Selects: How Fever Dreams Work

Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here and I'm here to deliver to you my pick for this week's Selects episode. This is from July twenty seventeen. It's the episode how Fever Dreams Work. And quite honestly, you guys have picked this one because I don't remember much about it, so I'm going to listen to it all over again myself, so I hope you do as well. Hope you have a great Saturday and a great weekend. Here we go

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. Jerry's got a salad. Everything's normal, which means it's time. There's stuff you should know.

That's right.

Jerry's got this Shwarma special. She said, oh really, yeah, she loves it. How you doing, good man? Feeling despite myself kind of relaxed. Okay, I'm not feeling feverish. If that's what you're driving at.

No, that's not what I was driving at.

Uh yeah, no I'm not.

Do you get fevers a lot.

No, not anymore, although I haven't for a long time. Like, I've never been like a fever person. I've probably had like a handful maybe. How many fevers have you had?

Not a ton since I was a kid. Yeah, not a lot of adult fevers, right, I.

Mean I've had like hip hop fever. I've had rock and roll fever.

Yeah, yellow fever.

I've had a fever for a flavor of a brindle.

Oh man, me too.

What are those? Those aren't even potato chips, are they?

They're potato crisps, and those are good. They're mashed together potato parts.

I don't think I want to know how those are made.

No, it's like chicken McNuggets.

I think a unicorn just poops them out.

Have you seen unicorn pizza? It's a little much.

What is it?

There's a restaurant in New York, I'm not quite sure where, maybe east Side. They have unicorn pizza. It's like dough, okay, good, start, like a nice pastel colored frosting instead of sauce, a mound of cotton candy nerds or pop rocks maybe, oh good lord, and then some other stuff. Supposedly, it tastes kind of good. I'll eat anything that has enough frosting on it.

I like frosting, but I'm not into like sugary candies really.

Oh like nerds and pop rocks and stuff. You know, I did brain stuff once. I'm pop rocks and that was interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, your tongue actually warms the pop rocks to the point where they melt. And since they have CO two trapped inside during the manufacturing process, that CO two suddenly is released in a.

Pop so it's just a little bubble of CO two. Yeah, that's gotta be good for you.

I'm sure.

It's funny.

My head of roommate in college, like, not many adults eat candy, Like people eat chocolate and stuff like that, candy bars, but candy candy and an adults.

Is just a little strange anything. Yeah, do be candy?

Sure? Like what mentos? Not mint mentos? Like candy mentos? I like those.

Well.

I had a roommate that would go to the convenience store next and this is college granted, but he still eats this stuff, I think, okay, And he would go with like fifteen dollars and buy you know, like giant sweet tarts, you know, those big chewable ones, sure, and like a fun dip and nerds and just all kinds of candy fun dip.

Remember liquam made there's the same thing. I think.

Yeah, it's just a sugar sugar.

Right, Like I don't have a foot, but I've got my liquim maide, Oh man, can you can? You guys out there and podcast Lantel were stalling because we are a big time because we happen upon a topic that no one really knows what's what. Yeah, I mean we're talking about fever dreams. We know about fevers, yep, kind of know about dreams. Yeah, but apparently no one's really gotten to work on figuring out what fever dreams themselves are.

We'll leave it. We'll leave that there for now.

Yeah, but I guess a good place to start is by talking about both those things separately and starting with fevers. You know, you've always heard ninety eight point six fahrenheit is the normal internal body temperature of human that in ninety two there was a big study that said is really ninety eight point two depending on like how old you are, what time of day it is, where you're doing, where you if you put it in your butt or in your under your armpit, or in your mouth or in.

Your ear or all of them at once.

That'd be something else. Yeah, it can vary a little bit.

So I think there's a bit of a slight sliding scale to that number.

Yeah, for sure. But I think the key is is it's going to be roughly around there. And even if you have an average body temperature that's not exactly ninety eight point six, let's say you typically tend toward ninety seven point.

Five, you run cooler.

Yeah, yeah, your body temperature still during the average day gonna fluctuate plus or minus about a degree farent hide either way. Yeah.

So I looked a little bit into the ninety eight point six and the original dude that came up with that was a German physician.

Named Carl Reinhold August Vondelich. It was good, a good one.

When eighteen sixty eight he wrote a book, Well he did his studies where he had this temperature rod he would stick under the armpits of all these people.

He's like, where do you want exactly?

And everyone once said, everyone always says, do you know the comedian Rory Scovel? No, he should just check him out.

Okay, he does these weird things, like he'll just do his whole routine with a German accent.

Okay, like for no reason whatsoever.

I like the sound of that.

And he did one about stealing old people, like kidnapping old people for the German accent.

He's from South Carolina, I think.

But he's done shows with like a severe Southern accent and one just normal accent, and he'll do a German thing.

He just likes semester with people.

I guess. So he's great.

I will check him out.

Thinks he's one of my favorites.

So anyway, eighteen sixty eight he wrote a book called after these experiments, called dos Vehauten Eerkin Frauma and kink and Heighten.

That is good and I looked at it. It's funny.

The real translation I think of that as on the temperature in diseases, but if you type it into Google Translate comes out as the behavior of the intrinsically warm and sick units.

That's the subtitle.

Yeah.

Yeah, So anyway, he's a guy that came up in ninety eight point six, and that stood for a long time.

But that's just so that was just based on his observations, his study, and it's stuck.

It was an average. It wasn't like this is what you should be. It was just the average of all these people.

Right, And then one hundred thirty years later we finally got around to verifying whether that was actually true or not.

Well, I mean, it says in ninety two that they said it was ninety eight point two from another study, but then everything I still read says ninety eight point six.

So all right, well, I know what you're talking about, though I had heard in the last few years that they're like that ninety eight point six Chazz is kind of kind of made up. So the point is is that your body's going to be roughly somewhere around there, right, that's your normal body temperature, yes, and then depending on the time of day, it's either going to be a little cooler in that or a little warmer than that. And our body temperature is regulated by something called the hypothalamus.

We're laying the groundwork.

So your body temperature changes, the hypothalamus is directing the whole thing, and sleep and wakefulness has something to do. It's related to your body temperature changes. All right, good night. You take it from here.

Well, you know what, let's take a break because I'm not sure where i should go.

We'll be right back. Okay, I was being coy. You set the stage very nicely.

Okay.

So if your body gets let's say, some bad bacteria gets in it, yeah, and your body is alerted, warning intruder is coming. Your immune system kicks in the gear and art's producing this biochemical material called a pyrogen.

Okay, this is my new favorite thing the body does.

Oh yeah, yeah, Well you knew that before, right, or did you just not know the mechanism.

I mean I knew humans get fevers, and I knew the fever was to kind of like cook out everything. I didn't understand the mechanism. I answer your question, Well take this part then, oh yeah, kind I yeah. So these pyrogens, right, they are these biochemical markers that are released by the immune system in the body. Or and this is why I love this. There's some bacteria, some

Yeah, it's they're big dummies in that way.

Right, They're like, hey, where's the party? They kick open the door. They're carrying like a pony keg under one arm, their gut sticking out. It's just that's that's like that kind of bacteria, right, uh huh. So the pyrogens enter the bloodstream, they travel to the hypothalamus, because remember the hypothalamus controls your your body temperature. And this is what they do, Chuck, are you ready for what the pyrogens do.

Yes.

They go to your hypothalmis and they dampen the heat sensing neurons in the hypothalamus and they excite the cold sensing neurons in your hypothalmis, and they trick your hypothalamis into thinking your body's suddenly gotten very very cold. Yeah, so that your hypothalamus turns the temperature up and says, don't let any of this heat out. We gotta warm back up. It tricks your body, your hypothomis, and in creating a fever.

That's right.

And they do this because well, they don't do this because but what happens from there? They do this because they're dumb. But what happens from there is, like you said, the fever, what a fever is, and why you want that fever for at least a little while. Fever that it does, it's it's trying to cook and burn and bake that bacteria until it dies.

Right.

It is your body's fighting. Like when you hear, you know, like your fever broke, that's usually a good sign. That means yeah, right, that your fever did its job and it's cooked all that bacteria up, and you're going.

To be on the men soon. Yeah. So basically that's what's happening. And this is the great thing about a fever.

But you know, fever makes you feel like crap because it's a lot of hard work to kill all those things.

Well it is. There's a lot of your sympathetic nervous system is kicked into high gear, which I found out is one reason why they say you want to feed a cold starve a fever because you don't want to introduce digestion because it requires the parasympathetic nervous system right right, fight or flight, and you don't want those two things going on while your body has a fever. It's just

Yeah.

I mean it's like working in a too hot of an environment. It's just never fun for anyone, right, although I got some people love that stuff.

Yeah, but they're still they might like it, but they still aren't working fast.

Yeah, that's true.

You know, they might be happy, but they're slow.

So if you have a fever, what's considered a fever now in twenty seventeen, If you're an adult and your oral temperature is above one hundred point four, or if you're rectal or ear temperature is above one oh one, then that's considered a fever. If your kid, good luck getting anything besides the rectal temperature because.

It's just tough.

You have basically no right.

Well, yeah, which you have as wiggly kids who aren't like, sure, stick something in my ear for force second. Yeah, but up the up the kazoo.

There's not really anything they can do about that.

All they can do is say glavin.

Yeah exactly.

So the rectal temperature for a kid above one hundred point four, and with adults like you don't have to really worry about your fever too much. If it tops one hundred and five for you know, any period of time, you probably want to do something about that.

That's what I saw was one hundred and five degree farenthype mark was about where you should start to work.

Yeah, as an adult, and you're going to feel so awful. If your tempera is one oh five, you've probably already been to a doctor at that point, let's hope.

So for kids it's different though.

If you don't want to let your child get up to one o five, that's bad, bad, bad.

So what is it for kids that you really want to start worrying about?

Did you say, Oh, you know what, I'm not exactly sure.

I mean, it probably depends on whether you're a first time pairing or this is your second.

Yeah, well, and it varies with the age. It's like zero to eighteen months. It's something.

And I guess you like what you should do is go consult your doctor.

Yeah exactly.

But you know, any kind of temperature you should for a child, you should kind of be a little more alert about.

Right. But we're not in medical experts here.

No we're not. And everything we're saying assumes that you have healthcare coverage.

That's right, all right, So that's fever in general. You got anything else on that?

Yeah? One other thing. The the pyrogen's.

Piro by the way, it's no mistake. Man, I did have some coincidence.

No, it's not. What is it Latin for fire? Greek word for fire? Yeah, Piro eat def Leppard. Right, great song, it really is, all right the whole album album.

Yeah.

Yeah. They just mentioned it in Rock of Ages. Yeah, it comes up.

They should have a song called Pyromania wonderful.

But that's pretty cool. It's like the antithesis of your band, your album, and your song all being the same name. Like Big Country. Oh I love that song, sure, but it's pretty uncreative. But you're basically saying, like, here's our basket and we're gonna put every egg we have into it. It's the one one thing we came up with.

Yeah.

I saw David Spade bit once and he was talking about He's complaining it wasn't even comedy. He was just complaining that he went and saw a Big Country and they didn't play the song Big Country. Now. Yeah. Really, He's like, it's the name of your band, It's the one song everybody came to see and they play it.

He's funny too.

Well. The long, the long and short of it is is I totally forgot what the other thing I had to say about pirate tins was, so I'll probably think of it. Oh, I know what it was pyrogens. As your immune system grows in ages and you become a grown up, the pyrogens have a little less of an effect on you. So where if you're a kid and your immune system is young and inexperienced, your fever's gonna shoot up quick, and it's going to it's gonna get

Yeah, it'll spike much faster. That's a good point.

That's what I was trying to think of.

Yeah, that's true. You need to take that.

You need to take that rectal temperature way more than you're comfortable with.

I don't recall that ever having been done to me.

Well, because you don't remember being a baby. No, But my.

Parents were pretty strict, pretty stern. No.

And by the time a kid is old enough to where you can say like, hey, put this under your tongue, or hold still for a minute while I put this in your ear. Yeah, but pre that when they're not sentient humans, and they're just, you know, crying, whiny little sacks of flesh.

I got you.

You got to stick it right up the butt. Okay, Harry's laughing.

She almost spit out her schwarm of salad.

Harry's done plenty of that, so she knows. Okay, So into dreams. I always think we've done a general show on dreams.

I think we did. Finally, I didn't find it.

What still, No, I saw lucid dreaming. Can you control your dreams?

That's the same thing, wasn't it.

I think that was the maybe. Yeah, No, we did.

One on dreams.

I didn't see it.

Wow, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Well, this contributes to the little by little.

Someone will know.

Okay, Jill Hurley, where are you when we need you? Our stattician Minister of stats?

Right, all right, Well we'll talk about.

Dreams a bit here then, even though we've explained this in various episodes here and there to some degree, but uh, dreams. You know, if you're a psychologist, you really love to spend time talking and dissecting dreams, interpreting dreams.

If you're a.

More into the neurology side of some cis, you don't really care about that kind of stuff. In fact, for many years they thought it was called activation synthesis hypothesis, which was you go to sleep and all these synapses are just randomly firing and they don't really add up to even a story. You just do that when you wake up because you're human. Yeah, but that, I mean, that's complete bs.

Well, you almost get the impression that they came up with this and the neurologists came up with it to stick out their territory. In response to years of psychoanalysts saying this is what dreams are, right, like tapping into the collective unconscious or your repressed memories, neuroscience said, no, nothing, Yeah, they're just your stupid wet brain going crazy while you sleep.

Yeah, which we all know now is not true.

I saw another one too, what's that threat simulation theory? Have you heard of that one?

No, but that's a great band name.

Basically, it's you're training to be a ninja while you sleep, Like your brain is running threat simulations constantly, so that it's like working itself out, like getting more and more agile and quick and like like, so you can get better at running from a saber tooth tiger, right, if you actually encounter it.

I could see that early on maybe.

Sure, And there is an evolutionary advantage to it, so evolutionarily speaking, it would make sense. The point is it that one came along and was like, no, there's obviously some reason for dreams, it's not just random.

Yeah.

Well, and then maybe I could have seen that early on. But then at some point someone around the fire had a dream about TikTok's wife and woke up and went, whoa, right, there's no saber tooth tiger in that. I'm not sure what that meant, but I better not tell tiktook right, you know.

And then they went, what's a rectal thermometer? It hasn't even been invented yet.

So these days they've done actual studies with EEG machines and MRI machines, and especially in Italy, these Italian researchers basically put people to sleep, not put them to.

Sleep in a sleeper hole.

They lay them down in a nice Italian bed, feed them some pasta fazoul.

And get out the rectal thermometer.

Yep, and they hook them up to all these wires and machines and then they will wake them up at different points in the night and say, hey, what were you dreaming of? We'd like to talk about it and study what was going on with these machines.

Right, And they actually what they found supports the current the prevailing theory. I don't think it was their theory. I think it was around, but their research supports it called affect regulation theory, which is basically that we control

Right, which are slow moving waves. Right.

Yes, And when you look at an EEG machine, if you looked at those dreamers brain waves, it looked like the brain waves of somebody who was sitting there forming and recalling memories.

Right.

So these people said, that's what they're doing. That's what all of us are doing. While we're dreaming, we're forming memories. We're taking emotions that we've experienced through the day, and we're creating memories. Out of them so we can file them away. So we're processing our emotions in our dreams. That's the point of dreams. That's the current understanding. Yeah.

And then I mean other parts of the brain that have been active all sort of deal with emotion, whether it's the amygdala and the hippocampus or the lingual gyrus, which I think.

We just talked about that in another episode.

I don't recall.

I can't remember, but.

They're all areas of the brain that relate to emotion and memory, right, and some with visual activity.

And you know that kind of makes sense. I like that theory. Yeah.

And then under that current theory, so that's like the explanation for regular dreams. And you can't just have a theory for dreams without including nightmares or else your theory's broken. Right, So the affect regulation theory considers nightmares. Basically, it's an emotion that's being put into the process of being, of creating a memory, a false memory, right, a dream memory,

Yeah, I think we did one night terrors, right.

We did for sure, all right? And sleep paralysis, we've covered it all.

I think I.

Guess we really haven't done a dreams one.

All right, So let's take another break.

We're gonna come back and finally talk about fever dreams.

You robbed me of a Saturday night fever reference. I just want to go on record as saying.

That I was wrong.

So Chuck, here's where everything just kind of goes totally off the rail. We've talked about fevers, We've talked about nightmares. The problem is really understanding both doesn't necessarily amount to understanding them together. Right, So, knowing what fevers are, knowing what dreams are, it doesn't mean you know what fever dreams are. But you can make stuff up if you want.

Yeah, and I'm boy, I don't even think we even said if you've never had a fever dream, you might even know we're talking about. Oh yeah, feel kind of dumb at this point in the podcast. But a fever dream is basically a nightmare on steroids. It's just so vivid and so real and scary, right, that happens, you know, when you are sick with a fever.

Yes, obviously, so they're fever dreams, right, So they are a thing. Yeah, but the scientific literature on them is super thin, basically non existent.

It seemed to get them, if not more, at least they stand out more to children, right, And so anecdotally people seem to recall having fever dreams more when they were kids. Whether or not that's true or just a memory is or you know, what do you call it, like a memory bias or whatever.

Yeah, no one really knows.

Yeah, well yeah, I mean we don't really know because.

I don't remember the last time I had a fever and if I did, whether or not I had a fever dream.

I don't think I've ever had a fever dream.

I did when I was a kid.

I don't remember having fever dream.

Yeah, I remember being sick as a kid and having like nightmares when I was sick.

So like they're noticeably worse than your average nightmare. Yes, really, so would you keep waking up from them that I don't remember. See, that's that's a big question to me. Well, let's talk about the anecdotal theory of what is behind fever dreams. Right, Okay, So when your body's undergoing a fever, we said that your body's not functioning at its top performance,

Yeah.

And the neurons compared to regular old dumb cells, they burn or they need about between three hundred and twenty five hundred times more energy, right than a regular old dumb cell in your body.

Right.

And so when all these chemical processes, when all of this energy is being exploited to power cells, it produces the byproduct of heat.

Yeah.

So the brain is super sensitive to overheating. Right already, it's just under normal circumstances.

Yeah, and it's generally taken care of by your body likes you know that it's cooled down right and regulated.

Right. So, if you have a fever and your brain is not operating at optimal conditions, but you're asleep, so it's trying to go through its normal processes. If you have a nightmare, it's entirely possible that that nightmare is going to be far, far worse because the normal processes of broken down, or it's even further possible. Apparently, the amygdala is frequently implicated with nightmares because it has to do with being terrified or angry or fearful. The amygdala

Yeah.

And then the fact that most dreams occur during rim sleep, and I think that's when your body is warmest sleep anyway, right.

That's when see, this is where it all gets kind of hinky. During r em sleep, your hypothalamus says I'm done, I'm not working right now, so it stops regulating temperature, which is usually why your body temperature is lowest right before you wake up.

Oh I thought it was highest right before you wake up.

No, it's highest in the afternoon while you're awake. It's lowest right before you wake up.

I feel like I always wake up hot.

You I mean, you may be like sleeping with too many blankets. Your room might be a little.

Too warmlankets, huh.

Or maybe it's my stupid you know, schedule of my ac I mean it could be you know, it might have cut off a couple hours before or something.

Right, it could be right, so fires up after I get up.

Because supposedly, when you are sleeping and you're in ram sleep, your hypothalamus is not regulating temperature during that period. So if you if you are already hot and remember high body temperatures associated with wakefulness, Yeah, then maybe you are waking up more frequently than you normally would, and when you wake up in the middle of a dream, you're

Yeah, I mean, I had a series of not nightmares last night, but just sort of anxiety dreams. And I don't have any anxiety about anything right now. I think it was just after reading all this stuff. Oh yeah, I'm just suggestible.

You had anxiety dreams.

Yeah, huh, but not about like nothing specific.

No, like there's you know, usually if I have anxiety dreams. I'm just like, because something's going on in my life, I'm anxiously sure. Yeah, but there was just a research h I think. So, man, you're dedicated. But they're also celebrity dreams because you know I've talked about those before. No, yeah, yeah that I have just celebrity dreams all the time. But they're just very normal that I'm just like friends with celebrity people.

But they were they anxiety ridden last night?

Yes, Like I was hanging out with the band Luna. Dean ware them of Luna, all right, and there was but there was I can't remember exactly what was going on, but you know, there was anxiety involved, like I was trying to get somewhere and couldn't get there, like the typical stupid dream stuff, you know.

But Dean was in there somehow.

Yeah. Have you talked to him today?

I don't know him, but uh, I think I know why they were in there, that's all I'll say.

Oh, okay, wink wink.

I guess.

So here's another thing that was our own article I thought was interesting, just a little tidbit, was that some recreational drugs like methan ecstasy can raise brain temperatures. Right, That is one of the reasons they think that it kills so many brain cells when you do those drugs.

Yeah, supposedly you're not supposed to take ecstasy in warm climates.

Yeah, never, I have heard that.

Yeah, just norway. Well, there you have it, only it's fall barred.

What else? Is there anything else in here?

No? Man, I can't believe we stretched this one out as far as we did. Alrighty, we never have to talk about fever dreams again, Chuck Good. If you want to know more about fever dreams, well you might as well start at HowStuffWorks dot com. There's nothing wrong with that. And you can also just go around and look at how sparse the research is on the internet for yourself. And if you are a researcher and you know more stuff about fever dreams, that you can point us to

I think Another reason the anxiety dreams is because I'm barreling through the season of Fargo and the third season. Yeah, and the two episodes I watched last night, which I believe were if there are ten, I think it was eight and nine. We're both just like ratcheted.

Up with tingin. I'm sure that's what it was, and I think that probably had something to do with it.

That happens to me sometimes I'll be watching something I won't realize how on top of me it's gotten, and then all of a sudden, like it goes to an ad and I'm like really uptight about like this scratching dent washing machine sale that's going on somewhere, and I don't understand why, and I'm like, oh, wow, that TV show really got to me.

Yeah, I think I think Fargo had something to do it.

I think you may have nailed it.

All right.

I'm gonna call this one garden variety fan mail, which we don't read a lot of these, so I'm going to dig in. Hey, guys, that's all this is fan maail. You guys are doing a great job, always have. It's clear that with every episode you take great pains to provide the most accurate information you can in the most thoughtful way possible.

How ironic that you would read this on the fever Dreams of Us day.

This has never been more evident to me than in the episodes you did on puberty. I know it's been a little while since he's came out, but just listen to them, and it was touching to see how frequently you tried to reassure young listeners what they're experiencing is normal and that there was nothing wrong about what was happening. To hear two grown men do their best talk to young boys and girls about such sensitive material.

What's a pleasure?

Yes, at times I could practically feel you nervously twitching while trying to discuss menstruation in an informative yet reassuring way, but it was absolutely charming. Just reaffirm what we've always known. You two are just a pair of great dudes.

Oh that's nice. Yeah, I like this guy.

I've only been listening for a few years, but I'm a lifetime fan. Now if you're keeping count, like to put in a vote for DC for live shows. Josh h E d G E E sorry E d G E is edge and then ed two l's Edgel Edgel. Sure, yeah, Josh Edgel or Edgel? I like Edgel or ed Gil L or Edge.

I think Edgel Edgel sounds like a kid next door.

Josh Edgel, It's Josh and Josh. You know what, We usually come to DC once a year. I don't think we're coming this year though.

No, we probably will be there early ish twenty eighteen.

Yeah. DC's always great to us, so what we'll definitely be.

Back yeah soonish yeah. Uh. And you can always fly somewhere in the continental United States or Canada. Josh, take that Asla Express up to Brooklyn exactly.

It's a pleasure train.

There you go. There's Rechtel thermometers everywhere. Uh. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us both and Jerry an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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