Does Your Diet Really Affect Your Dreams?

You might blame scary or surreal dreams on your bedtime snacks, but is there any scientific evidence to back that up? Learn about research into diet and dreams in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/pizza-nightmares-diet-determine-dreams.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogabam Here. If you've ever had
a meat lover's stuffed pressed pizza before bed and then
spent your dreams being chased around by a saber toothed,
willed beast wearing a top hat, you might have blamed
this bizarre and unsettling experience on your evening snack. This

(00:25):
tendency is so prevalent, yet any hard data is so
lacking that a study published in the journal Frontiers in
Psychology endeavored to crack this supposed a relationship between diet
and dreams. For the article that this episode is based
on how stuff works. That spoke by email with study
co author Dr Torrey Nielsen, psychiatry professor and director of

(00:48):
the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Center for Advanced
Research in Sleep Medicine at the University of Montreal. He said,
there's extremely little information available and all so some important
misinformation that keeps getting recycled. This research was motivated in
large part by the media itself. Questions about food and

(01:09):
dreams are among the most frequent questions we are asked.
These questions come up particularly around food center holidays, which
in our culture most holidays are the most commonly blamed
nightmare inducing culprits are cheese, spicy foods, and eating too
much right before bedtime? But is there any truth to

(01:31):
this folklore? Nielsen and his team surveyed nearly four hundred
participants on a range of topics such as sleep and
diet quality, and asked them to report whether they thought
food affected their dreams or not. Almost eighteen percent of
the participants indicated that they thought eating certain foods or
eating right before bed made a difference in the development

(01:52):
of disturbing dreams, with dairy products like milk, cheese, yogurt,
and ice cream, as well as pizza being the most
commonly listed by thirty of participants. Also blamed for disturbing dreams,
but to a lesser extent than dairy, were foods of
the spicy, starchy, or meat based varieties. Overall, sweets and

(02:13):
chocolates were the second most frequently mentioned category for dream
inducing foods after dairy, but they were considered most likely
to foster bizarre dreams not necessarily unpleasant but still strange,
like being able to fly, as opposed to more disturbing dreams.
Like being chased by a werewolf. The second part of

(02:34):
the study delved deeper into the subjects themselves. Nielsen explained,
when we broke down our sample into subjects who reported
disturbing dreams and those who reported vivid but not disturbing dreams,
we found that there were two very different profiles. Disturbed
dreamers at higher pathological indicators like poorer sleep, binge eating,

(02:56):
or emotional eating, whereas the vivid dreamers had high your
wellness indicators like better sleep, healthier diet, and longer times
between eating, what we consider a proxy measure of fasting.
The fasting note struck a chord with the scientists because
various cultures have long documented the effect of the practice

(03:16):
on dreams. Nielsen said the finding for fasting in particular
was of interest because of very old literature documenting how
different peoples have used fasting to induce the recall of
spiritual and life guiding dreams called vivid dreams. In our study,
although it might be a stretch to recommend fasting if

(03:37):
you're looking for some type of nocturnal intervention, it's certainly
preferable to dream vividly in place of a nightmare starring
a deranged as murderer. There are any number of theories
on why certain foods affect our dreams, and certainly people
with certain health considerations like gastrosophageal reflux disease, have different

(03:57):
sensitivities than others. How stuff works also spoke by email
with Amy corn Reavis of Emery Sleep Solutions in Orlando, Florida.
She explained foods that affect gastrosophical reflex disease tend to
be either spicy or fatty foods. The closer you eat
them to bedtime, the more likely they are to affect you.

(04:18):
This is because they are heavier and produce more acids
to digest. This causes people with weak muscles at the
top of their stomach to have acid move into their esophagus.
This effort may impact the time and length of valuable
R e M sleep, thereby affecting the type and duration
of dreams. She added that spikes or drops in blood

(04:40):
glucose levels, especially from desserts and other foods high and
simple sugars, may also affect R e M sleep, but
that there isn't solid research yet to back all of
this up. It seems that indeed the study of these
phenomena is just beginning. Nielsen said, we need to start
experimental studies that systematically vary what people eat and when,

(05:03):
and whether this induces any regular change in their dream content.
Today's episode is based on the article Pizza Nightmares. Can
your diet Determine Your Dreams? On how stuff works dot Com?
Written by Leo Hoyt. Brain Stuff is production by Heart
Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and

(05:23):
is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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