Spicy, Heavy Foods May Trigger Nightmares

We've all heard the old saw about eating spicy or heavy foods too close to bedtime can lead to crazy dreams or nightmares.  A whole comic strip, Little Nemo, was even based on this concept.  It turns out there are some sleep specialists that believe what our parents warned us about may actually be true.

In an interview with NBC News, Dr. Charles Bae, MD from the Cleveland Clinic's Sleep Disorders Center, explained that eating spicy foods like vindaloo or very rich foods like fried chicken and biscuits take a lot of energy for the body to digest.  While metabolism works on digesting all of this food, the body heats up and keeps the brain active, which may trigger more dreams.

Since people tend to remember nightmares better than good dreams or dreams about commonplace things, people tend to remember the nightmares more than any other kind of dream.  The point is, eating spicy, heavy or fatty foods less than 3 hours before going to sleep can cause you to dream more often.

NBC News also reported about a Canadian dream study.  Out of 389 volunteers, 8.5% said the cause of their bad dreams was die to what types of food they'd eaten.  Unfortunately, there wasn't any more details about this Candian study given and I can't find any information about it.

I now fancy a curry and a nap.

Image of curries from Wikimedia Commons.