Thread: Does eating a meal around bedtime affect recall?

I don't think your nutrition affects the subconscious in any way.

in my experience: when eaten to much or to heavy near badtime i dont sleep that well. i just pass out the first hours. later i get normal recall and normal sleep.

when i really really over do it because i smoked a lot and have all night munchies it might happen that i wake up after 8h of sleep and i burp and still taste the food and have the feeling that i laid down for 30min... on the ground.... like not at all rested... but i didnt that for some time now plus i cant tell you how my recall was then. but i think when you have a "stone" in your stomach you dont sleep to deep because the body is actively digesting

and lama: recall has less to do with subconscious... you dream every night _when_ reaching REM (therefore alcohol is bad for example) the recall of that dreams is another story

and nutrition has an impact on your dreaming because its all about brainchemistry and that is influenced how you subsist

I am similar to RelaxAndDream, whenever I have a big meal right before bed I don't sleep too well and I often don't have much recall. Your body is probably focusing too much on digesting the food to focus on sleeping and dreaming properly, and who knows it might even delay or reduce REM period, I don't know.

Lying down is not good position to digestion. So as RelaxAndDream said. Your stomach should be empty just for health and comfort. Like ~4h before should be max. Then your body wouldn't be interested in unfinished work.

Sometimes when I have really big and stodgy meal before bed I have freaking nightmares. So that's for sure have something with it. I don't know if with recalling but probably your sleep then is not very qualitative.

However I just read somewhere here that apple juice is good before sleep. So maybe there are some stuff which can improve your skills in dreaming. But I think it'll be only liquids.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche writes in The Tibetan Yogas Of Dream And Sleep that monks go to bed hungry or eat only a little soup for supper. (But that's hard advice to follow after a long day of work when i want to unwind and eat comfort food!)