dreams
So, I ran into the Easter Bunny last night and he told me he’s tired of fighting ninjas and chalkboard erasers without you. He asked me to help you find your way back from those monochrome dreams you don’t even remember so that, together, you can win control over the marshmallow bog once and for all.
It’s hard to say no to the Easter bunny, so here I am.
Though many of us consider dreams to be nothing more than junk output from REM sleep, Harvard professor Deirdre Barrett disagrees. According to her, it’s actually a highly creative form of thinking.
Though I can’t say what’s on the other side of your victory over the marshmallow bog, I’m betting it’s a solution to a nagging problem, the location of your car keys, or even an insight into a relationship you might not otherwise see.
Need some convincing? Let’s get started . . .
They’re all creative breakthroughs made while dreaming, of course! Recounting an interview with Albert Einstein, journalist Edwin Newman described the genius’ first inkling about the theory of relativity like this:
Of that dream Einstein later reminisced, “I knew I had to understand that dream and you could say, and I would say, that my entire scientific career has been a meditation on my dream.” (source)
More recently, Google co-founder Larry Page shared the spark that ignited Google’s creation:
There are so many more examples: Dr. Otto Loewi won a Nobel Prize after a dream helped him devise an experiment to prove that nerve impulses are transmitted via chemicals rather than electrical impulses.
Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleyev rushed to write down the periodic table after seeing it in a dream. The sewing machine and countless other inventions were inspired by dreams.
You probably don’t want to invent the next Google, but wouldn’t you love to harness your out-of-the-box thinking capabilities to find everyday solutions?
If so, I recently attended a talk given by Julia Ross, author of The Diet Cure, that may help. According to Ross, if you can’t recall your dreams it may be helpful to increase vitamin B6 intake.
Several studies have reported similar findings, like this one which found that vitamin B6 significantly increased dream recall compared to a placebo.
Vitamin B6 helps the body convert amino acids to serotonin, which is the active neurotransmitter during the dream phase. Since B6 is water soluble it cannot be stored in the body, adequate intake is needed on a regular basis. Even then, certain factors can deplete B6 levels rapidly. They are:
I prefer getting my nutrition from whole-food based supplements and foods instead of isolated nutrients when possible, so
If you find that you are unable to remember your dreams, you may want to consider increasing your intake of B6 rich foods such as:
If you find that you are still not remembering your dreams, you can try these techniques.
Einstein photo credit: Oren Jack Turner, Princeton, N.J. – Modified with Photoshop by en:User:PM_Poon and later by User:Dantadd. (The Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons