Aside from posting & reading in these forums, I've been doing my own reasearch & reading about dreams on the side, for the past few weeks (before that I just dreamed & enjoyed it). Everyone seems to agree that your diet, health, & medications do affect your dreams, but there's naturally all different opinions as to why we dream & what dreams mean (so little is known about them because everyone's dreams are unique to their own life/perspective & they happen while we're unconscious so it's hard to do more than speculate), and in these forums you'll find people from virtually every perspective. If you dream of a hot desert, some will say it was because you had a fever or the room was too hot to sleep comfortably, while others might say it means you're anti-social, and still others might say the dream is a sign from God. Take every answer with a grain of salt (and as my dad used to say "Consider the source".. if you look at other posts by a user you can usually get a good idea of their perspective on dreams), and even when you think you know what the dream is telling you it's best to test your ideas before putting too much faith in them (there are many things a dream can possibly be telling you). Many of my dreams seem stranger than the dreams most people have, and yours sound just as strange as my own. When I post dreams or questions on this site, I'm more looking for ideas & things that this perspective I'm stuck in may have missed, to find a new way of looking at it, or a new idea to consider. I know that all the intricate ways the dreams relate to my waking life, thoughts, beliefs, are more numerous than can be explained (without spending hours and hours per dream), so I'm not surprised when responses are way off... I just try to figure out what it was that brought them to that conclusion, & try to think of other things that may be relevant that I may have forgotten or failed to mention.
As far as how diet and health can affect your dreams: If your diet is poor it will inevitably cause health risks or problems & some dreams might tell you this. Eating or being intoxicated, or taking drugs / perscriptions (& even over-the-counter stuff like Nyquil) too soon before going to sleep can also affect your dreams... could cause you to sleep lighter or deeper, and remember more or less, & digesting food, or indigestion, or reactions to the medications during sleep could appear is some form in your dream(s). Acetylcholine, Seratonin, and Dopamine are chemicals naturally occurring in the brain, that are responsible for your dreams, but these chemicals also exist synthetically in quite a variety of prescription and over the counter products, so they can greatly affect your brain's balance of these chemicals and the way you dream. Still, I used to go to sleep intoxicated all the time and used to have worse eating habits than I do now, and even then I had some really intriguing, meaningful dreams, so I'm not even sure myself HOW they affect dreams. I still don't understand dreams as much as I'd like to, but giving them more thought, and discussing them with others, even sketching them seems to help realize or remember more about them. I'm anxious to know more already, but I'm content with the little things I find every day, cause at least it means I'm making progress. I hope this helps & good luck.
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06-22-2009, 08:08 PM
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