Say no cheese: How eating the dairy product before bed can give you nightmares

Charlotte Gupta, CQUniversity Australia

Have you heard people say eating cheese before bed will cause you to have vivid dreams or nightmares?

It’s a relatively common idea. And this week, a new study has landed this suggestion back in the spotlight.

But is it true? Let’s unpack the evidence.

What does the study say?

Canadian researchers recently investigated this idea in a sample of 1,082 undergraduate psychology students. The students completed a survey, which included questions about how they perceived their diet influenced their sleep and dreams.

Some 40 per cent of participants reported certain foods impacted their sleep, with 25 per cent of the whole sample claiming certain foods worsened their sleep, and 20 per cent reporting certain foods improved their sleep.

Only 5.5 per cent of respondents believed what they ate affected the nature of their dreams. But many of these people thought sweets or dairy products (such as cheese) made their dreams more strange or disturbing and worsened their sleep.

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In contrast, participants reported that fruits, vegetables and herbal teas led to better sleep.

This study used self-reporting, meaning the results rely on the participants’ recalling and reporting information about their sleep and dreams accurately. This could have affected the results.

It’s also possible that participants were already familiar with the notion that cheese causes nightmares, especially given they were psychology students, many of whom may have studied sleep and dreaming.

This awareness could have made them more likely to notice or perceive their sleep was disrupted after eating dairy. In other words, the idea cheese leads to nightmares may have acted like a self-fulfilling prophecy and results may overestimate the actual likelihood of strange dreams.

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Nonetheless, these findings show some people perceive a connection between what they eat and how they dream.

While there’s no evidence to prove cheese causes nightmares, there is evidence that does explain a link.

The cheesy connection

Humans are diurnal creatures, meaning our body is primed to be asleep at night and awake during the day. Eating cheese before bed means we’re challenging the body with food at a time when it really doesn’t want to be eating.

At night, our physiological systems are not primed to digest food. For example, it takes longer for food to move through our digestive tract at night compared with during the day.

If we eat close to going to sleep, our body has to process and digest the food while we’re sleeping. This is a bit like running through mud – we can do it, but it’s slow and inefficient.

Cheese can be particularly challenging to digest at night because of high concentrations of fat and protein, which slows down our digestion.

If your body is processing and digesting food instead of focusing all its resources on sleep, this can affect your shut-eye. Research has shown eating close to bedtime reduces our sleep quality, particularly our time spent in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the stage of sleep associated with vivid dreams.

People will have an even harder time digesting cheese at night if they’re lactose intolerant, which might mean they experience even greater impacts on their sleep. This follows what the Canadian researchers found in their study, with lactose intolerant participants reporting poorer sleep quality and more nightmares.

It’s important to note we might actually have vivid dreams or nightmares every night – what could change is whether we’re aware of the dreams and can remember them when we wake up.

Poor sleep quality often means we wake up more during the night. If we wake up during REM sleep, research shows we’re more likely to report vivid dreams or nightmares that we mightn’t even remember if we hadn’t woken up during them.

This is very relevant for the cheese and nightmares question. Put simply, eating before bed impacts our sleep quality, so we’re more likely to wake up during our nightmares and remember them.

Don’t panic – I’m not here to tell you to give up your cheesy evenings. But what we eat before bed can make a real difference to how well we sleep, so timing matters.

General sleep hygiene guidelines suggest avoiding meals at least two hours before bed. So even if you’re eating a very cheese-heavy meal, you have a window of time before bed to digest the meal and drift off to a nice peaceful sleep.

Does it apply to other dairy products too?

Cheese isn’t the only dairy product which may influence our sleep. Most of us have heard about the benefits of having a warm glass of milk before bed.

Milk can be easier to digest than cheese. In fact, milk is a good choice in the evening, as it contains tryptophan, an amino acid that helps promote sleep.

Nonetheless, we still don’t want to be challenging our body with too much dairy before bed. Participants in the Canadian study did report nightmares after dairy, and milk close to bed might have contributed to this.

While it’s wise to steer clear of food (especially cheese) in the two hours before lights out, there’s no need to avoid cheese altogether. Enjoy that cheesy pasta or cheese board, just give your body time to digest before heading off to sleep. If you’re having a late night cheese craving, opt for something small. Your sleep (and your dreams) will thank you.

Charlotte Gupta, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.