Lucid Experiment

**quiktaco** · 10-26-2011 05:56 PM

Preface -
We all know that nearly everything in our waking life can affect our ability to dream, and therefor, lucid dream. One of the biggest factors to this is what we put into our bodies. Food is a major contributor to dreaming, whether good, or bad.

Food plays a vital role in our lives, as it is what gives us our nutrition to get through the day. However, many of us do not put the best food we can into our systems, including myself.

I eat what is known as the 'standard American diet', consisting of anything from burgers and fries, to pizza and soda. I try to include healthy things as well, but I'd say 75% of what I eat is on the 'not-so-healthy' side.

Although I don't always eat the way I should, I do exercise, and watch my calorie intake, so I'm fairly healthy, all things considered. I'm 5'10", and weigh right around 150 pounds.

While trying to counteract what goes into my body, I stumbled across something called 'Fasting'. Fasting, basically, is going without food for a period of time. We all fast when we are asleep at night, and in the morning, we 'break' our fast, by eating 'breakfast'. In today's culture of modern medicine, most people shy away from fasting, and see it as a medicine man, voodoo, snake oil, etc. type of thing.

Fasting, however, has been used throughout time to cleanse the body, and heal illness. The digestive system uses a vast amount of the bodies resources to process food. By giving the digestive system a break, you free up your body to clean itself out, by a process known as detoxing.

I've experimented with fasting from time to time, and my longest fast was for just shy of 5 days, on water alone. However, I find that even one day does a great deal to help me feel better.

Hypothesis -
What I will be doing, is experimenting with fasting, and it's affects on dreaming. I will track both during the fasting period, as well as the days after, as part of my tests.

I believe that fasting will help with all aspects of dreaming, including...
• Dream Recall
• Dream Clarity
• Dream Control
• Lucid Dreaming

* This experiment can not be performed as a blind test, let alone a double blind test, so possibility of a placebo effect could occur. I will perform the tests multiple times over the course of a few weeks to a few months, to attempt to rule out any coincidence and placebo type effects.

** Also, if this turns into a helpful process, before you jump into fasting, please do your research on fasting, as well as talk to your doctor if you are unsure if it will be safe for you.

Follow this thread to see my results.

Observation -
Today is DAY ONE of my fasting. I ate dinner last night, then had a few glasses of water before bed. I woke this morning, and have abstained from eating, and will continue to do so until tomorrow morning, which will give approximately 36 hours without food.

I will continue my standard lucid dream techniques of Sporadic Awareness, and reality checking about 2-3 times per hour.

Feel free to ask any questions, or anything else that is on your mind about this experiment.

**Arch** · 10-26-2011 06:25 PM

Deleted reservations because you wont be able to edit them after a day anyway

**quiktaco** · 10-26-2011 11:57 PM

Update on how the day is going...

I haven't fasted in quite a while - probably over a year now (which is partially why I wanted to experiment with this), and it is really showing. It's a few hours before dinner, so I've only gone without breakfast, and lunch at this point. It's significantly harder than it used to be when I was doing this once or twice a month. Just shows that my body has a lot of toxins in its system that need to get out.

A few things, my sense of smell is dramatically increased. I also severely dislike coffee but smelt it about mid day today, and it smelt delicious. I've got a bit of a headache, but that's normal, since the brain isn't getting it's normal carbohydrate diet. The minor headaches usually last about 2 days or so, until the brain switches over to feeding off your stored fat for fuel. In the past, I know that I've felt more aware, and sensations - sight/smell/touch/sound/etc all seemed significantly increased. I'm not noticing that as much this time, but smell is definitely increased.

I'll update again tomorrow morning with how the night went, and whether anything was affected with these experiments. I'll then updated again in the following days to see if today's fast may have affected those as well.

**quiktaco** · 10-27-2011 05:12 PM

Well, last night was unsuccessful. I don't know if it can all be attributed to fasting though. I think it was partially due to my caffeine addiction

I normally have a soda, mid morning (cause like I said, I hate coffee). I didn't have one yesterday, and I think it was a combination of fasting and not having caffeine, that caused a really bad headache. Migraine actually. So I didn't sleep very well because of that. Fasting normally doesn't cause headaches, and never to that degree for me, so I think it was a fluke, and I'll have to try again.

I'm not giving up on this experiment, because I think my hypothesis are still accurate. One test is never enough to rule something out, especially when it's something so influenced by everything, like dreaming. I'll update the next couple days and let you know how the 'post-fast' dreaming went. I'll try another fast in a week or two, and we'll see if this 'fluke' was actually a fluke or not. I bet it was.