Thread: what to eat before bed to trigger lucid dreams ?

I've never heard of any proven lucidity foods, but I think that with a little imagination, any food could be a lucidity food!

Next time you eat, try pretending that your food is magical and filled with powerful lucid dreaming energy. Feel and visualize the energy spreading all throughout your body as you eat. I think that doing that while eating could be both fun and helpful for inducing lucid dreams.

Vitamin B6 is thought to enhance the vividness of dreams, but I've only heard of this being effective in the larger doses found in some supplements. (Make sure you do some research first if you choose to take any supplements.)

People sometimes talk about foods rich in tryptophan being "dream foods".
I've tried some of these in the past without success, and after some further research, I don't believe tryptophan from food could be an effective lucid dreaming aid:

Although purified tryptophan increases brain serotonin, foods containing tryptophan do not. This is because tryptophan is transported into the brain by a transport system that is active toward all the large neutral amino acids and tryptophan is the least abundant amino acid in protein. There is competition between the various amino acids for the transport system, so after the ingestion of a meal containing protein, the rise in the plasma level of the other large neutral amino acids will prevent the rise in plasma tryptophan from increasing brain tryptophan. The idea, common in popular culture, that a high-protein food such as turkey will raise brain tryptophan and serotonin is, unfortunately, false. Another popular myth that is widespread on the Internet is that bananas improve mood because of their serotonin content. Although it is true that bananas contain serotonin, it does not cross the blood–brain barrier. Source.

So AnotherDreamer's post above is probably the best dream food you'll get - intention and visualisation are effective induction tools, so I'd stick with them!

The only way I got a couple of lucids by eating (a lot) before going to bed was because of the indigestion and the nightmares it produced ... Now, reading what ~Dreamer~ said about the supplements and thinking about it, perhaps it had something to do when I was taking some supplements to strengthen my immune system some years ago although I wouldn't be so sure because of those days my intention to achieve lucids was pretty high compared to my present days that I barely have space/time to spend on the subject.