The science behind sleep struggles
Can what you eat affect the way you sleep or the types of dreams you have? A recent study asked just that.
In the study, published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, 40.2% of participants reported certain eating habits affected their sleep.
The study used data from online surveys taken by 1,082 college-aged participants who submitted their experiences from January to April 2023. The survey asked about more than a dozen food groups, including dairy, desserts and sweets, fruit and meat.
Around 25% of participants said at least one of the food groups worsened their sleep and about 20% said at least one made their sleep better. Desserts and sweets, spicy food, and dairy, including milk, yogurt and cheese, were mainly blamed for worse sleep, while fruit, herbal tea and vegetables were among the top foods that reportedly made participants sleep better.
Asked about dreams, 5.5% of participants reported that food affected their dreams, with nightmares being attributed mostly to desserts and sweets at 31% and dairy at 22%.
"While we still lack substantive evidence that these participant observations for food and dreaming are, in fact, accurate, there is some suggestive evidence for their accuracy," the authors noted, pointing to previous research on the effect different foods have on sleep.
The authors also concluded that the results suggest that associations between dairy consumption and disturbing dreams may be due to gastrointestinal distress caused by lactose intolerance.
"This analysis supports the notion that specific food-induced symptoms such as bloating, cramping or excess gas arising during sleep have a negative impact on dreaming," they wrote.
The authors also noted some potential biases in the research, namely that participants were university students enrolled in psychology courses, meaning they may have had prior exposure to topics that "influenced how they interpreted or reported the perceived effects of food on sleep and dreaming."
Sara Moniuszko is a health and lifestyle reporter at CBSNews.com. Previously, she wrote for USA Today, where she was selected to help launch the newspaper's wellness vertical. She now covers breaking and trending news for CBS News' HealthWatch.
