Is there a scientific reason why cheese gives you nightmares?

Question

I'm just curious...

Answer 1

Any time you eat heavy or hard-to-digest foods before you go to bed, your sleep will be disrupted.

I find if I eat a large meal close to bedtime, my dreams are in technicolor with a cast of hundreds. I keep expecting credits saying "Director: Cecil B. DeMille"

Answer 2

Not a scientific one, but I remember reading somewhere that it has to do with the Moon. Some (very unscientific) person duped everyone into actually believing that the moon was made of cheese! Imagine!
As the full Moon causes acts of lunacy and mysterious
transformations of otherwise normal humans into creatures such as werewolves and vampires and mosquitos, the Moon was seen as being very bad INDEED.
Therefore, cheese would give you nightmares because it was what the moon was made of, and everyone is terrified of mice coming in the night to nibble out your brains when you are fast asleep having nightmares about vampires and werewolves and mosquitoes etc.
Luckily we now know better and so cheese can be safely eaten before bedtime or else the mice WILL get at it when you sleep.
Enlightened souls who study Eastern philosophy will tell you there is a Rabbit in the Moon, and the Rabbit is pounding rice cakes. No cheese.

Answer 3

I have never heard of cheese giving people nightmares. In fact their is no scientific proof that foods can give people nightmares. It can give a person an upset stomach, indigestion etc and that is possibly why some believe it causes bad dreams.

Answer 4

I think this one is purely isolated rather than a general notion that cheese gives you nightmares.

It may be down to the fact that the cheese that may have been consumed may have been left out too late to develop fungus.

and the unfortunate person to consume that particular cheese must have had a reaction to that particular fungus.

Some fungus when consumed raw can 'trigger' psychedelic and hallucinating delusions and this can be drawn into dreams.

This is purley down to the sporadic increase in bacteria within each cell growth in the fungus and when consumed can temporarily distort the psychological thinking pattern of the consumer when he/she is asleep

hence why cheese or some cheese might give you nightmares.

Answer 5

It's actually just a myth. Although tryptophan, which is an amino acid found in cheese, is believed to reduce stress and induce sleep. So cheese before bedtime can help you get a good night's rest, which would obviously cause you to dream. Whether the dreams are good or bad would depend on how your day has gone.

Answer 6

There's a toxic gas in the holes you find in cheese that affects the brain and turns your would-be dreams into your worst nightmares.

Have you ever noticed, you don't get nightmares after eating brie, camembert or feta (no holes, you see). I think Swiss cheese is the worse as there's more room. English cheddar has degrees of toxins (mild, medium and mature) increasing in strength respectively. ;o)

Answer 7

I'm not convinced that is does but the theory goes that it's because some cheeses have high levels of tyramine, which is a precursor for the excitatory amino acids noradrenaline and adrenaline (sometimes called epinepherine), the hormone of fight, flight and fright.

People taking some antidepressent drugs are told to avoid foods containing tyramine as it can cause side effects.

Answer 8

If cheese gave nightmares, I'd wake up in a cold sweat every night.

mmmmm cheese

Answer 9

It doesn't.
If it does, it's purely psychological. You only notice the nightmare because you eat the cheese and have a nightmare. If you had a nightmare without eating cheese you wouldn't regard it.

Answer 10

properly from what ive examine those days if cheese changed into going to provoke your sleep you should get solid targets no longer undesirable. The protein Casein which makes up about eighty% of the proteins in cow milk, round 60% of human milk, extremely can create a morphine like impression, so eating cheese will extremely make you sense solid.

Answer 11

I'm guessing that the cheese give you mild indigestion, not bad enough to wake you up, but enough discomfort to give you a bad dream. Ask your doctor to check if you have a mild case of lactose intolerance. A doctor can prescribe something that will help with that.