Scientists have found that the rumours are indeed true – too much cheese can ruin your sleep.
A team from Université de Montréal surveyed 1,082 students on the quality of their sleep and their eating habits. They found a strong link between nightmares and lactose intolerance, possibly due to the gas or stomach pain during the night, which affects people’s dreams.
“Nightmare severity is robustly associated with lactose intolerance and other food allergies,” says Dr Tore Nielsen of Université de Montréal, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Psychology.
“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 for bad dreams!”
The research also found that women were more likely to remember their dreams – and to report poor sleep and nightmares – and were nearly twice as likely as men to report a food intolerance or allergy.
Anecdotally, about 40 per cent of participants said they thought eating late at night or specific foods affected their sleep, with roughly 25 per cent of participants identifying specific foods that could make their sleep worse.
Most participants who blamed poor sleep on food considered sweets, spicy foods, or dairy (such as cheese or milk) to be responsible.
Only 5.5 per cent considered what they ate to affect the tone or mood of their dreams, but many of this group said they thought sweets or dairy made their dreams more surreal or disturbing.
The report’s authors found that lactose intolerance was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, nightmares and low sleep quality.
“Nightmares are worse for lactose intolerant people who suffer severe gastrointestinal symptoms and whose sleep is disrupted,” says Nielsen.
"This makes sense, because we know that other bodily sensations can affect dreaming. Nightmares can be very disruptive, especially if they occur often, because they tend to awaken people from sleep in a dysphoric state. They might also produce sleep avoidance behaviours. Both symptoms can rob you of restful sleep.”
Nielsen has suggested that the improved awareness of food intolerances in the population could mean that the students in this study generally ate fewer of the foods that activate their intolerances and impact their sleep. It could mean that a few simple dietary adjustments could improve their sleep and overall health.
Further research is required, however. “We need to study more people of different ages, from different walks of life, and with different dietary habits to determine if our results are truly generalisable to the larger population,” says Nielsen.
"Experimental studies are also needed to determine if people can truly detect the effects of specific foods on dreams. We would like to run a study in which we ask people to ingest cheese products versus some control food before sleep to see if this alters their sleep or dreams.”
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Cheese recipes
- Brussels sprouts, blue cheese and chestnut tartlets
- Tomato and cheddar cheese cobbler
- Apple, goat’s cheese, honey and hazelnut tarts
- Leek and goat’s cheese tarts
Top image: Cheese dreams (credit: Getty Images)
