Eating dairy products before bed may indeed lead to nightmares, according to one new study.
Another week, another modern-day mystery solved.
According to the boffins at Canada’s MacEwan University, cheese does indeed give you weird dreams.
The new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, surveyed about 1000 university students on their diet, sleep patterns, allergies and the self-perceived effects of specific foods.
Around one in 20 respondents felt that food affected their dreams – more specifically, sweets and dairy products were associated with higher nightmare recall.
This effect was also associated with food allergies and gluten intolerance.
The worst sleepers and (some of the) biggest nightmare-havers were people with lactose intolerance.
Rather than cheese containing some sort of undiscovered nightmare-inducing chemical, though, the researchers arrived at a far simpler idea; people with lactose intolerance get sore bellies.
“This analysis supports the notion that specific food-induced symptoms such as bloating, cramping or excess gas arising during sleep have a negative impact on dreaming,” they wrote.
“Such a mediating role for GI symptoms is consistent with other findings that dreaming is more emotionally intense and conflictual when abdominal cramping is at its worst, e.g., during menstruation.”
The researchers also cited the work of cartoonist Winsor McCay – specifically his early 1900s comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend – at several points throughout the paper.
The popular strip featured bizarre scenarios befalling those who partook in dairy too close to bedtime, who would then curse their consumption of cheese.
“The possibility that GI symptoms can incite nightmares could explain why Winsor McCay so consistently asserted in his art that Welsh rarebit and other cheese snacks so wildly affected dreams … McCay himself may have had nightmares aggravated by lactose intolerance,” the authors wrote.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: you can take the King Island double cream ash brie out of my cold, dead, nightmare-having hands.
Winsor McCay be damned!
Send your cheesiest dreams to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
