If you don't dream will you die?

[Dillon352]

I heard if you don't dream you will die because dreams produce serotonin and serotonin is neede to survive. This is what I've heard please correct me if you know more!

[Ophiolite]

Is the reason for this question that you think you don't dream and therefore may be in danger of dying? If so set your mind at ease. You likely do dream, you just don't remember your dreams. That said, there are a small proportion of the population (<1%) who apparently do not dream. They do not have any problems associated with this absence of dreams. For example, this study.

[iNow]

Dreams may alter the levels of serotonin in your system, but they are not the source of its production.

[CharonY]

Actually serotonin levels affect wakefulness. I.e. high levels of serotonin inhibit REM sleep. Edit to add that that it may not be strictly true as the pathways are somewhat complicated and under certain conditions this does not hold to be true.

Edited October 10, 2012 by CharonY

[DrmDoc]

I heard if you don't dream you will die because dreams produce serotonin and serotonin is neede to survive. This is what I've heard please correct me if you know more!

You are probably referring to Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), which is condition caused by a rare genetic disorder involving a mutated prion protein. Although I'm not aware of any current research involving the treatment of FFI with Orexin-A, there has been promising research on the restorative effects of this peptide in sleep deprivation studies.

[mimi9911]

In most cases, you won't die if you don't dream. Many people don't get sleep for many days. For that matter, many people do not dream. Instead of dreaming, they instead see short pictures in their mind all about what happened that day. It is called "Sliding". If you do not dream, you may get more grumpy, and more likely to lose breath when running quicker, but you don't have to worry about not dreaming. It is a very rare accurance to die if you don't dream, but if you don't dream often you may get dissy, and do the things above. But it's okay, just get some extra sleep and you will be back to normal.

Edited December 30, 2015 by mimi9911