Tag: health | In your dreams …

Good sleep food & home-made muesli

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

Do you have a late night snack before going to sleep? Is it affecting your sleep and dreams?

I have a couple of spoons of muesli – yes, I know it’s a breakfast food – in a glass of milk mixed with natural yoghurt every night before bed. If I’m really hungry, it’s three spoons. And I’ve just discovered that it’s the best food for great sleep and dream recall. Here’s why:

My breakfasty nightcap is pumped high in tryptophan, an amino acid the body converts into serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin is a mood enhancer (ah, sweet dreams), and melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate your sleep.

Dairy foods are top of the list for being high in tryptophan, and oats are also noted as a high source. Milk: tick. Yoghurt: tick. Oats: tick. Also prominent in the list are sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, which are an abundant feature of my homemade muesli mix: tick.

Guess what I have for breakfast? The same, only much more. I have about ten spoons of my muesli and add half a banana. But I don’t fall asleep after breakfast because I’m well-slept and, um, well, there’s my caffeine-rich coffee to follow.

Some research suggests that tryptophan may assist dream recall since people with tryptophan deficiency often have poor memory of their dreams.

What else is good for a late night snack?

What else is good for a late night snack? And what’s not so good?

Poultry is high in tryptophan, but protein takes a lot of digesting, enough to disturb your sleep. Big meals before sleep are not a good idea.

Bananas are high in tryptophan, and also rich in the B vitamins known to make dreams more vivid. Bananas are also complex carbohydrates, and complex carbs are in the tick box for a good night’s sleep because they stimulate the release of insulin which makes it easier for the tryptophan in your dairy snack to get to work. (Note, that’s complex carbs, not sugary junk carbs!)

What not to eat before bed

What not to eat? This slideshow lists foods with high fat content, caffeine (chocolate and many common medications are high in caffeine), alcohol, spicy foods, and protein.

For most of my life I’ve had a glass of hot milk before bed, and it’s only been in recent years that I’ve added the muesli because my blood sugar levels started dropping too low in the middle of the night. No wonder I’ve always enjoyed good sleep and abundant dream recall.

73,000 spoonfuls of muesli

Here’s my homemade muesli recipe, developed and refined over the last 20 years. Yes, I must have eaten around 7,300 bowls of this stuff, or 73,000 spoonfuls! I like to think it’s contributed many wonderful healthy benefits, including great sleep and abundant dream recall, ripe pickings for daily insight.

Jane Teresa’s Muesli

No cooking required. Just mix the ingredients thoroughly!

Makes about 7kg (lasts our family about three weeks)

Organic ingredients are best:

About 6 kg Oats
500g LSA (linseed, sunflower, almond, ratio 3:2:1, all finely ground)
50g Hazelnuts – grind
100g Walnuts – grind
110g Mixed nuts (Brazil etc) – grind
125g Shredded coconut
100g Sunflower seeds
250g Pepitas (pumpkin) seeds
100g Sesame seeds
250g Dried apricots – chop
About 10 Figs – chop
400g Sultanas

Enjoy!

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Bad dreams & dementia?

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Recent research has got people all excited about a possible link between people who thrash about in bed while they’re dreaming and the later development of dementia, in particular, Parkinson’s Disease. Here’s a video clip of me talking about this on The Morning Show, Channel 7, this morning.

So let’s have a look at this:

Normally, we don’t thrash about in bed while we’re dreaming. We might toss and turn between dreams, and we might twitch during a dream, but that’s about it.

We’re protected from acting out our dreams by a mechanism called ‘sleep paralysis’. Your dreaming brain flicks a switch to inhibit your skeletal motor muscles from moving. You’re kept safely tucked up in bed, no matter what you’re up to in your dreams.

Some people experience a REM sleep behaviour disorder where sleep paralysis doesn’t kick in. When they dream, their muscles move accordingly. They act out the more dramatic parts of their dreams. They may kick, punch, jump, or even get out of bed. Some people experience this sleep disorder every night; others occasionally, maybe once every couple of weeks, and the episodes last about 2-10 minutes. If they wake up and describe their dream, it generally fits the movements they’ve been making.

(This is different from sleep walking and from restless legs syndrome, both of which occur in non-dreaming phases of sleep.)

It’s commonly believed that the dreams people act out are always bad or violent, but it’s more likely that all dreams are acted out but because the bad or violent ones involve more activity (punching, running away), they are more noticeable.

The dreamer, or his (people with this disorder tend to be older men) bed partner may be hurt – or killed – during one of these episodes. Controversy has surrounded cases where people have murdered their bed partners and claimed innocence due to suffering this disorder.

Back to the recent research:

Mayo Clinic researchers found a possible link between this sleep disorder and the later onset of dementia, particularly Parkinson’s Disease. They analyzed the medical records of 27 people who suffered from this sleep disorder and who all developed dementia up to 50 years later, and concluded that there may be a link.

Of course, this is NOT to say that if you have the sleep disorder you’ll develop dementia within 50 years. Plenty of people suffer this disorder and remain mentally fit and healthy into old age. However, this research may provide a clue to help neurologists understand dementia.

REM sleep behaviour disorder is treatable with drugs, so see your doctor to ensure a good and safe night’s sleep, for yourself and your bed partner.

Watch the video of me talking about this on The Morning Show, Channel 7, this morning.

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Do nightmares affect health?

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Do frequent bad dreams have a negative impact on your health?

Do frequent bad dreams have a negative impact on your health? Michael Lund, writing for the Courier Mail, reports today that recent studies suggest a link between frequent nightmares and insomnia, fatigue, depression and anxiety.

Research in China suggests that 5.1% of people have frequent nightmares, defined as at least one a week, while other studies link the frequency of nightmares to income.

What are my thoughts about this research? I’m quoted in the article, so have a look.

The article also quotes Dr Michael Schredl, of Germany’s Central Institute of Mental Health’s sleep laboratory in Mannheim, who said “The high correlation between nightmare frequency and sleep-related daytime consequences underlines the fact that nightmares might have a strong effect on the wellbeing of the patient, and should be treated.”

I totally agree. And that treatment ideally would include professional interpretation of the nightmares and getting sufferers to apply dream alchemy techniques (specific to their dreams and situations) to address the issues the nightmares reflect. The result? The issues are addressed, the nightmares stop, the people begin to sleep properly again, and health and wellbeing returns.

Read the full article.

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Can dreams help heal disease?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

When dreams offer healing hands

Can dreams help you to heal from disease?

Most, if not all, diseases begin with the mind. Stress, emotional issues, fears, and beliefs can and do manifest in the physical body if not addressed. When your mind is not at ease, when it is at dis-ease, bodily disease may follow. Since dreams reveal your emotional and mental make-up, they offer an opportunity to understand a disease or illness from an emotional-mental perspective.

If you are prone to sickness, or suffering a disease, look through your dreams for symbolic representations of your physical condition. For example, you might see a balloon about to burst under pressure when you’re suffering a headache, a stack of bricks out of alignment when your spine is out of line, a cloudy or murky pond when you’ve got a bladder infection, an off-key or raspy musical instrument when you’ve got a throat infection, a blocked road or pipe when you’ve got a blockage such as a blocked artery or constipation, a toxic waste factory polluting a system when you’ve got a liver or kidney problem, or an invasion or war dream when you’ve been invaded by a virus, or when your immune system is fighting an infection.

These are NOT definite symbols with strict meanings, as any of these symbols can come up in dreams that have nothing to do with physical disease, so don’t use these to diagnose your physical condition. Instead, use these examples as guidelines to help you identify parts of your dream that seem to mirror your physical condition. Once you have found your personal symbol of your disease in a dream, the healing magic begins with a dream alchemy practice. This is what to do.

Visualise the dream situation healing, adding an uplifting emotion. For example, visualise a blocked pipe unblocking, and its contents flowing smoothly, feeling the elation of the release. Or visualise the high-pressure balloon that was about to burst breathing out gently, just enough to relieve the pressure and feel the light-hearted, happy balloon lift and fly. Or visualise the stack of bricks being gently stretched and reset into alignment, feeling the joyous freedom of a new flexibility.

Keep up your visualisation for several weeks, always making sure to add and feel that uplifting emotion. What you are doing is communicating with your unconscious mind using its own language, the language of your dreams. Your unconscious mind then takes your healing cue, and helps heal the emotional or mental cause of your dis-ease by changing the disease-causing beliefs and feelings. Watch your dreams for feedback on your healing progress.

[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, (paperback and ebook), Jane Teresa Anderson]

Have you noticed symbolic parallels in your dreams to diseases, illnesses, aches or pains you’ve experienced?

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