For more than a century, folklore and cartoons have warned us: eat cheese before bedtime and awaits you a strange night. Winsor McCay’s 1904 comic strip RAREBIT’s demon dream Famous converted the forst of spicy cheese called Galeses Rarebit into a portal for surreal and disturbing dreams. Now, a new study suggests that McCay could have been in something.
Researchers led by Dr. Tore Nielsen at the University of Montreal report a surprising link between certain food sensibilities (especially lactose intolerance) and experience nightmares. Based on a great survey of more than a thousand university students, the study discovers how what we eat, when we eat it and how our bodies respond can conspire to shape the landscapes of our dreams.
The team survey 1,082 undergraduate students, asking for sleep patterns, diet, food sensitivities and dream content. Almost a third of the participants reported frequent nightmares. About 40% believed that food affected their dream, and around 5.5% said specific foods affected their dreams.
Of those who saw a connection between food and its dreams, most pointed to desserts, sweets or dairy. “The demon RAREBIT version of this hypothesis, blaming the cheesy foods in particular, was supported by the current results,” said the researchers.
Dr. Tore Nielsen, who directs the Dream & Nightmare laboratory at the Hospital of the Sacred Heart of Montreal, explained: “The severity of the nightmare is associated robust with lactose intolerance and other food allergies. These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensibilities could relieve nightmares.
Cheese, gas and nightmare
Participants with lactose intolerance were significantly more likely to experience nightmares and inform of bad dream. Researchers believe that gastrointestinal symptoms, such as swelling, cramps or gas, can be the fault. These discomforts, especially when they hit at night, can interrupt sleep and leak in dreams.
“Nightmares are worse for lactose intolerant people suffering from serious gastrointestinal symptoms and whose dream is interrupted,” Nielsen said The times. “This makes sense, because we know that other bodily sensations can affect sleep.”
A sophisticated mediation analysis supported this link. The data showed that lactose intolerance predicted the severity of the nightmare, but the connection disappeared when the researchers controlled gastrointestinal symptoms. Then, the culprit was not simply cheese, but what cheese does to a lactose intolerant body during sleep.
Sweets, spicy foods and time
Dairy was not the only suspect. They were blamed more frequently than cheese for disturbing or strange dreams, according to published data and open responses of the participants. Spicy foods came below.
The moment of meals also mattered. Eating late at night, particularly when I was not hungry, associated with more nightmares and negative dreams. People who ate less at night typically were more likely to remember their dreams, while the other group tended to experience more negativity of dreams.
Interestingly, participants who reported healthier eating habits, such as listening to internal signs of hunger or avoiding emotional food, had better sleep and remember their dreams more frequently. People who consumed more fruits, vegetables and teas of herbs reported that the dream improved.
Meanwhile, those with high afternoon scores and poor diet patterns had the opposite experience: interrupted sleep, emotionally negative dreams and more frequent nightmares.
However, researchers warn that correlation is not causality. “It is not clear if the dietary factors evaluated cause sleep changes, if the dream affects dietary choices or if any third factor affects both diet and dreams,” they write.
A broader intestinal connection
The findings echo the emerging research on the axis of the intestinal brain, complex and bidirectional communication between our digestive system and the central nervous system. Conditions such as irritable intestine syndrome (IBS), which imply interruptions in serotonin signage, usually affect both mood and sleep. Some studies It even suggests that intestinal health can influence nightmares, especially in conditions such as PTSD.
“There is a growing amount of research that examines the diet relationship with post -traumatic stress disorder,” said Nielsen, “an important feature of which it is the frequent occurrence of nightmares.” Diets rich in anti -inflammatory foods, such as the Mediterranean diet, have been related to reduced PTSD symptoms and the most stable dream content.
It was also McCay’s Rare demon Comic Only an absurd fiction work, or a prophetic warning of the intestine? The new study suggests that the line between cultural belief and biological reality can be thinner than we thought.
“They routinely ask us if food affects the dream, especially for vacation journalists focused on food,” said Nielsen. “Now we have some answers.”
Even so, he and his colleagues have not finished. They hope to perform controlled experiments below. “We would like to execute a study in which we ask people to eat cheese products compared to some control foods before sleeping to see if this alters their dream or dreams,” said Nielsen.
Until then, if you are chased by dreams after a cheesy sandwich or a sweet dessert, you now have a clue to why that is happening. His stomach, and what he sends to his sleeping brain, can be the culprit.
The findings appeared in the magazine Borders in Psychology.
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