Cheese = Increased length, recall and vividness?

**ErikaEH** · 01-01-2012 08:33 PM

I'm a big fan of crackers and cheese, and lately I've been eating them before going to bed. One thing I've noticed is that whenever I do, my dream recall seems to be a lot better, and my dreams are often more long and meaningful. The vividness also seems to be increased quite a bit. On nights where I don't eat cheese before bed, these factors drop.

I've heard that cheese causes nightmares, but I haven't had a nightmare for nearly a year, and I can't recall any that could have been caused by cheese.

Has anyone else noticed this? What are your experiences with cheese?

**Morten** · 01-01-2012 09:33 PM

I did a google search and found this interview: Study: Eating Cheese Can Alter Your Dreams : NPR

We found that about three-quarters of everybody said that they slept well every night, and most of those people could remember the dreams that they had. So that was pretty encouraging. And the science of that, we think, is that there is an essential amino acid in milk called tryptophan. Now tryptophan is known to be something which is helpful in normalizing sleep and reducing stress levels. That seemed to make sense to us. What was really wacky was that the type of cheese that people were eating seemed to give them different types of dreams.
......................
What we found was that those who were eating blue cheese, Blue Stilton, were coming up with some quite vivid dreams that I'm sure the sleep psychologists would have a field day with in terms of interpreting.

**TankTan38** · 01-02-2012 06:03 AM

I'm gonna try this tonight..... gonna spread some peanut butter on my cheese.

**Kitties** · 01-02-2012 06:42 AM

Originally Posted by Morten

What we found was that those who were eating blue cheese, Blue Stilton, were coming up with some quite vivid dreams that I'm sure the sleep psychologists would have a field day with in terms of interpreting.

...Congratulations, science, on finding the only thing that would make me want to eat blue cheese.

**ErikaEH** · 01-02-2012 12:41 PM

Originally Posted by Morten

I did a google search and found this interview: Study: Eating Cheese Can Alter Your Dreams : NPR

Interesting study! Didn't know the type of cheese affected what you dream about. I usually have Cheddar or Red Leicester, but I haven't dreamed about any celebrities. Thanks for the link!

**JohnnyScene** · 01-13-2012 04:26 PM

lol I wonder if this works for the bleu salad dressing

**Zoth** · 01-13-2012 04:46 PM

Seems a bit hard to me that a cheese can influence your dream content that much. I'm not saying cheese isn't a substance that doesn't have influence on the vividness of dreams and such, but if you eat one kind of cheese you have nostalgic dreams and another type a sleep with many dreams recalled? I'd rather put the experience under the influences of placebo: you cheese to understand what kind of influences it has on your dream recall, and people were expecting to recall dreams, so they did. The content was barely what they were dreaming with. And a week doesn't seem a very long period.

It's an interesting study though, I also heard that cheese can cause nightmares, but I always assumed it had to do with something about digestion. Curious to see other replies.