Growing up, we were all told by our mothers what foods were guaranteed to give us sweet dreams. And, while moms may swear by a glass of warm milk, that’s not going to help a lot of people.
A study looked at how food impacts sleep using online surveys from more than 1,000 people being tracked for four months. They were asked about over a dozen food groups, including dairy, desserts, fruit and meat. The results showed that 40.2 percent of people’s sleep is impacted by their eating habits. While around 20 percent said that at least one food group could improve their sleep, 25 percent said that at least one food group makes sleep worse. Fruit, tea and vegetables were called beneficial by the participants. On the other hand, Spicy foods, desserts, sweets and dairy worsened sleep.
Five point five percent of participants said that foods impacted their dreams. And 22 percent of people said their bad dreams were caused by dairy. So warm milk might be the last thing you want!
One of the reasons why dairy is to blame is that the worse lactose intolerance a person had, the more intense their dreams were. People who had severe gastrointestinal problems caused by lactose intolerance reported worse, more frequent nightmares that impacted their daily activities more.
“In the earlier study, people were blaming cheese all the time for their bad dreams,” said Tore Nielsen, a professor of psychiatry at the Univ. of Montreal who worked on the research. “And so I think we got some better answers in the study for that.”
Prof. Nielson said, “These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares.”
Women in the study were more likely to remember their dreams. They were also more likely to report having food allergies.
The researchers said that more research is needed, especially as the participants were all young adults. “We need to study more people of different ages, from different walks of life, and with different dietary habits to determine if our results are truly generalizable to the larger population,” said Prof. Nielson. “Experimental studies are also needed to determine if people can truly detect the effects of specific foods on dreams. We would like to run a study in which we ask people to ingest cheese products versus some control food before sleep to see if this alters their sleep or dreams.”
While dairy might not be a problem if you have a steel stomach, the wisest recommendation, until all the research is in, is to avoid snacking near bedtime and pay attention to how food makes you feel throughout the day.
