Why Do We Dream?

There are very few things in life that you can count on being there with you for the rest of your life and that will occur in such a regular and predictable pattern. The average person spends one third of their life sleeping and two hours a night dreaming.

With dreams being such an integral part of our lives, you would think we’d have them all figured out by now. However, the debate continues. Throughout time, scientists, doctors, mystics, and religious men have announced many theories about why we dream. This article will examine some of the most popular theories.

When you are dreaming, your body goes through some important changes. The first thing that happens is adrenaline is released and level in your blood stream increases. As this happened, your blood pressure rises, and your heart rate goes. There are also specific brain wave patterns that happen while you are dreaming. In fact, research has shown that you actually have increased brain activity while you are dreaming than you do during normal waking hours. Throughout time, many philosophers and spiritual leaders have referred to dreaming as a higher state of consciousness. Now that scientific equipment has been used to confirm that our brains are working harder, we may have proven that idea to be a fact.

REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is a common name for dream sleep. The reason it got this name is because your eyes move rapidly beneath your eye lids during REM sleep. Dream sleep is considered the final state of sleep and accounts for between 15% and 20% of total sleeping time every night. On a full night’s sleep (7-8 hours) an average person will dream between four and seven times during the night. However, you won’t remember most of those dreams in the morning, the chances are good that you will only remember the dream you had just before waking up.

But, just because you don’t remember the dream, it doesn‘t mean you didn‘t have any. Every single person dreams every night, whether they remember their dreams or not. Your first dream of the night doesn’t normally start until you have been asleep for 30 to 90 minutes. This is the time it takes for your body to reach your deepest stage of dreamless sleep. Once there, you will cycle back and forth between dream sleep and deep sleep for the rest of the night.

Another important note is the paralysis that occurs during sleep for most people. Tossing and turning that you normally experience at night happens when you are not dreaming because when you are, your muscles remain completely relaxed. Some people do experience some movement during dreams, however, this is not normal and often indicates a sleep disorder of some kind.

Scientist have been studying the purpose of dreaming for many years and they still don’t fully understand the purpose of dream sleep. There are some things we do know, however. We know that dreaming is essential to our physical and psychological health. Studies have shown that those who are deprived of dreams for a period of time begin to exhibit a variety of psychological symptoms.

In one study, the researchers used brain wave monitoring equipment to watch the volunteers sleep stage closely throughout the night. Whenever they were just about to enter REM sleep, the subjects were woken up. This cycle was repeated throughout the night, stopping the subjects from dreaming all night long.

All of the volunteers received the same amount of sleep time as they normally do, they all began to show impairments in their daily activities. The symptoms included disorientation, depression, irritability, and other psychological issues. The study continued for several night, depriving the subjects from dreaming for a few days in a row. As each day passed, they became more and more agitated and psychologically unwell.

The results of this study and many studies that have followed have all proven that dreaming is vital to our health both emotionally and physically. The question left to answer is why? Does our dream release a needed chemical that we have yet to discover while we dream? Does our mind need this psychological output in order to release pent of feeling that may not have an outlet in our day to day loves? What do you think? Use the comments section below to share your thoughts!