What your dreams reveal

Plus: What happens when you stop taking obesity drugs

View this email online June 2, 2024 by Carmel Wroth, Health Editor This week: Dreaming is often misunderstood. But in a new book, a neuroscientist argues that it’s one of the most vital functions of the human brain, and just about anyone can tap into dreams' insights. Here’s how. Plus: Slept in and missed your kid’s soccer game? We’ve got a comic on how to harness your guilt for good. And: New research shows keeping things simple with a low-carb diet can help IBS symptoms, and a look at whether new obesity drugs have a lasting effect on weight once you stop taking them.  Five surprising things to know about dreaming by Andrea Muraskin Eoneren/Getty Images I had a nightmare last night.  It began like many of my dreams do – I was on vacation with my extended family. This time, we were in Australia, visiting family friends in a big house. Things took a turn when somehow that I can’t quite explain, I got mixed up in this Australian family’s jewelry theft and smuggling operation. And I lied about it in front of my relatives, to protect myself and my co-conspirators. Before I woke up, I was terrified I’d be sent to prison.  The dream seems bizarre, but when I pick the narrative apart, elements emerge with a clear connection to my waking life. For instance, I recently listened to a podcast where a pair of fancy hairpins suspiciously go missing during a family gathering. Moreover, I’m moving tomorrow and as of this writing I still have packing to do. When the movers arrive in the morning, I either have to have finished packing, or face the consequences of my lack of preparedness – (a crime, at least to my subconscious).  Dr. Rahul Jandial, neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and author of This is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life, says the major themes and images of vivid dreams like these are worth paying attention to, and trying to derive meaning from. (For me, I decided that the next time I have to move, I’m taking the day before off!) I spoke with Dr. Jandial about what else we can learn from our dreams, including some of modern science’s most remarkable findings, and theories, about the dreaming brain.  1. Dreams are not random From dream diaries recorded in ancient Egypt and China to reports from anthropologists in the Amazon to surveys of modern Americans, evidence shows our dreams have a lot in common. For example, being chased and falling are pretty consistent. “Reports of nightmares and erotic dreams are nearly universal,” Jandial says, while people rarely report dreaming about math. Jandial says the lack of math makes sense because the part of your brain primarily responsible for logic – the prefrontal cortex – is typically not involved in dreaming.  2. The times when you first wake up, or while you're drifting off, are fertile ground for creative ideas Salvador Dali had a method for capturing his thoughts just as he was falling asleep, which Jandial recounts in This is Why You Dream. The artist would sit in a chair holding a large key above a plate on the floor. When he nodded off, he’d drop the key on the plate, which would wake him up. Then he’d sketch what he remembered from those first few moments of sleep – an inspiration for his surrealist paintings. Brain imaging studies have supported the potential of sleep-entry as a moment of insight.  Fortunately for those of us who prefer to fall asleep and stay there, thank-you-very-much, you can also get inspiration from your dreams when you first wake up. “I get all my ideas when I wake slowly,” he says. Jandial writes down what he remembers in the first few minutes after waking, before checking the news or Instagram. It’s not all great stuff, “But when there are good ideas, it's from that time. It's not from two o'clock with my espresso,” he says.  3. Nightmares? Write a new script. Jandial says nightmares around occasional stressful events, like my dream about the jewelry heist –  are usually not cause for concern. But if you’re stuck in a loop of recurring fearful dreams, there is something you can try: Imagery Rehearsal Therapy.  This is something you can do with a therapist. “If [a patient has] a recurrent nightmare of an explosion or an airplane crashing, they'll go to the therapist to draw out the map of the dream, the dreamscape, if you will, and then they'll rehearse that the airplane landed safely,”  or they arrived home from a drive instead of crashing, etc, Jandial explains. After time, he says many patients see their nightmares change.  4. Dreams about cheating on your partner are normal. They don’t mean there's something wrong with your relationship. In surveys, a majority of people report erotic dreams. And for people in relationships, these dreams contain “high rates of infidelity, whether people report being in healthy relationships or unhealthy relationships,” Jandial says. But sexy dreams have rules too. “When you look at the pattern of erotic dreams, the acts seem to be wild, but the characters are surprisingly narrow. Celebrities, even family members, repellent bosses; it's a small collection of people as a pattern.” Jandial and others theorize that having sexual dreams about people familiar to us may be a feature our brains evolved to keep us open to procreation and increase the likelihood of the species’ survival.  5. Near the end of life, dreams can provide comfort  Treating patients at City of Hope cancer center in Los Angeles, Jandial observes a phenomenon he calls “dreams to the rescue.”  For some patients near the end of their lives, “even though the day is filled with struggle, the dreams are of reconciliation, of hope, of positive emotions. I was surprised to find that end-of-life dreams are a common thing, and they lean positive.”  Jandial says there’s evidence that death may come with one final dream. “Once the heart stops, with the last gush of blood up the carotid [artery] to the brain, the brain's electricity explodes in the minute or two after cardiac death…Those patterns look like expansive electrical brainwave patterns of dreaming and memory recall,” Jandial says.  Learn more about how to interpret dreams, and what they can signal about your mental health. Also: Popular myths about sleep, debunked Newsletter continues after sponsor message COMIC: The upside to feeling guilty Malaka Gharib If you let someone down, sometimes the agony of feeling bad lingers on and on. You broke someone's heart. You missed your kid's recital. You weren't there for your mom when she needed you. And you can’t let yourself off the hook.  In this comic by NPR’s Malaka Gharib, Taya Cohen, who researches honesty and moral character at Carnegie Mellon University, and Han Ren, a clinical psychologist based in Austin, Texas, explain how to cope with some of the unhealthy emotions that can come with guilt — and transform it into a positive force.  For instance Ren advises people to think about whether the guilt is justified – sometimes we have to push back and take care of our own needs rather than caring for another. You can say, “I love you, but I love me too” says Ren. Another tip: Have a good “gut check” person, someone who “knows your heart” and can tell your honestly who’s at fault. For more tips and scripts for how to work with your feelings, read the comic. Plus: When to let go of old family traditions — and create new ones Part-interview, part-existential game show This is Wild Card from NPR. Host Rachel Martin rips up the typical interview script and invites guests to play a game about life's biggest questions. Rachel takes actors, artists and thinkers on a choose-your-own-adventure conversation that lets them open up about their fears, their joys and how they've built meaning from experience – all with the help of a very special deck of cards. LISTEN TO WILD CARD NOW Here’s something new to try for IBS relief d3sign/Getty Images/Moment RF For people who get frequent abdominal pain, bloating or other unpleasant gastro symptoms, relief may be in sight, as Ronnie Cohen reports. A new study shows that diet helps with irritable bowel syndrome, even more than drugs. And you don’t have to try the notoriously complicated (and strangely named!) low FODMAP diet that doctors often recommend. A low-carb eating plan brought nearly as much easing of symptoms.  For years, doctors have advised dietary changes to manage IBS, including the tricky FODMAP elimination diet that cuts out many common foods like dairy, grains and beans and some tasty vegetables like onions and garlic. While this diet can help (if you can stick to it), a simpler to follow low-carb diet may well be worth trying as well. Learn more about both. Also: For stomach pain and other IBS symptoms, apps can bring relief What happens when you stop taking obesity drugs? Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg via Getty Images The new obesity drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound help some patients lose weight and gain a new-found sense of ease in their bodies, no longer plagued with food cravings. But there’s a huge catch. The minute you go off the drugs, the craving and weight come back. And because of cost, drug shortages or unpleasant side effects, many people do have to stop taking them. NPR’s Yuki Noguchi talked to some of these patients, people like Jonathan Meyers, who struggled to find Zepbound after being on it for months. He dreaded going off the drug, and going back to the kind of drastic lifestyle changes necessary to keep off weight without medication –  tracking every bite, scanning everything he eats into a mobile app, and feeling like he’s “just absolutely starving all the time.”  Here’s more of his story and the workarounds that patients have to resort to to stay on the drugs. Plus: Lifesaving or stigmatizing? Parents wrestle with obesity treatment options for kids We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism online. Yours dreamily, Andrea and Carmel Listen to your local NPR station. 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