How Useful Are Our Dreams
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What’s In A Dream?
We were recently asked:
❝I have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞
~ 10almonds subscriber
There are two main schools of thought, and one main effort to reconcile those two. The third one hasn’t quite caught on so far as to be considered a “school of thought” yet though.
The Top-Down Model (Psychoanalysts)
Psychoanalysts broadly follow the theories of Freud, or at least evolved from there. Freud was demonstrably wrong about very many things. Most of his theories have been debunked and ditched—hence the charitable “or at least evolved from there” phrasing when it comes to modern psychoanalytic schools of thought. Perhaps another day, we’ll go into all the ways Freud went wrong. However, for today, one thing he wasn’t bad at…
According to Freud, our dreams reveal our subconscious desires and fears, sometimes directly and sometimes dressed in metaphor.
Examples of literal representations might be:
- sex dreams (revealing our subconscious desires; perhaps consciously we had not thought about that person that way, or had not considered that sex act desirable)
- getting killed and dying (revealing our subconscious fear of death, not something most people give a lot of conscious thought to most of the time)
Examples of metaphorical representations might be:
- dreams of childhood (revealing our subconscious desires to feel safe and nurtured, or perhaps something else depending on the nature of the dream; maybe a return to innocence, or a clean slate)
- dreams of being pursued (revealing our subconscious fear of bad consequences of our actions/inactions, for example, responsibilities to which we have not attended, debts are a good example for many people; or social contact where the ball was left in our court and we dropped it, that kind of thing)
One can read all kinds of guides to dream symbology, and learn such arcane lore as “if you dream of your teeth crumbling, you have financial worries”, but the truth is that “this thing means that other thing” symbolic equations are not only highly personal, but also incredibly culture-bound.
For example:
- To one person, bees could be a symbol of feeling plagued by uncountable small threats; to another, they could be a symbol of abundance, or of teamwork
- One culture’s “crow as an omen of death” is another culture’s “crow as a symbol of wisdom”
- For that matter, in some cultures, white means purity; in others, it means death.
Even such classically Freudian things as dreaming of one’s mother and/or father (in whatever context) will be strongly informed by one’s own waking-world relationship (or lack thereof) with same. Even in Freud’s own psychoanalysis, the “mother” for the sake of such analysis was the person who nurtured, and the “father” was the person who drew the nurturer’s attention away, so they could be switched gender roles, or even different people entirely than one’s parents.
The only real way to know what, if anything, your dreams are trying to tell you, is to ask yourself. You can do that…
- by reflection and personal interrogation (see for example: The Easiest Way To Take Up Journaling)
- or by externalising parts of your subconscious (as in Internal Family Systems therapy)
- or by talking directly to your subconscious where it is, by means of lucid dreaming.
The idea with lucid dreaming is that since any dream character is a facet of your subconscious generated by your own mind, by talking to that character you can ask questions directly of your subconscious (the popular 2010 movie “Inception” was actually quite accurate in this regard, by the way).
To read more about how to do this kind of self-therapy through lucid dreaming, you might want to check out this book we reviewed previously; it is the go-to book of lucid dreaming enthusiasts, and will honestly give you everything you need in one go:
Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life – by Dr. Stephen LaBerge
The Bottom-Up Model (Neuroscientists)
This will take a lot less writing, because it’s practically a null hypothesis (i.e., the simplest default assumption before considering any additional evidence that might support or refute it; usually some variant of “nothing unusual going on here”).
The Bottom-Up model holds that our brains run regular maintenance cycles during REM sleep (a biological equivalent of defragging a computer), and the brain interprets these pieces of information flying by and, because of the mind’s tendency to look for patterns, fills in the rest (much like how modern generative AI can “expand” a source image to create more of the same and fill in the blanks), resulting in the often narratively wacky, but ultimately random, vivid hallucinations that we call dreams.
The Hybrid Model (per Cartwright, 2012)
This is really just one woman’s vision, but it’s an incredibly compelling one, that takes the Bottom-Up model and asks “what if we did all that bio-stuff, and then our subconscious mind influenced the interpretation of the random patterns, to create dreams that are subjectively meaningful, and thus do indeed represent our subconscious?
It’s best explained in her own words, though, so it’s time for another book recommendation (we’ve reviewed this one before, too):
Enjoy!
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What Curiosity Really Kills
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Curiosity Kills The Neurodegeneration
Of the seven things that Leonardo da Vinci considered most important for developing and maintaining the mind, number one on his list was curiosity, and we’re going to be focussing on that today.
In case you are curious about what seven things made Leonardo’s* list, they were:
- Curiosità: an insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning
- Dimostrazione: a commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes
- Sensazione: the continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as a means to enliven experience
- Sfumato: (lit: “gone up in smoke”) a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty
- Arte/Scienza: the curated balance of art and science, imagination and logic
- Corporalità: the cultivation of physical grace, ambidexterity, and fitness
- Connessione: a recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of phenomena (systems-based thinking)
*In case you are curious why we wrote “Leonardo” and not “da Vinci” as per our usual convention of shortening names to last names, da Vinci is not technically a name, in much the same way as “of Nazareth” was not a name.
You can read more about all 7 of these in a book that we’ve reviewed previously:
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day – by Michael J. Gelb
But for now, let’s take on “curiosity”!
If you need an extra reason to focus on growing and nurturing your curiosity, it was also #1 of Dr. Daniel Levitin’s list of…
The Five Keys Of Aging Healthily
…and that’s from a modern-day neuroscientist whose research focuses on aging, the brain, health, productivity, and creativity.
But how do we foster curiosity in the age of Google?
Curiosity is like a muscle: use it or lose it
While it’s true that many things can be Googled to satisfy one’s curiosity in an instant…
- do you? It’s only useful if you do use it
- is the top result on Google reliable?
- there are many things that aren’t available there
In short: douse “fast
foodinformation” sources, but don’t rely on them! Not just for the sake of having correct information, but also: for the actual brain benefits which is what we are aiming for here with today’s article.If you want the best brain benefits, dive in, and go deep
Here at 10almonds we often present superficial information, with links to deeper information (often: scholarly articles). We do this because a) there’s only so much we can fit in our articles and b) we know you only have so much time available, and/but may choose to dive deeper.
Think of it in layers, e.g:
- Collagen is good for joints and bones
- Collagen is a protein made of these amino acids that also requires these vitamins and minerals to be present in order to formulate it
- Those amino acids are needed in these quantities, of which this particular one is usually the weakest link that might need supplementing, and those vitamins and minerals need to be within this period of time, but not these ones at the exact same time, or else it will disrupt the process of collagen synthesis
(in case you’re curious, we covered this here and here and offered a very good, very in-depth book about it here)
Now, this doesn’t mean that to have a healthy brain you need to have the equivalent knowledge of an anatomy & physiology degree, but it is good to have that level of curiosity in at least some areas of your life—and the more, the better.
Top tips for developing a habit of curiosity
As you probably know, most of our endeavors as humans go best when they are habits:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
And as for specifically building a habit of curiosity:
- Make a deal with yourself that when someone is excited to tell you what they know about something (no matter whether it is your grandkid, or the socially awkward nerd at a party, or whoever), listen and learn, no matter the topic.
- Learn at least one language other than your native language (presumably English for most of our readers). Not only does learning a language convey a lot of brain benefits of its own, but also, it is almost impossible to separate language learning from cultural learning, and so you will learn a lot about another culture too, and have whole new worlds opened up to you. Again, more is better, but one second language is already a lot better than none.
- Make a regular habit of going to your local library, and picking out a non-fiction book to take home and read. This has an advantage over a bookshop, by the way (and not just that the library is free): since library books must be returned, you will keep going back, and build a habit of taking out books.
- Pick a skill that you’d like to make into a fully-fledged hobby, and commit to continually learning as much about it as you can. We already covered language-learning above, but others might include: gardening (perhaps a specific kind), cooking (perhaps a specific kind), needlecraft (perhaps a specific kind), dance (perhaps a specific kind). You could learn a musical instrument. Or it could be something very directly useful, like learning to be a first responder in case of emergencies, and committing to continually learning more about it (because there is always more to learn).
And when it comes to the above choices… Pick things that excite you, regardless of how practical or not they are. Because that stimulation that keeps on driving you? That’s what keeps your brain active, healthy, and sharp.
Enjoy!
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HBD: The Human Being Diet – by Petronella Ravenshear
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We don’t often review diet books, so why did this one catch our attention? The answer lies in its comprehensive nature without being excessively long and complex.
Ravenshear (a nutritionist) brings a focus on metabolic balance, and what will and won’t work for keeping it healthy.
The first part of the book is mostly informational; covering such things as blood sugar balance, gut health, hormones, and circadian rhythm considerations, amongst others.
The second, larger part of the book is mostly instructional; do this and that, don’t do the other, guidelines on quantities and timings, and what things may be different for some people, and what to do about those.
The style is conversational and light, but well-grounded in good science.
Bottom line: if you’d like a “one-stop shop” for giving your diet an overhaul, this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out the Human Being Diet, and enjoy the best of health!
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28-Day FAST Start Day-by-Day – by Gin Stephens
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We have previously reviewed Gin Stephens’ other book, “Fast. Feast. Repeat.”, so what’s so special about this one that it deserves reviewing too?
This one is all about troubleshooting the pitfalls that many people find when taking up intermittent fasting.
To be clear: the goal here is not a “28 days and yay you did it, put that behind you now”, but rather “28 days and you are now intermittently fasting easily each day and can keep it up without difficulty”. As for the difficulties that may arise early in the 28 days…
Not just issues of willpower, but also the accidental breaks. For example, some artificial sweeteners, while zero-calorie, trigger an insulin response, which breaks the fast on the metabolic level (avoiding that is the whole point of IF). Lots of little tips like that peppered through the book help the reader to stop accidentally self-sabotaging their progress.
The author does talk about psychological issues too, and also how it will feel different at first while the liver is adapting, than later when it has already depleted its glycogen reserves and the body must burn body fat instead. Information like that makes it easier to understand that some initial problems (hunger, getting “hangry”, feeling twitchy, or feeling light-headed) will last only a few weeks and then disappear.
So, understanding things like that makes a big difference too.
The style of the book is simple and clear pop-science, with lots of charts and bullet points and callout-boxes and the like; it makes for very easy reading, and very quick learning of all the salient points, of which there are many.
Bottom line: if you’ve tried intermittent fasting but struggled to make it stick, this book can help you get to where you want to be.
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Do We Simply Not Care About Old People?
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The covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults.
The death toll was shocking, as were reports of chaos in nursing homes and seniors suffering from isolation, depression, untreated illness, and neglect. Around 900,000 older adults have died of covid-19 to date, accounting for 3 of every 4 Americans who have perished in the pandemic.
But decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized. Today, most people — and government officials — appear to accept covid as a part of ordinary life. Many seniors at high risk aren’t getting antiviral therapies for covid, and most older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting updated vaccines. Efforts to strengthen care quality in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debate over costs and the availability of staff. And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of covid, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.
In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to covid — a group that would fill more than 10 large airliners — according to data provided by the CDC. But the alarm that would attend plane crashes is notably absent. (During the same period, the flu killed an additional 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126.)
“It boggles my mind that there isn’t more outrage,” said Alice Bonner, 66, senior adviser for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “I’m at the point where I want to say, ‘What the heck? Why aren’t people responding and doing more for older adults?’”
It’s a good question. Do we simply not care?
I put this big-picture question, which rarely gets asked amid debates over budgets and policies, to health care professionals, researchers, and policymakers who are older themselves and have spent many years working in the aging field. Here are some of their responses.
The pandemic made things worse. Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but “it feels more intense, more hostile” now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University.
“I think the pandemic helped reinforce images of older people as sick, frail, and isolated — as people who aren’t like the rest of us,” he said. “And human nature being what it is, we tend to like people who are similar to us and be less well disposed to ‘the others.’”
“A lot of us felt isolated and threatened during the pandemic. It made us sit there and think, ‘What I really care about is protecting myself, my wife, my brother, my kids, and screw everybody else,’” said W. Andrew Achenbaum, 76, the author of nine books on aging and a professor emeritus at Texas Medical Center in Houston.
In an environment of “us against them,” where everybody wants to blame somebody, Achenbaum continued, “who’s expendable? Older people who aren’t seen as productive, who consume resources believed to be in short supply. It’s really hard to give old people their due when you’re terrified about your own existence.”
Although covid continues to circulate, disproportionately affecting older adults, “people now think the crisis is over, and we have a deep desire to return to normal,” said Edwin Walker, 67, who leads the Administration on Aging at the Department of Health and Human Services. He spoke as an individual, not a government representative.
The upshot is “we didn’t learn the lessons we should have,” and the ageism that surfaced during the pandemic hasn’t abated, he observed.
Ageism is pervasive. “Everyone loves their own parents. But as a society, we don’t value older adults or the people who care for them,” said Robert Kramer, 74, co-founder and strategic adviser at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care.
Kramer thinks boomers are reaping what they have sown. “We have chased youth and glorified youth. When you spend billions of dollars trying to stay young, look young, act young, you build in an automatic fear and prejudice of the opposite.”
Combine the fear of diminishment, decline, and death that can accompany growing older with the trauma and fear that arose during the pandemic, and “I think covid has pushed us back in whatever progress we were making in addressing the needs of our rapidly aging society. It has further stigmatized aging,” said John Rowe, 79, professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“The message to older adults is: ‘Your time has passed, give up your seat at the table, stop consuming resources, fall in line,’” said Anne Montgomery, 65, a health policy expert at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. She believes, however, that baby boomers can “rewrite and flip that script if we want to and if we work to change systems that embody the values of a deeply ageist society.”
Integration, not separation, is needed. The best way to overcome stigma is “to get to know the people you are stigmatizing,” said G. Allen Power, 70, a geriatrician and the chair in aging and dementia innovation at the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging in Canada. “But we separate ourselves from older people so we don’t have to think about our own aging and our own mortality.”
The solution: “We have to find ways to better integrate older adults in the community as opposed to moving them to campuses where they are apart from the rest of us,” Power said. “We need to stop seeing older people only through the lens of what services they might need and think instead of all they have to offer society.”
That point is a core precept of the National Academy of Medicine’s 2022 report Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity. Older people are a “natural resource” who “make substantial contributions to their families and communities,” the report’s authors write in introducing their findings.
Those contributions include financial support to families, caregiving assistance, volunteering, and ongoing participation in the workforce, among other things.
“When older people thrive, all people thrive,” the report concludes.
Future generations will get their turn. That’s a message Kramer conveys in classes he teaches at the University of Southern California, Cornell, and other institutions. “You have far more at stake in changing the way we approach aging than I do,” he tells his students. “You are far more likely, statistically, to live past 100 than I am. If you don’t change society’s attitudes about aging, you will be condemned to lead the last third of your life in social, economic, and cultural irrelevance.”
As for himself and the baby boom generation, Kramer thinks it’s “too late” to effect the meaningful changes he hopes the future will bring.
“I suspect things for people in my generation could get a lot worse in the years ahead,” Pillemer said. “People are greatly underestimating what the cost of caring for the older population is going to be over the next 10 to 20 years, and I think that’s going to cause increased conflict.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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Green Tea Allergies and Capsules
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Hey Sheila – As always, your articles are superb !! So, I have a topic that I’d love you guys to discuss: green tea. I used to try + drink it years ago but I always got an allergic reaction to it. So the question I’d like answered is: Will I still get the same allergic reaction if I take the capsules ? Also, because it’s caffeinated, will taking it interfere with iron pills, other vitamins + meds ? I read that the health benefits of the decaffeinated tea/capsules are not as great as the caffeinated. Any info would be greatly appreciated !! Thanks much !!❞
Hi! I’m not Sheila, but I’ll answer this one in the first person as I’ve had a similar issue:
I found long ago that taking any kind of tea (not herbal infusions, but true teas, e.g. green tea, black tea, red tea, etc) on an empty stomach made me want to throw up. The feeling would subside within about half an hour, but I learned it was far better to circumvent it by just not taking tea on an empty stomach.
However! I take an l-theanine supplement when I wake up, to complement my morning coffee, and have never had a problem with that. Of course, my physiology is not your physiology, and this “shouldn’t” be happening to either of us in the first place, so it’s not something there’s a lot of scientific literature about, and we just have to figure out what works for us.
This last Monday I wrote (inspired in part by your query) about l-theanine supplementation, and how it doesn’t require caffeine to unlock its benefits after all, by the way. So that’s that part in order.
I can’t speak for interactions with your other supplements or medications without knowing what they are, but I’m not aware of any known issue, beyond that l-theanine will tend to give a gentler curve to the expression of some neurotransmitters. So, if for example you’re talking anything that affects that (e.g. antidepressants, antipsychotics, ADHD meds, sleepy/wakefulness meds, etc) then checking with your doctor is best.
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Big Think’s #1 Antidote To Aging
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Why This Video Is Important
A lot of what we talk about here at 10almonds is focused on healthy aging. We want you – our lovely readers – to not only live for a long time, but also be healthy enough to enjoy that “long time”.
We’ve talked about anything from Dr. Greger’s eight anti-aging interventions, to the specific benefits of resveratrol or metformin in combatting aging, to even reducing stress-induced aging.
So, why is this video important? It goes beyond just talking about what we know about living longer, but also focuses on how we should live longer; there’s a big difference between living a long life but never leaving your house vs. living a long life beyond your front door.
The Takeaways
The core message that Big Think wants to convey is that our lifestyle is our best bet in slowing the aging process. Our bodies are adaptive systems, responding positively to healthy lifestyle choices. They focus on exercise: regular physical activity increases healthspan, consequently extending lifespan.
A key takeaway is the difference between physical activity and exercise. While any movement counts as physical activity, exercise is a deliberate, health-focused activity. It benefits the brain by releasing growth factors that strengthen critical areas like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
The video encourages embracing physical activity in any form available to you, from gardening to walking. The goal isn’t to hit a specific number of steps but to stay active in a way that suits your lifestyle.
Science may not solve death. Yet. But focusing on maintaining a healthy, functioning state for as long as possible is the real victory in the battle against aging. And, at the moment, exercise seems to be our best bet:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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