Researchers sure: dreams can warn you about deadly diseases

Dream researchers have been using our subconscious for years as a potential early warning system for future illnesses. “It is precisely the dark dreams that contain secret messages about ourselves,” says dream researcher Ernest Hartmann. So should we

listen to our dreams

to learn more about personal health?

Life Saving Nightmare

The feeling is unbearable. Glowing coals under his chin burn like fire. His tormentor knows no mercy. Only when Brandon Tanner opens his eyes and wakes up in his bed does the spook come to an end. He dreams this scene night after night. The pain seems real, as soon as he wakes up it’s gone. The 36-year-old doesn’t even feel a slight tug. At some point Tanner tells his doctor about the dreams. The US doctor Bernhard Siegel arranges an extensive health check. The result is a sensation even for the experienced doctor: Tanner has thyroid cancer in the early stages. With early detection, the cancer can be successfully treated. Tanner’s dreams save his life.

The body’s early warning system

Dream researchers can now confirm: Dreams can not only reveal something about our fears and preferences. They also say whether diseases are hidden in the body. “Dreams can work like X-rays,” says the US doctor Robert L. Van de Castle. But does our subconscious really know about it earlier? Other reports also suggest that our body expresses information about its condition through dreams. For example, an officer dreamed that he was wounded in the lower right abdomen. The next day he came with me

acute appendicitis

to the hospital. The officer was just one of more than 3,000 cases of illness in which psychiatrist and dream researcher Vasily Kassatkin examined the connection between dream events and the onset of illness.

The subconscious sends signals

The amazing result: In 85 percent of the cases, illnesses announced themselves during sleep by dreaming of the corresponding pain or symptom. Vasily Kasatkin went even further and also established a temporal connection between the occurrence of a dream and the onset of the disease: only a few hours elapse in the case of complaints affecting the skin, the throat or the teeth; with high blood pressure two to three months; in the case of a brain tumor up to a year. “Our subconscious mind is alerted by the first signs of illness from our body and sends its warnings in the dream,” explains Kassatkin. “Those who take them seriously and go to the doctor can save themselves a lot of suffering.” Researchers disagree on the reason. But a sure dream warning sign is said to have been identified recently: If dreams suddenly have more violent content and these people keep dreaming of an attack that they have to fend off, it can be a

neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson’s

point out, but which may not be diagnosed for another two or three decades – a startling phenomenon called RBD (Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder). Another case that shows that the uncanny power of our thoughts is obviously much greater than before supposed. Deciphering this will be one of the greatest tasks facing medicine in the coming decades.

From World of Wonders Editors