So…. we’ve discussed foods that can help you sleep peacefully.
What about the ones that do the opposite?
Are there foods that can give you nightmares?
Before Cosby played sausage sandwich with unwilling womenfolk, he played someone feeding actual sausage sandwiches to his own unwilling gut. (Or maybe it was at the same time. Who knows. Moving on.) Anyone remember that episode? With Dr. Huxtable and the muppet nightmare? ‘cause of the bedtime hoagie he’d eaten? Despite his wife’s warnings, the doc noshed the greasy meat squeezed between bread right before bed. And, as a result, he had nightmares starring antagonistic Henson creatures.
But was it the sandwich specifically that doomed the doc’s dreamtime?
Experts suggest it’s not necessarily specific foods that give us bad dreams – so much as when we’re eating them and how well our gastro tracts get along with them. While pre dreamtime dietary choices can have a massive impact on the nature of our subconscious eyelid movies, it’s generally just eating too late at all that’ll cause our puppy dog tails and candy cloud dreams to turn Krueger on us. Why? In order to go through all of the parts of the sleep cycle, our brain needs its normal blood supply. That, then, may become difficult if your life fuel’s suddenly being summoned south for sustenance sorting. (Same reason we get cognitive fog and the early afternoon slump right after lunch.) Also, the tendency for reflux to happen is higher if you opt to go horizontal directly following chomp o’ clock. (Re*flux: noun; that one thing that feels like a fatal heart attack, isn’t, but you almost wish was because then at least you’d know the pain is ending soon.) The thing about reflux is that even if you do fall asleep before it hits, once your viscera starts trying to push everything back out the entry, it stresses out your body. Sometimes it might make you wake up in a breathless sweat, clutching your chest. Sometimes it might just translate to a series of Lynch-meets-Stephen-King dreams. (TBH, neither sounds worth downing a massive falafel during flannel jammies time.)
In sum, eating any kind of food heavily and too late in the evening will probably cause a ship wake of choppy water in what could’ve been a peaceful delta wave float sesh. However, there is a concession to your P.M. concession stand obsession. Because specific foods can indeed potentially exacerbate the sitch. For instance, if your late night snack has a tendency to disagree with you anyway (but you’re both a glutton and a glutton for punishment so you eat it on the regular anyway), then the body chaos becomes two-fold. Same applies if it’s a too-sugary snack (see the next article on why). Not only is your blood supply busy processing the bowel bound bolus mound you threw down there before hitting the pillow, but your stress hormones are also increasing as your innards rebel against the familiar food foe. And that unsavory series of ingredients can cook up a Wes Craven level brain feature. Or just wake you up and propel you into insomnia – which’ll make your day tomorrow a nightmare as well.
“Don’t say that it looks like his face. Don’t say that it looks like his face. Don’t-…”
So, how do you avoid a haywire mind when you hit the hay?
I’d say a good rule of thumb might be to settle for a thumb (or palm) sized snack that’s benign before bed.
Or else risk some nightmares of your own. Probably starring Mr. Cosby. And his talking roofie sammich.