不做梦对健康的不利影响
Carl Jung believed dreams represent archetypal realities obscured during waking consciousness. Dreams reveal more than they conceal, he wrote, countering Freud’s idea that subconscious movies were by design secretive. Dreams are an integral component of Jung's theory of individuation, in which our conscious and unconscious lives are integrated.
卡尔·荣格相信：梦代表在清醒意识中被掩盖的原型现实，梦所揭露的比它们隐藏的更多。在他的理论中，我们的意识世界和无意识世界被整合在一起了。
In Jungian philosophy, the conflict and chaos experienced in dreams ultimately bring order to our lives. While Jung’s more mystical theories are debatable given our current knowledge of neuroscience, he was not mistaken about the importance of dreaming. As it turns out, their absence is terrible for our health.
在荣格的哲学中，我们在梦中所经历的冲突和混乱最终给我们的生活带来了秩序。虽然荣格的理论备受争议，但事实证明，梦的缺席确实对我们的健康不利。
Rowan Hooper, the managing editor at New Scientist, reports that chronic dream deprivation is damaging our waking hours in numerous ways. As I wrote about last year, 40 percent of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep every night; Hooper claims that number is 60 percent in the UK.
《新科学家》的执行编辑Rowan Hooper表示，长期的梦境缺失正在以多种方式影响我们的日常生活。Hooper声称，60%的英国人每晚睡眠时间少于7小时。
This trend is wreaking havoc on our immune and metabolic systems, leading to a variety of diseases and obesity. Forget about focus: the devices that keep us up late at night are ruining our sleep patterns, which has long-term consequences on our memory system. One study showed that denying mice adequate amounts of REM sleep, the cycle in which we dream, the mice couldn’t consolidate memories.
这种趋势正在破坏我们的免疫系统和代谢系统，导致各种疾病和肥胖。同时，这也正在破坏我们的睡眠模式，对我们的记忆系统有长期的影响。
We might think this is just a sleep problem, but dreaming is inseparable from our nighttime sojourn through the darkness. Dream problems and sleep problems go hand in hand. We sleep in cycles, each lasting about 90 minutes; we go through three cycles before hitting REM. The longer we sleep, the more time we spend in REM, which is why we are often dreaming when waking up in the morning. If we sleep less than seven hours, however, it becomes harder to achieve this level of REM.
我们可能认为这只是一个睡眠问题，但是梦境与我们的睡眠是分不开的。我们的睡眠是周期性的，每次持续大约90分钟。在进入快速眼动之前，我们大约需要经历三个周期。我们睡得越久，我们在快速眼动阶段(睡眠的最后阶段，你能在这个阶段看到清晰的梦境)花的时间就越多，这就是为什么我们经常在早上快醒来时做梦。然而，如果我们睡眠时间少于7小时，就很难达到这种快速眼动的水平。
This makes us more than a little groggy. As Hooper writes, sleep problems and digestive issues are also related. Besides mood disorders, missing sleep raises our stress level during the day, which affects how we digest food. The digestive process is interrupted when we don't get the proper amount of shut-eye.
正如 Hooper所说的，睡眠问题和消化问题是相关的。缺乏睡眠会增加我们在白天的压力水平，而这会影响我们消化食物的方式。
Hooper points out a connection between the digestion of food and the digestion of emotions. Memory consolidation is a critical reason for dreaming at all. The combination of sleeping and dreaming acts as an emotional stabilizer. We’re able to integrate the day’s events in a place where, physically speaking, we’re vulnerable—our ancestors didn’t have locks on their doors. Incredibly, we heal from emotional trauma more quickly when we sleep, and dream, properly.
Hooper还指出了睡眠和情绪消化之间的联系。巩固记忆是做梦的一个重要原因，睡眠和做梦的结合起到了情绪稳定器的作用。我们能够把这一天发生的事情整合到一个地方。当我们做梦时，我们从情感创伤中愈合得更快。
Except we’re not getting enough sleep to cycle through the stages to take advantage of this circadian anti-depressant. Instead, we get depressed and turn to substances like alcohol and pharmaceuticals to nod off. This only makes things worse. Even one drink delays REM—forget about getting drunk. Your sleep is ruined. Antidepressants promote deep sleep at the expense of REM, which also disrupts our dream cycles.
除了因为没有足够的睡眠而扰乱梦周期外，我们还在使用一些让事情变得更糟的东西——酒精以及抗抑郁药物。即使是一杯酒也会延迟快速眼动睡眠，而抗抑郁药物则以牺牲快速眼动睡眠为代价促进深度睡眠，这都扰乱了我们的梦周期。
We’re paying for this lack of dreaming in numerous ways, including creativity. One 2009 study stated, “Compared with quiet rest and non-REM sleep, REM enhanced the formation of associative networks and the integration of unassociated information.” Volunteers that experienced more REM sleep were better equipped for solving problems requiring creative solutions.
我们为这种缺乏梦境的生活方式付出了无数的代价，其中甚至包括创造力。2009年的一项研究表明：“与非快速眼动睡眠相比，快速眼动睡眠增强了联想网络的形成和非关联信息的整合，那些经历了更多快速眼动睡眠的参与者更有能力解决需要创造性解决方案的问题”。
Hooper writes that dreams that include an “emotional core” appear to be a main function of REM sleep. He continues,
Hooper表示，包含“情感核心”的梦境似乎是快速眼动睡眠的一个主要功能。他说道：
You might dream about a hard decision, and the brain monitors your emotional response to it. The next day, your ability to make the decision is easier: you have “slept on it”. This phrase or similar exists in most languages, by the way.
你可能会梦到一个艰难的决定，而大脑会监控你对它的情绪反应。第二天，你做决定的能力就变得更容易了
He concludes that we should scrutinize sleep patterns as seriously as we do diet and exercise habits.
