Denys Chumak

04 Apr 2024

Is Dreaming A Sign Of Good Sleep?

The purpose of dreams is still a highly debatable topic in the scientific community today. Researchers and sleep specialists agree on very few key ideas. One such idea is when dreams happen during our regular sleeping cycle.

When you sleep, your brain goes through two main stages: NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Dreams can occur during both of these stages, but they're more likely to happen during REM sleep, which is the final stage.

So, if you remember having dreams, it's a sign that your brain has been going through this last stage of sleep, which is a good indicator of a healthy sleep cycle.

Now, here's the big question: what comes first? Does dreaming make you have a good sleep cycle, or does a good sleep cycle make you dream? Which comes first?

What is A Good Sleep Cycle? – And When Do We Dream

Scientists have known for a long time that poor sleeping habits and irregular sleeping patterns reduce human longevity. Sleep deprivation is tied to some of the most dangerous diseases including a higher risk of obesity and heart disease.

Surprisingly, none of these negative outcomes have anything to do with dreams. No matter how good or bad your dreams may be, it appears that they do not negatively impact your mental, emotional, or physical health.

Let’s look at when dreams happen in the sleep cycle to get a clearer picture of why that is:

NREM Stage 1

It is the first stage making up about 5% of the sleep cycle. Your mind is mostly awake but you are drifting off. Dreams that happen during this stage are short and often incorporate noises from your surroundings or events from that day. You are less likely to remember these dreams

NREM Stage 2

You are less likely to remember dreams in this stage too. Stage 2 accounts for about 45% of the sleep cycle and at this point you have become less aware of the surrounding. Some scientists believe this is where memory and emotion processing/consolidation happens through dreams and thoughts.

NREM Stage 3

About 25% of sleep takes place here. This is where many people sleepwalk because it’s harder to wake up at this stage. The body repairs itself physically and the immune system is boosted, making sure you are energetic and refreshed in the morning.

More memories are processed here and anything learned during the day is consolidated. Your brain repeats NREM Stage 2 before going to REM sleep.

Stage 4 - REM Sleep

Usually begins about 90 minutes after NREM Stage 1. Your body is fully immobilized but brain activity increases causing rapid eye movement, increased heart rate, and breathing.

Due to increased brain activity, dreams are frequent here and more vivid, making it the epicenter of dreaming. Your body is immobilized which ensures you cannot act out your dreams.

The brain activity is similar to that of wakefulness but without the same level of consciousness. This allows the mind to generate thoughts, and plans, and imagine fictitious scenarios without consequence. Once the stage is over, your body repeats NREM Stage 2, and the cycle starts all over again.

Note that these stages occur more than once during the night, but always in the same order. In total, you dream for about 2 hours every night when you get a full 8 hours of sleep or more.

But you may be wondering, “I don’t dream every day!”

In reality, every person dreams each time they are asleep, we just don’t remember the dreams each time.

Remembering Dreams Leads to Good Sleep

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According to Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, we forget so many of our dreams because during REM sleep the brain’s short-term memory is most active, but it only holds memories for about 30 seconds.

Once you drift back into NREM Stage 2 without waking up, the brain forgets that dream since it never enters long-term memory.

After sleeping for about 8 hours, the REM stage will occur during those final hours. If you wake up after the 8 hours then your awake brain will have time to store the short-term memory into the long-term memory before the short 30-second window elapses.

This makes your waking routine extremely important if you want to remember your dreams more often. A good practice is to have a dream journal close to your bed. You may also go for a softer alarm system to avoid a loud awakening that may distract you as you wake up.

Does Remembering Your Dreams Mean You Slept Well?

If you keep remembering your dreams day in and day out, then you are constantly getting good sleep which translates to a healthy mind and a healthy body.

However, there is an exception – recurrent nightmares.

Occasional nightmares are normal. Some research shows that nightmares are a beneficial evolutionary trait, a mechanism that simulates rehearsals of threat perception and avoidance thereby preparing us for danger.

The problem arises when nightmares continue to occur on a regular basis. This causes you to drift in and out of REM sleep which is one of the most restorative stages. When interrupted, it takes longer for your mind to relax and get back to REM sleep, eventually, your sleep duration and quality are affected.

Recurrent nightmares can be caused by stress, major life-altering events such as the loss of a loved one, increased stress, too much alcohol/drug use, alcohol/drug withdrawals, illness, over-the-counter (OTC) sleeping pills, abrupt stoppage of OTC sleeping pills, PTSD, depression, or anxiety disorders.

Ensure you consult a medical professional to help address the nightmares further.

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What Is Good Quality Sleep?

As seen, dreams (apart from recurrent nightmares) are signs of a healthy sleeping cycle. However, they are not the best signs.

The best sign of quality sleep is waking up feeling energetic, well-rested, refreshed, and not in need of any external stimulation like coffee. This is a better indicator of good sleep that does not rely on dreams that you may or may not remember.

Other good signs include:

Getting a full 8 hours of sleep or more which maximizes time spent on REM sleep.
Uninterrupted sleep.
Going to bed at the same time every night.
Using sleep tracker apps like SleepScore or SleepPilot to improve sleep through data-driven insights.
Maintaining good sleeping hygiene techniques like reducing caffeine and increasing daily exercise.

Conclusion

In conclusion, unless you are experiencing recurrent nightmares, dreaming won’t negatively affect your sleep, it improves it.

Dreaming has more benefits like improved creativity and memory. Moreover, there are specialists who can help you interpret your dreams to unlock their meaning and offer interpretations that may provide eye-opening insights.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does Dreaming A Lot Mean Good Sleep?

So long as you are getting enough sleep and the dreams aren't recurring nightmares, then you can rest assured that your many dreams are a sign of good sleep. They are a symptom of ample rest, a relaxed, mind, effective memory consolidation, and emotional processing.

It is also normal to dream a lot. Human beings dream every day but we do not always remember our dreams. If you are remembering your dreams often, then it means you are experiencing increased awareness which also increases creativity in the waking life.

How To Monitor Your Sleep Quality?

Several studies have proven that monitoring your sleep quality is the best way to recognize patterns in your sleep habits. Using tracking devices, such as wearables and smartphone applications, can help patients understand why they feel sluggish sometimes and energetic at other times, depending on when and how long they slept.

The optimized sleep monitors analyze data recorded during sleep. The data is then used to provide useful information like sleep cycles and body movement behaviors, and in so doing, helps you improve the quality of your sleep.

The insightful data is presented in user-friendly ways including graphs and reports that will help you make sense of the quality of your sleep. Suggestions and recommendations are also made using personalized reports that help improve your sleeping habits.

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16 Jan 2025

dream-about-militia-capturing-loved-ones

Dream

A group of bad guys like a militia took a lot of males including my dad and brother. The males they took were on their knees and they started to kill them using machetes, directly into their necks. My mom and I were observing all these crazy act from a high building. I yelled at my mom to please let me go to the police. I knew I could make it to the police station to save my brother and dad. I was so frustrated because she didn’t let me go . She was afraid I might get captured and killed. So I went to the roof of the building to see if I could access the police station but the darkness of the night didn’t allow me to see forward. At the end they all got killed and the people that were on the top of the building didn’t allow me either to go to the police. They put traps or say things for Me not to go. So we all can survive .

16 Jan 2025

Dream

My dream started off, it seemed like I was in kind of like a parallel world, one of the houses that I grew up in, like a log cabin, and each room I would go in would be different than it was when I was little, and there were like more beds in there, like maybe more people or more siblings or something, and then I kind of jumped to being in a room with who I thought were my kids, I didn't see their faces, but they were being really rambunctious and like broke this plant, like they were very careless, and then I went to carry the plant down the stairs, and the stairs were the stairs that I got pushed down, yeah basically pushed down when I was a child, anyway, the dirt fell down the stairs, and then my grandmother, well we kind of jumped in the dream, and then my grandmother went sliding down the stairs, fell, and then I called for my husband to come out, and he was kind of being grumpy about it, but finally came and helped, and then like I saw her like slumped over at the bottom of the stairs, and then the dream jumped to me and my husband living in California in some random house on a hill, and then we watched some either like alien ship launch or rocket or something, while we were out there, we, I don't know, went to take the garbage out, there were, he had brought the mattress out to the side of the street, and then while we were talking, and this face would start changing, like into like people that I knew, or I don't know, like scarier faces, I guess, and what was face changed into some face, I don't remember recognizing, and then I just woke up to this feeling of, of, it's almost like grabbing my throat, someone grabbing my throat, or pinning me down, but it was like I felt this really big don't touch me in the throat area of peace, and then I woke up very panicked.

16 Jan 2025

Dream

First it was animal crossing and I was being chased by scorpions so i when into villager’s house to hide, then sometimes i would lay on their bed and they would lay onto of me making me unable to leave the bed. But when I came out of their house the scorpion was still there. I tried a different strat of catching them carring a flashlight, it didn’t work. Then I started looking for them in the rain and they got smart and would bring another big with their claws, release it when I’m about to swing my net and I capture that instead then the scorpion stings me. Then the dream switches. I’m about to get tattoos one on my arm of a lion and the other one of me and my cat. But the one of my cat requires them to break every bone in my arm. I sketch of where I want the rainbow lion tattoo, only realizing I drew it too low on my arm. I go to the bathroom to clean it off. After I’m done I think of shower then my mom starts knocking on the door saying there’s no time. I go out and quickly grab my bag, my phone charger and my winter jacket. I get in the car only realizing have way that I forgot my glasses. Then on my jacket I see a case of my spare glasses, “Oh I’m fine I found my spare glasses, I forgot I left them in the car haha.” Then when I get to the destination it was my choir group having dinner at a place similar to Apple Bees. I sat in the middle of the booth next to my friends, and I thought to myself “Gosh I feel stinky, did I even put on deodorant? My hair looks greasy doesn’t it…” Then my mom and my sister were also there and my mom started talking for a toast. In the middle of it I just angrily say “Oh shut up!”. I get scolded by my dad of not treating mommy that way then I get upset and lock myself in the bathroom forgot I took a burrito with me instead of leaving it on the table. I take a bite of it then remember I’m not supposed to eat in bathrooms. So I wrapped it in its wrapping the best I could and shoved it in my pocket. Then my mom knocks on the door saying she’s sorry and we need to talk to my sister cuz she’s crying. I wash my face and I’m like “fineee”. Me and mom mom go into her room, she’s on her bed crying with her cat ontop of her. She turns around and says “This was supposed to be Lee’s special day… And you had to go around and ruin it.” I say nothing as my mom taking over the conversation, she tries to explain her actions, there was a little back and forth. Then my sister says “See that’s your problem!” Then the dream switches and I’m a deer specialist Bambi and other people that are always baby animals. We are behind some bushes and a scientist tells us to duck all the way to the floor and cover our ears. Then the ground opens and out comes out a giant dish then it has some square holes on the size of the cylinder under the dish. “Test one!” The scientist says. The dish rotates a little and a giant pink boom wave comes out of it, I could feel it on my chest and the tree would shake from the released pressure. I say “omg that’s so loud that’s scary.”, someone else says “Don’t stand up or you’ll be cut in half.” “o-oh” I say. “Test two and this one goes ove the whole country!”.. the same boom happens. And now we are free to go, they show us up how the dish works, then one of the workers tripped over wires and shut the whole thing down “Oop! My bad” he says then turn is on again. Then a bird crashes into the dish’s and doesn’t the boom again. “You might want to see a real scientist.” I say. Her “Oh I plan too”. Then she goes and meets a professor that looks like Einstein. “Let me introduce you to my daughter” they both say at the same time. Then they realize their daughters already know each other and are a mirror image of each other. The look at the giant coins that are the size of their bodies, they have the same last name, “oh that’s kinda creepy” he says. “Any way I was planning on analyzing this thing tho know what’s wrong” she says. “No no you got it all wrong, analyzing is when you already know that problem” the professor says. Then the dream switches and I’m on my bed, I think I woke up, it was still dark outside so I thought it was probably 5am. I looked at my hand and there was a tiny scorpion on my middle finger I scream, I proceed to slap my hand against the wall. I look at it again and it’s still there I scream again then I accidentally wake up.

16 Jan 2025

dream-about-weird-coworkers-children-and-violence

Dream

I had 3 interesting dreams last night. In the first one, I was with my old coworkers at my house. It all just felt weird to me, like I was the odd one out. One of them, Janiqua, who was my closest friend at the time, explained to me that she’s sorry because they have inside jokes and lore that I’m not aware of. The house was a mess and nobody helped me clean up. In the second one, I was in an airport. This random man was pushing a stroller with I think two kids, but I only remember one. He asked me for directions to his gate. We got to his gate and he was handling something on his phone so I watched the stroller. The child was really really small with kind of a big head. I assumed maybe she was born prematurely. His gate number wasn’t for an airplane though, it was for a boat. The man boarded first without the stroller and the baby. The platform was swaying badly and the stroller nearly fell out the door but I caught it. I was stressed and scared and kept thinking that this has to be the wrong gate because of the danger. In the third one, I was in a classroom with Jack, the UK guy that broke my heart, and Cam, his friend, along with random other guys. My sister Teri was there, on a table, acting strangely. She was on all fours and acting really sexual. Of course the guys enjoyed it, but I pulled her aside and asked “what’s wrong with you?”. The dream suddenly warped to seeing this character Neal Caffrey from a TV show I’ve been watching starting acting strangely as well. In the show, he’s never killed anyone. But in my dream, it was as if he had a breakdown. He started shooting people dead in front of me. He tried to hurt me but somehow I managed to get into a room and close and lock the door long enough to call 911. It was the first time I used a phone in a dream. It took forever to type in 911 because I kept messing up, but eventually I did it, to Neal”s dismay. I tell the officers “you need to come to my address, there’s a guy, Neal Caffrey, and he’s already killed multiple people, he’s trying to hurt me, get here quickly!” This is how I found out I was back at my own house even though the interior looked nothing like it. Neal runs outside and to the right down the street, in the east direction. I contemplate chasing after him to keep track of him, but I see the lights of the police coming down from north to my house, so I take one last glance at Caffrey and stay to tell approaching officers he’s on foot. I don’t remember anything else after that except being scared out of my mind.

16 Jan 2025

Dream

I had a dream where I was watching some people play basketball, I guess, and there was this one guy that I thought was cute, and we started talking, and then we started kind of seeing each other off and on, and I invited him over to like my place and whatnot. She was not happy about it, and she was kind of like trying to stop me a little bit and find out where I lived. She ended up coming to my house as a party or whatever, and tried to find out if he was with me, and like cheating on him, or cheating on her with me, which he wasn't, because they were separated, and there were times that she would just kind of like try and go over to my house, and she wanted me to go over to like their place, because it was really weird and kind of complicated, but they like still kind of got along. She seemed to be a little bit more accepting of the fact that their relationship was over and that he's kind of moving on, and he and I seemed to be really compatible, and everything seems to be working out, and right before the dream ended, I was at their sort of like penthouse mansion in a city. It was weird. I was like on top of their roof while the two of them like argued. I watched both of them argue about everything, and it was just really, really strange.

16 Jan 2025

Dream

I was traveling in Bariloche, Patagonia, Argentina with my mom and sister, and we found out through a guy I knew who was also traveling Patagonia that there was a big hurricane coming and that he was leaving the next day to get out of its path. We had no idea that a hurricane was coming. After searching the news we realized that indeed a hurricane was coming to Argentina and Brazil and then moving up to Central America and North America. It was getting late and the hurricane was coming the next day so My mom, my sister, and I brainstormed about what we were going to do to avoid the hurricane. To fly or drive out of its path.