NBC News
Dairy products could be interfering with their dreams.
A study published Tuesday in the magazine Frontiers in Psychology investigated people’s sleep habits, in particular their dreams, and compared them to food.
What concluded the investigation? How worse were the lactose intolerance reactions of the people studied, the more intense their nightmares were.
The study seems to offer some answers to the questions raised in a 2015 investigation that analyzed how foods affect dreams.
“In the previous study, people blamed cheese all the time for their bad dreams,” said Tore Nielsen, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal and co -author of both investigations. “That’s why I think that in this study we obtained better answers in this regard.”
A little more than 1,000 people participated in the study. Those who reported serious gastrointestinal symptoms because of their lactose intolerance said they had stronger nightmares. Throughout two months, the frequency of bad dreams was monitored, the level of anguish they caused, how much they interfere in daily activities and their duration.
In most cases, participants blamed their nightmares to dairy and sweets.
The participants conducted the survey as part of an introduction to psychology. For this reason, it is possible that the results are not applicable to the general population.
Even so, both researchers and independent experts claim that there are plausible explanations for why eating cheese before bedtime can cause nightmares.
Anxiety symptoms that accompany lactose intolerance could be causing more nightmares, according to Nielsen.
Marie-Pierre St-onge, director of the Center for Excellence for the Dream of the Irving Medical Center of Columbia University, indicated that sleep alterations caused by gastrointestinal problems could explain this relationship.
“If you have gastrointestinal problems, that could explain much of what happens with sleep alterations, which could be associated with different dreams,” said St-onge.
Patrick McNamara, Associate Professor of Neurology at the Chobanian & Avedisian Faculty of Boston University, which studies the brain and sleep, said that ingesting a food that activates lactose intolerance can cause “microdespertar” that alter the quality of sleep and give rise to more intense nightmares.
However, both McNamara and the authors of the study warned that other factors not related to gastrointestinal symptoms could also influence.
Nielsen said that more research is needed on the relationship between dairy and dreams. Russell Powell, co -author of the New Study and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Macewan University in Alberta, said they plan to reproduce the results in other groups.
Even so, people can analyze their own diet and make decisions about what aspects change, Nielsen added. These measures do not necessarily require a doctor’s help.
