“Oh man..what a horrible dream I just had… Maybe it’s because I ate that cheese I found under the cooker” – Neil, “Hole in My Shoe”.
It’s an old wives’ tale that you shouldn’t eat cheese before bed because it will give you nightmares. But is there any truth to it? A new study has claimed to give credence to the advice – until you drill down into the method and realise that it’s probably worth about as much as most psychology experiments (which is to say, not much at all).
For starters, the Canadian researchers used a sample of just over a thousand psychology students. So, like many sociological and psychological studies, it mostly just tells us about the psychology of a small sample of university students, which may not be exactly the most representative sample.
The study also relied entirely on the subjects’ self-reporting.
So, what did it find?
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.
In contrast, participants reported fruits, vegetables and herbal teas led to better sleep.
As already noted, the study is entirely dependent on participants accurately recalling and reporting their sleep and dreams. How often have you woken and almost immediately forgotten what you dreamed? Or claimed to have hardly slept, while your partner counterclaims that you were snoring your head off?
It should also be borne in mind that the participants were already aware of the alleged connection between cheese and nightmare, especially given they were psychology students who may have studied sleep and dreaming.
Nonetheless, these findings show some people perceive a connection between what they eat and how they dream.
Sure, but is there any objective evidence linking cheese and bad dreams?
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 […]
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.
So, eating right before bed impacts sleep quality. If you’re waking up more during the night, you may simply be taking more notice of the same vivid dreams and nightmares you have every night.
Is there any practical advice from all this? Mostly, just don’t eat much in the two hours before you go to bed.
Except, seemingly paradoxically, milk (the base stuff of cheese). Milk contains tryptophan, an amino acid that helps promote sleep.
So, have that cup of warm milk – just maybe don’t have a cheese toastie with it.
