Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (9 page)

Many bodily functions are affected by zinc’s influence on numerous enzymes, and zinc may increase REM sleep, as well. As with the B vitamins, many people do not consume sufficient zinc in their diets, so supplementation is smart. Foods high in zinc include pumpkin seeds, salmon, dark chocolate, garlic, organic beef, lima beans, egg yolks, mushrooms, turkey, spinach, peanuts and brown rice. For nighttime, you might try sucking on a zinc lozenge about ten minutes before bed.

These findings line up with those of Dr. Charlene Gamaldo of Johns Hopkins Medicine, who says that magnesium and zinc deficiencies have been linked to sleeping problems.
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The Institute for Optimum Nutrition put out a list titled the
Best Bedtime Vitamin/Mineral Combo for Dream Recall
. According to ION’s list, here is how to fall asleep and stay asleep:

• Avoid all stimulants after 4:00 p.m. and take 2 x L-tryptophan 500 mg (if still necessary).
  
• Daily eat calcium rich and magnesium rich foods.
  
• Supplement B6 100 mg and zinc 10 mg (and more if no dream recall).
  
• Supplement three dolomite tablets in the evening.
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Calcium

Dolomite tablets are calcium magnesium carbonate. Calcium is perfect for a good night’s sleep. After all, babies love it! A warm cup of milk does wonders. Turns out it is not just the warmth, but the calcium. Calcium has a calming effect on the nervous system and is a natural relaxant. Typically, 500 mg daily is helpful. Keep in mind that soft drinks for dinner can deplete calcium, not to mention keep you awake if caffeinated. Check with your pharmacist or doctor about the calcium dosage that is right for you in your stage of life.

Vitamin D3

I had heard the rumor that taking large doses of vitamin D before bedtime would give you bizarre dreams, so I tried it. It did. I dreamed the most nonsensical things, and trust me, I can get a good interpretation out of almost any dream scene. But remember, you do not want to take supplements that give you more dreams. You just want to remember the ones you are already having. Let’s not confuse matters or waste time sorting through outlandish dreams.

So why did I include vitamin D here? Mainly to address the dreams rumor, and also because you do need vitamin D in your diet in the D3 form since it is more potent and long lasting. The Harvard School of Public Health reported in an article entitled
“Vitamin D and Health” that being “D-ficient” has been linked to multiple ailments. Once the deficiency is corrected, there is a reduction in bone fractures, heart disease, cancer, type-1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis—not to mention that vitamin D possibly prevents the common cold.
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Go ahead and get plenty of vitamin D in your diet, but just remember not to take the sunshine vitamin at night.

Melatonin

We talked in chapter 4 about circadian rhythms and how melatonin, “the drowsy hormone,” is released in the body. But you can also buy it over the counter in a supplement, although I have never tried it. It is a neurotransmitter/hormone that is only active when you are sleeping and is being metabolized from serotonin, a neurotransmitter whose predecessor is tryptophan.

Melatonin increases N-REM sleep. You do fall asleep faster if you are taking it, but then something risky happens. After reaching the N-REM sleep cycles sooner, a sort of rebound effect occurs that throws you into unusually vivid dreams. Personally, I do not want to play with my dreams like this. I just want to supplement my body with the right nutrients so that I can better remember the dreams I am naturally having. Lucid dreamers often take melatonin to manipulate their dreams. Be careful not to train your body to need melatonin supplements nightly, lest you begin to mistake vivid dream rebound for true prophetic dreams.
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Many scientists support the idea that nutritional deficiency is why people do not remember their dreams. In a survey I cited earlier from ION, they discovered that more than 40 percent of people had no dream recall or poor dream recall. While the federal government’s 2010
Dietary Guidelines for Americans
notes that “nutrients should come primarily from foods,” there is nothing wrong with supplementing your diet with over-the-counter bottled vitamins and nutrients to ensure you get them—and
to assist with sleep and promote healthy REM dream sleep. Always consult your pharmacist, doctor or nutritionist for dosage amounts.

Herbs and Teas

Livestrong.com lists the following as great herbal combinations for better dream recall and aid in sleeping:
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Valerian and Passionflower

Valerian is a relaxant that helps you fall asleep faster. This shorter sleep latency time results in more nightly time to complete N-REM cycles and move efficiently into REM dream sleep. Valerian is often taken in combination with passionflower for what are said to be magnified results. Passionflower is often used for insomnia. The herb leaves no narcotic-type hangover symptoms the morning after.

Lemon Balm and California Poppy

Lemon balm helps normalize your breathing and circulation. When taken together with California poppy, lemon balm helps normalize both your N-REM and REM sleep patterns and facilitates sleep depth. California poppy helps by restoring sleep patterns in those who wake up frequently during the night or wake up earlier than necessary in the morning.

Red Spider Lily and Daffodil

Spider lily is an herb native to China and Japan that can be used to assist your REM dream cycle and even to help with dream recall. Galanthamine is a chemical derived from the extracts of red spider lily and common daffodil bulbs. According to a 2004 trial published in “The Journal of the American Medical Association, galanthamine (or “galantamine”) shortens the
amount of time between N-REM cycles and dream sleep, and also increases REM-state density.
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Other Helpful Herbs

You can also try the following herbs in capsule form or as a tea: chamomile, spearmint, hibiscus, cinnamon, peppermint, mugwort, Saint John’s wort, licorice root, jasmine, honeysuckle, orange blossom, bee pollen, skullcap, rose blossoms, mimosa, lavender, passionflower, cardamom, marigold, nutmeg and turmeric.

Combination teas at your local grocer:

Bigelow Sweet Dreams Herb Tea
: chamomile, hibiscus, peppermint leaves, rose blossoms, spearmint leaves, spice, orange blossom.

Celestial
Seasonings Sleepytime Herbal Tea
: chamomile, spearmint, West Indian lemongrass, tilia flowers, blackberry leaves, orange blossoms, hawthorn, rosebuds.

Turns out Peter Rabbit’s mother was right after all a hundred years ago, when she gave the overexcited bunny some chamomile tea to calm him before bed.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, the following herbs and supplements are beneficial for improving memory, period: Asian ginseng, carnitine (L-carnitine), ginkgo biloba, green tea (decaf if at bedtime), rosemary and siberian ginseng.
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Please avoid the following potent dream-inducing herbs that are often used by shamans for hallucinatory, witchcraft purposes: alepidea amatymbica, calae zacatechichi, whole leaf African dream root and silene capensis synaptolepis. Also abstain from dream oil magic pills or any other substance that claims to help you control your own dreams, such as is done in lucid dreaming.

Essential Oils

Essential oils have many benefits. They can relieve stress and anxiety, soothe a busy mind and help you fall asleep and stay asleep. Essential oils never have serious side effects; they work with the body to support its God-given healing capabilities. Proverbs 7:17 mentions a few oils when it says, “I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.”

To name a few other helpful nighttime oils, there are lavender, frankincense, chamomile, marjoram, orange, patchouli, valerian, chamomile roman, clary sage, sandalwood, lemon and nutmeg. You can also promote peaceful rest with clove oil. Add a few drops of any of these oils to a spray bottle and spritz your room, or use a few drops in a room diffuser. I also put some drops on a tissue inside my pillowcase. I personally enjoy a few drops of pink grapefruit oil under my pillowcase after a stressful day, as does my husband. I keep it by the bed and reach for it at the first sign of a burdened brow, enjoying the smile that comes to his sleepy face when he settles in and takes that first deep breath.

Here are some helpful oil recipes for relieving insomnia. For babies, boil water and place some in a bowl with one drop each of chamomile Roman and geranium oil. Put the bowl under the child’s crib (but not under baby’s head), and keep the door almost closed to retain the aroma molecules in the room. Slowly, over time, the baby’s sleeping patterns will change.

For children 12 months old to 5 years, help insomnia by placing the child in a warm bath that contains 1 drop per year (up to 3 drops maximum) of these oils: mandarin, chamomile Roman, lavender and palma rosa.

For children 5–12 years old, do the same as for younger children, except add these oils to the bath as well: geranium, nutmeg and clary sage, in the amounts of 3 drops for up to 7 years old, 4 drops for 7–10 year olds and 5 drops for 11–12 year olds.
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Increasing Prayer and Worship

Have you ever thought about why you seem to dream more on Sunday nights or Monday mornings? Years ago, I began to recognize this pattern with myself and soon realized why. I had spent time in worship on Sunday morning at church, and sadly, had not done so any other day of the week. I was praying, but not truly spending time in thanksgiving and adoration of the Lord. Some people have never been taught to sit still long enough to practice God’s presence, but if you will wait on God, you will notice a change in your spirit. It may not be in that moment of worship and you may be tempted to think it is time wasted, but it is not.

In fact, what happens as you sit there in prayer is that you make a deposit into yourself and into your inner man (or woman). Tomorrow or the next day or the next, when you are presented with a situation in which an immediate decision must be made, you instantly will be able to make a withdrawal and choose rightly. There will be a sudden wisdom that you cannot explain, or a “knowing” about how you should proceed. It came from God, and it came while you sat with Him and—by faith—allowed Him to pour His divine nature into you.

It is a supernatural exchange that many miss these days because they are too busy and too distracted. These very people fall into bed exhausted, needing counsel, often begging God to speak to them at night with a dream, but no dream comes. Not because God is unkind, but because these people never prepared their spirit to hear from God that day. And because, on the practical side, they were so exhausted and had such a sleep debt that they spent much of the night in a deep N-REM dreamless sleep.

Healing Is Here

As I look back at this list of vitamins, minerals, herbs and oils, I marvel at how just about everything we need to take care of
our bodies was created on day 3 of Creation. On that day, God made the land (from where we get minerals from rocks and dirt), the sea (from where we get many things, including fish oil and magnesium) and then vegetation (where we get all our herbs, vitamins and vegetables). How miraculous. “The earth is the L
ORD
’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1
KJV
).

But before you run to your local drugstore and clear their shelves so that you can better hear from God through dreams, remember that this is a total-package lifestyle change. You can take all the proven vitamins, guzzle all the proper teas and lather on all the ordained essential oils, but if you are sleep deprived, your sleep stages will not flow as God intends. Many of us are unreachable, except for the occasional crisis-intervention dream. Wouldn’t you much rather hear from God on a regular basis in times of nonconflict and perhaps even avoid the conflict?

You often hear God called the “Great Physician,” and Jesus the “Balm of Gilead.” Jeremiah 8:22 (
NIV
) asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” I hope that after the evidence about sleep debt (and sleep defiance) I have presented in the last two chapters, you will see just how many of your wounds are self-inflicted. Find healing through God.

I will close with a testimony of such healing. During the writing of these last two chapters (which at first was one chapter that grew and doubled), I encountered incredible opposition from what seemed like hell itself to get this information to you. In fact, I encountered opposition to the whole book when I was diagnosed with adrenal burnout just weeks after signing the publishing contract and turning in a sample chapter.

Things noticeably intensified, however, when I began to pen these actual medical pages. At home, while chatting with my beautiful daughter-in-love Brittany that week, I fell backward onto a glass-and-wrought-iron coffee table, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, spraining a ligament and bruising more ribs. I have had six children and yet have never known such pain. On a deadline to finish the book, I refused to quit writing, but I also refused painkillers because I did not want to be groggy during the process. I was told to go home and rest for 6–8 weeks and breathe deeply if I wanted to avoid surgery to reinflate my lung (which had already started to collapse). They called it a pneumothorax. To make matters worse, a few days later I caught a nasty stomach flu and my sainted husband had to hold in my ribs for me each time I got sick during the night.

Since the ER doctors and the fall’s adrenal experts all seemed to be saying the same exact phrase to me,
“Go home and rest
,”
and since I was contracted to sit and write a book, I decided to look at these physical hurdles less like an illness or injury and more like an invitation. We turned my bed into my new desk, our church cooked us meals and my daughters served them to me in bed. Even my “co-mothers” helped (both of my sons’ mothers-in-law). Debb, the Virginian mother of my beautiful daughter-in-love Sarah, bought me some bright jammies that lured me to rest, and WenDee, Brittany’s mom, sent me cards and “thinking of you” texts from Texas that seemed to come at the exact moment when bed rest was getting painfully lonely. I had been cornered by God—who uses for good what the enemy intends for evil—and had been given no choice at all but to sit and focus on this book. How ironic, though, that I was pecking out these medical chapters while hunched over a pillow, on my stomach, with iced back ribs.