Why lack of sleep makes you crave biscuits

I DREAM a lot, but recently the themes have been largely stress-related — for instance, I’m driving too fast down a narrow road with a sharp drop to my left (over which I inevitably plunge), or I’m trying to get somewhere and being endlessly frustrated by missing trains.

I tell you this, despite knowing that other people’s dreams are dull, because new research suggests important things are going on in our brains while we dream.

We already know dreams play a crucial role in helping process our emotions, and now it appears they seem to help fine-tune our hunger, too.

The majority of dreams occur in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, when we’re almost totally paralysed and little moves, apart from your eyes which flick from side to side (which is why it is called REM).

This is probably to stop us thrashing around while we are in the grips of a particularly intense, dramatic dream.

Dreaming is a bit like free psychotherapy, where you revisit unpleasant memories and events from the day that has just passed, but remain calm. This allows you to process and defuse your emotions. If you deprive people of REM sleep they get increasingly irritable. They also get hungry and crave biscuits. That could be because of a recently identified circuit in the brain that’s particularly active in REM sleep. Mice studies have shown altering the activity of this circuit makes the mice eat more, which suggests REM sleep plays an important role in controlling hunger. Another reason to get a good night’s sleep and enjoy those dreams!