Thread: Does lucid eating result in physiological changes?

Sounds like a great science fair project title... but I'm very curious. I once read on Dr. Eades' nutrition blog that even though artificial sweeteners are noncaloric and don't actually contain any sugar, the body still to a certain extent treats them the same way: it tastes sweet, it anticipates sugar, and pumps up insulin production to compensate for what it anticipates is coming. Sugar never does come, though, and the increased insulin leads to hypoglycemia in the short term and contributes to insulin resistance in the long. I don't remember if this was put out as fact backed by a study or just as speculative theory, though.

So this makes me wonder: we all talk about how great it is to head into our dreams and eat whatever we want there because it won't do anything bad to our health, but maybe this isn't actually true. If we eat loads of calories in our dreams, well... obviously we won't get obese from those, they're imaginary, but isn't taste just taste, whether in real life or in a dream state, and couldn't we expect the body to react to taste in predictable ways regardless of where the stimulus is coming from? Could it be that when we eat a dream donut, our bodies go through some of the motions of digesting a donut all the same? And some of those motions are bad for you (insulin release, etc) regardless of whether or not they're put to any use (digesting the donut vs. nothing).

Does anybody have any anecdotes or obscure lucid research to back up this idea? I'd love to see LaBerge or somone similar try this by taking blood glucose levels from lucid dreamers before and after eating something really sinful.

Wow. I've never thought of this. Yeah, I've definetely heard about this phenomenon. I've heard that even thinking about food can get the enzymes going because, well, we tend to think about food just before eating it! I expect that in a dream, if we eat food, our stomach will secrete those enzymes...

But how does circadian rhythm fit into all this? Would our digestive system shut down this response, as it 'knows' that humans don't really eat at night?

I don't know the answer. But I agree--there should be a study!

Ha, that's one of the better 'reality check' signatures I've seen. xD

You'd think it would make sense for us to shut down the pathways between our brains and our stomaches while asleep, because I'm certain in the rough-and-tumble environment where we evolved food was constantly on our mind. For that reason I don't suspect that normal dreams would do anything, they're just too typical for the body to risk screwing up its biochemistry every time we have donut dreams. But lucid dreaming seems to recover a lot of the faculties that we otherwise "put under" while sleeping, so it does seem feasible that if we have a safety lock against reacting to dream food that it might be unsprung when we go lucid. Plus, with lucid eating you're actually tasting the food whereas in (most peoples') normal dreams eating is a visual stimulus but rarely a gustatory one.

I'm only guessing with the sig since I've never been lucid to know what shifting text "looks" like, if anything, but I figured a real reality check alert is sure as hell not going to look so simple in a dream.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are physiological changes, because as you mention even artifical sweeteners cause insulin release. On the CRON site a while back there were a lot of posts flying around about some research that indicated that even smelling food can cause reactions that make you gain weight.

Great. I hadn't even thought about this. That had become my favorite lucid activity, too.

Does that mean I can't even sniff coffee grounds anymore without gaining weight? Coffee is negligibly caloric, so I should hope I could still have that one last dirty little pleasure left to me.

Man, sorry to ruin your nighttime feasts. IIRC LaBerge (or someone) reported that people eating forbidden foods in their dreams really did lose the cravings for them in real life, which just gives more credence to the idea that there's a real physiological process going on there - I don't know about you, but I can visualize about carrot cake all day and it'll just make me hungrier for it, so the fact that dreaming the case makes the cravings go away suggests it's doing something above and beyond what the imagination can... which is good for your tastebuds, not so good for your everything else.

Dammit! That really sucks. It's gotta be better for you than a real (whole) carrot cake or cheese cake (or two, if they're small); so of those two alternatives, I guess I'll keep trying to dream about it.

Thanks for ruining my last pleasure in life.