A slice of cheddar, a smear of brie, a sprinkle of parmesan — they’re all a dream for cheese lovers. But for people with lactose intolerance, they’re a nightmare in the making. Perhaps literally.
According to a new study, it’s possible that the consumption of cheese and other dairy products could contribute to poor sleep and nightmares among lactose-intolerant individuals. Published today in Frontiers in Psychology, the study involved over 1,000 participants who were asked about their diets, sleep patterns, and perceptions of the relationship between the two.
The results revealed that lactose intolerance, poor sleep, and nightmares are all closely connected, probably thanks to the gastrointestinal distress that’s caused by dairy, which could interfere with the sleep and dreams of those who consume it despite their intolerance.
“Nightmare severity is robustly associated with lactose intolerance and other food allergies,” said Tore Nielsen, a study author and a psychologist at the University of Montreal, in a press release. “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!”
How Diet Impacts Sleep and Dreams
Though we all eat and sleep, there has long been a lack of research into the potential relationship between what we eat and how we sleep. So, to address this absence in the research, a team from the University of Montreal, the University of British Columbia, and MacEwan University surveyed students about their diet and food intolerances, their sleep and dreams, and whether they thought that their diet impacted their sleep.
After reviewing the responses, the team found that female respondents reported food intolerances more frequently than male ones, and they also reported poor sleep and nightmares more frequently, too. Still, around a third of the participants — male and female — reported nightmares overall. Moreover, specific foods were reported to affect sleep by approximately 40 percent of the students, and to have a negative impact on sleep by around 25 percent of them.
Most remarkably, around 5.5 percent of the participants reported that specific foods altered their dreams, with sweet foods, spicy foods, and — of course — dairy products being blamed most often for the alterations. For the majority of these respondents, these foods were thought to turn dreams into nightmares, making them generally more disturbing and more disruptive.
Taken together, the researchers’ results indicated that lactose intolerance was related to nighttime gastrointestinal discomfort, poor sleep, and nightmares.
“We are routinely asked whether food affects dreaming,” Nielsen said in the release. “Now we have some answers.”
Read More: Food Sensitivity Tests Are on the Rise — But How Legit Are They?
Dairy May be the Stuff of Nightmares
According to the team, it’s likely that this problem comes down to the consumption of dairy. When people with lactose intolerance take their chances with a shred of cheese or a swig of milk, it could cause stomach pain that could sour their sleep and their dreams.
“Nightmares are worse for lactose-intolerant people who suffer severe gastrointestinal symptoms and whose sleep is disrupted,” Nielsen said in the release. “This makes sense, because we know that other bodily sensations can affect dreaming.”
Additional research is still needed to confirm these connections and their causality. But, for now, it seems that sweet dreams aren’t made of cheese, at least for those with lactose sensitivities.
“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 generalizable to the larger population,” Nielsen said in the release. “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.”
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
Read More: Is Milk Bad for You? Here’s What the Science Says
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Frontiers in Psychology. More Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Food Sensitivity and Dietary Correlates of Sleep and Dreaming
Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
