances of being harmed. Dr. Cheng said REM sleep is a mechanism that helps our decision-making process.

Our dreams allow us to rehearse for these abnormal situations because "dreaming sharpens information," according to Dr. Cheng. 

"For example, when we see a lion, we want to quickly recognize it’s dangerous and run away," explained Dr. Cheng. "It’s not advantageous to learn that when we encounter a lion in real life, because it’s such a high stakes situation -- you could be eaten if you don’t react fast enough."

He said dreams do impact our mood, and cited anecdotal evidence that depressed people have more violent or vivid dreams.

"To dream, perchance ..."

Internal therapist

That dreams enable us to cope with stress is also the contention of Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at Rush University in Chicago.

“It’s almost like having an internal therapist, because you associate (through dreams) to previous similar feelings, and you work through the emotion related to it so that it is reduced by morning,” she noted.

Dr. Cartwright said sleep studies among newly divorced women with untreated clinical depression revealed women that recalled their dreams, and saw their ex-spouse or partner in their dreams scored better on tests of mood the next morning.

These women were also much more likely to recover from depression than those who didn't dream about the marriage, or who couldn't recall their dreams.

“It really shows that there was an ongoing working through the night in the dream material, and eventually that the depression lifted in those people,” noted Dr. Cartwright.

Dream sleep heals

Like both his peers, Dr. Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, also believes dreams can help heal our emotional wounds and de-escalate high-strung emotions. REM-sleep might play a key role in maintaining memory and mental health.

“It’s said that time heals all wounds, but my research suggests that time spent in dream sleep is what heals," he noted.

He said dreams are important to our well-being since REM-sleep dreaming lessens the pain of hurtful and traumatic experiences and memories. He said dreams also calm our nerves by providing an emotional resolution to a hurtful experience.

 “I think of dreaming as overnight therapy. It provides a nocturnal soothing balm that takes the short edges off of our emotional experiences so we feel better the next day.”

He also pointed out that apart from regulating our emotions better, REM-sleep is also linked to better memory because it strengthens our brain's neural connections and improves concentration. There is research linking (but not proving) poor-quality REM sleep to medical problems like Alzheimer’s disease and depression.

These findings don't mean sleep and dreams can cure illnesses by themselves. Sleep and dreams can't, but they can assist in, or speed-up, the healing process.

Four stages of sleep

Good for creativity

Dreams can also help drive the creative process. In his book, Dr. Walker wrote that dreaming creates a "virtual reality space" where our brains combine past and present knowledge leading to creativity.

He said research has shown that deep non-REM sleep (the other kind of sleep that occurs in the early stages of sleep) strengthens our individual memories. But, it's during REM-sleep where these memories are transformed into creative insights whose results can sometimes change the world.

Such was the case for the great German theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, who said his epic Theory of Special Relativity published in 1905 was inspired by a weird dream involving cows.

Einstein said he dreamt of a herd of cows bunched together against an electric fence. He saw the cows jump backwards as a farmer turned on the electricity to the fence. On the other hand, the farmer saw the cows jump one by one as in a rolling or Mexican wave (the type we see done by crowds in a stadium).

Einstein's weird dream revealed to him that an event looks different depending on where a person is because of the time it takes light to reach our eyes. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity remains the most accurate model of motion at any speed involving miniscule gravitational and quantum effects.

Larry Page, one of the two founders of Google, revealed his idea for the now all-encompassing Google search engine came to him in a dream. Mary Shelley, the British writer who wrote the world's first science fiction novel, Frankenstein, said her inspiration for this work was a nightmare. She was only 19 years-old when she began writing the novel in 1816.

The reason why creativity blooms when we dream is because REM-sleep inactivates noradrenaline, an anxiety-triggering chemical that reaches high levels during stressful or dangerous events.

Dr. Walker said REM-sleep is the only time noradrenaline is almost completely absent from our brain. He also said dreaming in REM-sleep reactivates key emotional and memory-related areas of the brain.

The absence of noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine) allows our brain to absorb more knowledge while revealing hitherto unrevealed insights that can sometimes solve hard problems and create the magnificent. This also seems to explain why the more REM-sleep a person has before a traumatic event, "the weaker the fear-related effect,” said one study.

Dr. Walker is the author of the book, "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams," published in 2017 and a New York Times bestseller.

The road to healthy dreams

Everyone dreams and most of us dream every night.  For young adults and adults, a good night's sleep lasts from seven to nine hours. The elderly (or those ages 65 up) need seven to eight hours of sleep. Teens need eight to 10 hours.

We need at least eight hours of sleep because sleep “is the single most effective thing we can do to rest our brain and physical health each day," according to Dr. Walker.

Why do we need to get at least eight hours of shuteye? That's because REM-sleep takes place during the fifth and last stage of sleep.

The first four phases (also called non-REM sleep) see a transition from shallow to deep sleep. REM sleep involves marked brain activity and dreams, and only occurs during the final hours of sleep, which is in the early morning for most of us.  

REM-sleep accounts for up to 20% of the sleep-time for most persons. A person that dreams might enter REM-sleep up to seven times a night. Dreams last for more than two hours a night.

Dreams occur during both non-REM and REM sleep. Studies confirm it takes from 30 to 90 minutes for a person to start dreaming.

Research reveals the best way to get more REM sleep (and to dream) is to get more sleep. The key to unlocking the health benefits of dreams is, therefore, to get a good night's sleep.

You can sleep better by switching off all the lights in your bedroom, and develop a regular sleep habit by sleeping at about the same time every night. You’ve got to ensure your room is cool, which in this tropical country means you have to sleep with your electric fan turned on. No coffee, wine or beer before going to sleep.

Dream trivia

Dreams are weird and among its weirder aspects are:

* We still don't know why we dream. Scientists haven't reached a consensus opinion as to the raison d’être for dreaming. Continuing research into dreams might one day find the answer, however.

* We also don’t where in the brain dreams originate. It’s unknown if dreams reside in only one area of the brain or in multiple areas. The search for a physical origin of dreams is much like the search for the physical seat of consciousness. We also don’t know what consciousness is exactly.

* We forget half of our dream five minutes after dream's end. We lose 90% of a dream after 10 minutes. If you want to remember your dreams, write them down immediately after you wake up.

* A typical person spends at least six years or 2,100 days of his life dreaming.

* We dream every night, whether we remember the dreams or not.

* Blind people also dream but their dreams are based on what they hear, touch and smell.

* You can't dream if you snore.

* People dream about fear, anxiety, anger, sadness and negative emotions more than they do about happiness, love and pleasant emotions.

* People with lower stress levels and who are happy with their lives tend to have happier dreams.

* Your brain waves are more active when you dream than when you're awake.

* Our dreams come to us mostly as pictures. Most dreams are visual and have little sound or movement.

* Nine in 10 people dream in color. Those that dream in black and white are mostly older people who were exposed to black and white TV and movies in their youth.

* You can’t dream about a person you haven’t met or an event that hasn’t occurred to you.

* Only some four percent of our dreams are about sex. Sleep sex, or sexsomnia, is real.

* There isn’t enough evidence to prove dreams are prophetic.

If you’ve got trouble going to sleep, listen to a sad love song. My personal favorite is the mournful ballad, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” sung at a sleepy and drowsy pace by Karen Carpenter. Turn down the volume.