I never would have believed it unless I read it on one of most-trusted Foodie newswire services. A study by a team at the Université de Montréal (UdM) says cheese, and other dairy products, specifically, may ruin your sleep…
We all know, from the old parables learned at our grand elders’ knees, that eating at bedtime is a bad idea. You’ll have nightmares!’ I can recall my Mom’s Mom warning me.
She was right
Well… Grandma was right. And I still believe to this day, she played an uncredited character in my first memorable nightmare when it came, a few weeks after her warning. Be that as it may…
The new theory UdM reserchers studied theory about food and nightmares goes as far as to associate certain types of food with sleep disturbances. I’m not so sure about that.
But lactose intolerance? I’ve never suffered from anything remotely like lactose intolerance, waking or sleeping, child or adult, which is the trigger the researchers are focusing on in the study behind today’s post. But maybe that’s just me. There are plenty of theories and lot of previous research suggesting such a link.
What they did
The team asked more than 1,000 students about their sleep habits and experiences, looking for links between diet, sleep problems, and cultural beliefs.
Anyone who has lived in residence at college or university will tell you, there plenty of cultural and environmental causes with the potential to affect sleep. Loud parties, alcohol consumption, and so on. But late-night indulgence in fatty or high-Cal foods – typically Pizza or Fast Food – is also com-mon among students, and not overly-reported as linked to sleep and dreaming issues.
Nevertheless, researchers wondered if more-fundamental causes – like allergenic sensitivities such as lacto-intolerance – might be playing a role in sleep disruptions.
Researchers asked 1,082 subjects about sleep time and quality, dreams and nightmares, and any per-ceived association between different kinds of dreams and different foods. They also asked about participants’ mental and physical health, and their relationship with food.
What they found
“Nightmare severity is robustly associated with lactose intolerance and other food allergies,” said Dr Tore Nielsen of Université de Montréal, Lead Author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology.
Most participants who blamed their bad sleep on food thought sweets, spicy foods, or dairy were specifically responsible.
“These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares. They could also explain why people so often blame dairy, specifically, for bad dreams,” the study report speculates.
In general…
- About a third of respondents reported regular nightmares.
- Women were more likely than men to remember their dreams and to report poor sleep and nightmares.
- Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report a food intolerance or allergy.
- About 40 percent of participants said that they thought eating late at night or specific foods affected their sleep
- Roughly 25 percent thought particular foods could make their sleep worse.
- In general, people who ate less healthily were more likely to have negative dreams and less likely to remember dreams.
The takeaway
“These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares,” Nielsen observed. “They could also explain why people so often blame dairy for bad dreams.”
It’s not clear how the relationship between sleep and diet works, the researchers concluded. It’s possible that people sleep less well because they eat less well, but it’s also possible that people don’t eat well because they don’t sleep well, or that another factor influences both sleep and diet. Further research will be needed to confirm these links and identify the underlying mechanisms.
My take
Sounds to me as though there is a connection between lactose intolerance and sleep disruptions. That jives with previous findings that many more people suffer from mild or medium-intensity lactose intolerance than have been formally diagnosed as such. Not to mention a theory that’s been circulating for decades, states that adults should not be consuming dairy products at all, because, “milk – whether cows’ or human mothers’,” was meant to be consumed by their babies, not by older kids who are fully grown, much less by adults.”
If it’s true that any dairy at all is dietary overkill for human adults, it could explain a lot of things… Which could indicate that a LOT more research is required…
~ Maggie J.