Sleep and dreams: where do they come from

As soon as they do not call a dream: the sec­ond real­i­ty, the fourth dimen­sion, the jour­ney of the soul … And yet, sci­en­tists still can­not give an exact answer to the ques­tion: why does a per­son dream.

In ancient times, many super­sti­tions were asso­ci­at­ed with sleep: for exam­ple, sleep­ing chil­dren closed their mouths so that the soul would not fly away and get lost. How­ev­er, in our enlight­ened era, dreams are still treat­ed with con­sid­er­able rev­er­ence: alleged­ly a prophe­cy appears to a per­son in a dream, you just need to be able to deci­pher it.

Dream: another reality?

Once upon a time, the Brah­mins of Ancient India sug­gest­ed that sleep is the jour­ney of the soul. The Euro­peans believed that in a dream the soul leaves the body, all its flights are dreams. Mod­ern sci­ence has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent point of view on this mat­ter, but in some ways it echoes ancient inter­pre­ta­tions: sleep is just a dif­fer­ent mode of brain activ­i­ty. That is, the brain does not stop work­ing even for a minute.

It is still unclear how dreams hap­pen and why a per­son falls asleep? The famous Z. Freud was one of the first sci­en­tists who tried to explain dreams. So, he con­sid­ered sleep to be a kind of con­nec­tion with the sub­con­scious, where the most secret desires, aspi­ra­tions and fears are hid­den. Every­thing once seen, felt, heard is deposit­ed in the sub­con­scious. With the help of a com­pe­tent psy­chother­a­pist, you can open even the deep­est lay­ers of the sub­con­scious and there­by find answers to many ques­tions.

Thus, dreams are not a ran­dom mosa­ic of pic­tures, but a kind of sym­bols of an asso­cia­tive series that the brain shuf­fles in the most bizarre way. Some sci­en­tists believe that this is how the brain clears the space of the matrix from unnec­es­sary and irrel­e­vant rub­bish. Oth­ers believe that the brain in a dream is try­ing to solve some prob­lems and sug­gests a vari­ety of options.

A lot is still being said about prophet­ic dreams, but sci­en­tists explain this fact from the stand­point of sci­ence. When inter­pret­ing a dream, a per­son often sets him­self up for a cer­tain sce­nario, includ­ing the mech­a­nism of self-hyp­no­sis. And if you expect a bad devel­op­ment of events, then you can see it in any more or less neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion. Often in a dream a per­son is sick or sees some pic­tures that refer to dis­eases. This is not a prophet­ic dream, it is the body that sends sig­nals to the sub­con­scious that there are prob­lems. There­fore, rest­less dreams and night­mares can be observed in peo­ple who are unaware of their ill­ness. In addi­tion, emo­tions that are hid­den inside and need to be released can also man­i­fest them­selves in dis­turb­ing dreams. If night­mares are con­stant­ly tor­ment­ing, then it is nec­es­sary to find out their cause — a psy­chol­o­gist can help with this. It is also worth pay­ing atten­tion if you con­stant­ly dream. Usu­al­ly, dreams come only in the REM phase, and full recov­ery requires the phase of non-REM sleep.

Sleep as the basis of a healthy lifestyle

A healthy lifestyle (HLS) begins with a rou­tine. First of all, with the sleep mode. One of the most com­mon myths about sleep: you can “catch up” with com­pen­sato­ry rest on week­ends, for exam­ple. This is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong. If dur­ing the week the body feels a seri­ous lack of sleep, then it can­not be filled with any days off. More­over, this approach is extreme­ly unhelp­ful: the process of recov­ery of the body is cycli­cal, that is, uni­form. There­fore, the inter­vals between sleep and wake­ful­ness should be approx­i­mate­ly the same.

Anoth­er impor­tant aspect of a healthy lifestyle relat­ed to sleep is phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in the late evening hours. There is a mis­con­cep­tion that exer­cis­ing before bed makes you fall asleep faster. But any activ­i­ty leads to accel­er­at­ed blood cir­cu­la­tion and, as a result, exci­ta­tion of the mus­cles, while they need to be in a relaxed state. There­fore, it is more pro­duc­tive to exer­cise at least four hours before bed­time.

Sleep lovers should know that too much sleep is just as bad as not enough. Nor­mal nor­mal sleep requires sev­en to nine hours. It is impor­tant to main­tain a bal­ance here (one of the pil­lars of a healthy lifestyle): if you sleep a lit­tle, but at the same time you feel quite cheer­ful, there is no drowsi­ness, your work­ing capac­i­ty is at the lev­el — there is noth­ing to wor­ry about. But if you want to sleep all the time, and you sleep a lot and for a long time, then this is a rea­son to see a doc­tor. Such sleep dis­tur­bances, cou­pled with sleep apnea syn­drome (snor­ing), can lead to a stroke, doc­tors say.

Good qual­i­ty sleep is the key to calm nerves, which is very impor­tant in our time. In a dream, the brain does not rest, but the ner­vous sys­tem relax­es, gain­ing strength for the next day.

How hormones affect sleep

Hor­mones have a great impact on the human body: almost no process in it can do with­out these sub­stances pro­duced by the endocrine glands. They did not bypass their atten­tion and the reg­u­la­tion of sleep.

There are many rea­sons why sleep is dis­turbed, but one of the most com­mon is the lack of the so-called sleep hor­mone. This is mela­tonin, pro­duced strict­ly in accor­dance with dai­ly bio­rhythms. So, most of all it is pro­duced by the body in the dead of night until five in the morn­ing — at this time a per­son has the sweet­est dream. The expla­na­tion for this is sim­ple: mela­tonin is active­ly pro­duced in the dark.

By the way, a lack of mela­tonin caus­es rest­less, weak sleep in the elder­ly. As we age, mela­tonin syn­the­sis decreas­es (as well as oth­er process­es), which is why many old­er patients com­plain of unpro­duc­tive sleep.

Mela­tonin is respon­si­ble for more than just sleep. With its help, some impor­tant hor­mones are formed (for exam­ple, lep­tin is a sati­ety hor­mone), the pro­tec­tive prop­er­ties of the immune sys­tem are enhanced (it has been noticed that peo­ple with chron­ic sleep depri­va­tion get sick more often than those who sleep well and accord­ing to the regime), the emo­tion­al state improves.

If nec­es­sary, the doc­tor can pre­scribe drugs con­tain­ing mela­tonin: they will pro­vide the nec­es­sary amount of the hor­mone in the body, which means that there will be good sleep, good rest and a restored ner­vous sys­tem.

But not only one prepa­ra­tions is worth main­tain­ing good health. It is impor­tant to go to bed and get up at about the same time inter­val: thus, dai­ly bio­rhythms will work smooth­ly and devel­op the nec­es­sary mela­tonin stan­dards.