Is a late -night cheese session ever seemed to send you your own person Nightmare on Elm Street? You are probably not alone. Research today has revealed a connection between intolerance of lactose and a higher risk of bad dreams.
Scientists in Canada conducted the study by investigating university students. People who reported having regular nightmares and poorer sleep in general, also more likely to have food allergies, including intolerance to lactose, they found. The researchers speculate that the misery caused by people’s stomach problems can swallow into our non-wake hours.
“The results we have obtained have confirmed our hypothesis that lactose intolerance is indeed predictive of disturbed dreaming and nightmares,” student of author Ross Powell, psychologist and professor emeritus at Macewan University in Edmonton, Alberta, told Gizmodo.
The idea that the foods we eat, especially cheeses or other dairy products can worsen our sleep is hardly new. In the early 1900s, for example, US cartoonist Winsor McCay created a popular journal comic book –Dream of the rarebit -friend“This routinely presented people receiving nightmares or strange dreams after eating something less than pleasant.” Often, this exhaust food was Welsh raredbitA popular British dish of cheese on toast.
But according to Powell, this phenomenon has not really been studied much scientifically. A decade ago, this same team released a survey finding that about 20% of participants Reported Having bizarre dreams they felt were connected to eating certain foods or eating late in the evening, with many guilty dairy products specifically. In their latest study, Powell and his colleagues hoped to replicate their earlier findings, as well as digging a little deeper into the reasons for cheese’s nightmares of cheese.
The researchers have investigated more than 1,000 university students (more than twice the sample of the study in 2015) on their diet and sleep habits. About 40% of respondents felt that some foods or late night Ching affected their sleep, and 25% feel that their diets worsened their sleep. This time, only 5.5% specifically blamed food for touching the contents of their dreams, but dairy products, spicy foods and sweets were usually blamed culprits among those who did. The researchers also found that self-reported intolerance of lactose was associated with stiffer nightmares and poorer sleep, as well as other food allergies. Incredibly, lactose intolerance was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, while people who reported less healthy diets in general, tended to have more nightmares and have more difficulty to remember their dreams.
The team’s findings were issued On Tuesday in fronts in psychology (and the current and the study in 2015 directly references Dream of the rarebit -friend in their title).
As anyone with lactose intolerance knows, indulging milk craving can cause much pain and swelling. And the researchers reason that these symptoms can incite people awake or subtly ruin their dreams – an explanation that could extend to other similar types of pain.
“It may be that its conflict, compared to other types of physical misery, has a particularly strong impact on sleeping and dream. Menstrual bracket, for example, was also shown To increase the likelihood of an annoyed dream, “Powell said. He further theorizes that because it can be caused by ingestion of poison, our dairy nightmares may be the body’s way of holding itself alert in the event of a medical emergency.
The researchers would like to confirm their research experimentally, as a test that directly compares how people intolerable in lactose sleep and dream after eating or avoiding dairy products. Powell believes that it would also be interesting to study whether food sensitivities could directly contribute to the nightmare disorders of some people.
Around one third Of Americans have trouble digesting lactose, although not everyone feels sick after having some. And considering how annoying lactose intolerance is already, these findings can offer an additional stimulus to stay away from the late night dairy. I personally know that I will be more likely to reach a rag of evening sorbet over the ice cream next time.
