Eating Before Sleeping

[pj]

(This may go better under Dreaming and Health.) This is an interesting article about the effects of eating before sleeping. One of the observations is how different types of cheese affect dreams differently! I found it referenced by another article that states a heavy meal before bed tends to deprive you of stage three and four sleep - meaning that it might actually be easier to get into REM! Here's the referenced article: http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=230695 Here's bit of the first article that pointed me there. (Emphasis is mine): 5. Is there any effect of eating before you go to bed? MSN Health studied what happens if you eat right before bedtime. The couple who ate a few hours before they went to bed slept fine, whereas the couple who ate before they went to sleep reported “tossing and turning all night.” The poor sleep was attributed to your body digesting food when it should be winding down in preparation for sleeping, which results in reflux. Conversely, going to bed on an empty stomach will also result in disruptive sleep (specifically, missing the “deep sleep” stage that allows your body to rest and repair). The best thing to do is to have a light snack before going to bed, which will provide fuel for your body as it rests for the night.

[Moonbeam]

That's interesting. I have experimented on myself, being generally obssessed with both food and dreams. I've eaten too much (pizza binge for example) and had LD's, but then other times I just had a bad night's sleep. My recent experiments with deprivation (limiting myself to a single boring food) and going to bed hungry work sometimes too. The latter is a little harder for me to maintain. I don't think eating too much is good for me (anyone) anyway, so I should stick to other method. The article says why eating too much is bad, but it doesn't really say physiologically why eating too little is. I do dream of food when I am hungry, so I'm hoping to use that as a DS more often. I don't know if I believe that cheese experiment! Kind of specific for the kind of cheese!