What Your Dreams Tell You About Your Health

The 2010's may have been the era of the zombie movie, but the 1960's were the era of the mummy movie. When I was a kid in the 1960's, dreams about mummies played a significant role in my health.

In 1960, all the other kids who attended a birthday party and I caught measles. (This was the era before vaccinations, after all.) Most of us also developed pneumonia, and I had a particularly nasty case. I have vivid memories of my mother standing over my bed, expressing worry that my fever had hit 105 degrees F (about 40.5 degrees C), while I simultaneously was dreaming that I was being chased by evil mummies. 

In those days, it was common for caring mothers to wrap up their children in a blanket when they got a fever. I am sure I was tucked tightly under the covers even when I had the 105 degree fever — so my dreams weren't just about what I had watched. When my fever broke, however, my mummy dreams ceased.

That may have been because I was no longer "under wraps." The mummy dream was probably a way for my brain to tell me I was sick, and then end of the mummy dreams was probably a way for my brain to tell me I was well again.

From Mummy Dreams to Zombie Dreams

It's now more than 50 years later, and movies about the living dead are in vogue. One evening a few months ago, I had an especially vivid dream that my deceased father was standing by my bedside. He told me me that it was soon for me to die, but everything would be OK. Somehow I knew that the "dying" part of the warning was optional. In my dream I asked my dad if he were really there, and he answered indignantly, "Well, I certainly think I am." 

Sure enough, about a week later, I suffered a cardiac arrest — not the first time. But because I took the warning seriously I had arranged to be in a hospital room tethered to a heart monitor, and at the exact moment I "died," the head nurse, a nurse in training, and a diabetes educator all happened to walk in my room at the same time. The alarm bells went off at the monitoring station, and the heart surgeon who performed an emergency 3-hour operation a few minutes later happened to walking down the hall less than 10 steps away. I "died" three times that afternoon, but because I was in the right place at the worst time, I suffered no lasting damage from the experience.

Dreams Aren't Diagnostic, But They Point Out the Need for Diagnosis

My experiences, of course, are anything but unique. Human beings are really good at figuring things out, and we tend to want instant enlightenment. We don't want to have to go through the laborious process of documenting and rationalizing our thought processes, and dreams are one way our brains provide us with the information we need right now, including information that our conscious brains are trying very hard to avoid or deny into non-existence.

Albert Einstein once said something to the effect that it is impossible to solve problems with the same thinking process that created them. Dreams allow us to tap the potential of non-linear thinking to give us insight into problems of all kinds, but especially problems with our physical health. But how can we remember and use the health guidance of our dreams?

How To Keep A Bad Dream From Getting Worse

The convenient thing about the kinds of bad dreams or even nightmares we have about health issues is that it is usually not very hard to remember them. If you have a dream that you are being stabbed in the belly, for example, possibly indicating among many possibilities that you have a blocked artery to your colon, or if you dream about being torched by a flame thrower, possibly indicating (again, among dozens of possibilities) that you are about to break out in shingles, you will probably remember the dream. Chances are that it will be so nasty that you'll wake up, something that makes it easy for the dream to stay with you even later on. The problem is, once you have your bad dream, then what do you do?

Relate Your Dreams to Previous Medical Diagnoses

Personally, I persuaded a cardiologist to admit me to the hospital to make sure my dream of impending doom wasn't going to be realized. It turned that it was, but at least I was in the very best place at the very worst time.

I had enough previously diagnosed cardiovascular issues that it was not difficult to justify putting me in hospital again, and I had the good fortune of going to a hospital where the physicians and staff take hunches, premonitions, and funny feelings seriously. The doctors in this hospital would not even automatically make a referral to psychiatry for report of a "hallucination," as long as they were very sure the patient was in contact with the shared, "real" world and no dangerous decisions would be made.

Don't Catastrophize

Even if you just "know that you know" that you are suffering a dreadful disease revealed to you in a dream, don't call your doctor at home at 3 in the morning to share the news. Seek timely medical attention without screaming at the admissions nurse, barging to the front of the queue at the emergency room, sending out inflammatory emails, or, most importantly, making up symptoms to get medical attention. Trust your dreams to give you timely information that allows your doctors to diagnose you and treat you through an organic, natural, rational process. Dreams are not necessarily rational, but medical treatment should be.

Don't Indulge Your "Fight or Flight" Response

Predictive dreams often activate a region of the brain known as the limbic system. These neurons enable the body to engage in fight or flight behaviors for dealing with imminent danger.

In dreams about health, however, the danger usually is not imminent. It is actually helpful to approach medical personnel calmly and in full control of the ways you express your emotions. Immediately after a predictive dream, while it is still night, it may be helpful to drink of cup of warm tea, do some stretching, crack the window open to let in some fresh air, or simply to sit quietly until agitation passes. Then when you feel calm, in the morning, when medical care providers are also refreshed and alert, then seek the attention your condition may require. If you have physical symptoms, not dream symptoms, then it's appropriate to call for medical care (911 if you are in North America, 999 in much of the rest of the world) right away.

Write Down Your Dream In As Much Detail As You Can

It also helps to record the details of your dream while they are fresh on your mind, because the details will fade away soon enough without this step. It is to be hoped that you don't have predictive dreams about your own health so often that you need to keep a journal at your bedside, but jotting down notes about your dream as soon as you awaken from it will help you understand the dream and act on it later.

Just how much value do doctors put in reports of dreams?

Except in psychiatry, doctors are not trained in interpreting dream symbols. Don't expect an emergency room doctor to indulge your highly metaphorical description of your ailments without earning yourself a referral to the psych department. Interpreting your dream is largely up to you.

Interpreting your labs and diagnostic signs, on the other hand, is up to your doctor. Let your doctor do the job of diagnosis, but use your dreams to get yourself to the right place at the right time. It may even save your life.

Dreams appear to serve the purpose of helping us process things that were either so important that we can't do it all during our waking hours, or to call attention to deep-seated or scary things that we actively try to deny while we're awake. Predictive dreams aren't magic. They simply help you piece together symptoms that you were already experiencing, but tried to dismiss. Dreams can be one of your body's many ways to warn you about something that already exists. So before you go to the doctor with an "I had a dream" story, be honest with yourself about the physical symptoms that have been plaguing you, and tell your doctor about those, too.