An expert has looked into how certain recurring dreams might point to an underlying health issue.
Dreaming is one of the strangest parts of human experience, and people have long debated whether our dreams carry meaning — or are simply random.
Many recognize stress-fuelled scenarios, like turning up late to an exam you haven’t taken in years, or being pursued while your legs feel stuck and you can’t move properly.
Others have dreams that are comforting, or so surreal and fragmented they’re hard to describe at all.
However, specialists suggest that some patterns of dreaming could be the body’s early warning system, making them worth paying attention to.
Professor Patrick McNamara, a psychologist at Boston University School of Medicine who focuses on sleep research, says the brain is continuously keeping tabs on what’s going on inside the body.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: “The brain is constantly monitoring signals from the body’s internal organs to keep our physiological systems in balance.”
It’s already well known that difficult periods — particularly stress and anxiety — can disrupt sleep and increase the frequency or intensity of unpleasant dreams.
But the more recent idea is that clusters of specific nightmares may sometimes appear before we consciously notice that something is off physically.
Describing the kinds of information the brain is tracking, Professor McNamara said: “These signals are integrated in paralimbic regions such as the anterior insula, which track the body’s internal state.
“During REM sleep the brain effectively compresses and synthesises this information, producing a kind of snapshot of what’s happening inside the body.”
These have been referred to as ‘prodromal dreams’ — dreams that can precede symptoms and potentially relate to a wide range of conditions.
“When we are talking about prodromal dreams though, we are not just talking about serious life threatening illnesses, they could also come before a cold or the flu,’ said Professor McNamara.
So what themes might be worth noting if they start cropping up unusually often?
“Dreams that are detecting threats are often presented in similar ways,” Professor McNamara explained.
“One of them is that there will be unwarranted aggression from somebody towards the dreamer, it may seem unusual but it is a metaphorical signal from the body.
“The other strong signal is the appearance of male strangers, who are mildly threatening.”