New research reveals a surprisingly creepy link between nightmares and dairy, especially for those with lactose intolerance.
In a survey of over 1,000 students, scientists found that people who consumed dairy products like cheese before bed were more likely to experience unsettling dreams, possibly due to gut discomfort disrupting sleep. The findings suggest that what’s in your stomach might be influencing what happens in your dreams — and that late-night snacks could be fueling more than just cravings.
Dairy Intake and Disturbed Dreams
Eating too much dairy might be doing more than upsetting your stomach, it could be disturbing your sleep. In a new study, researchers found a strong connection between nightmares and lactose intolerance. The likely culprit? Gastrointestinal discomfort like gas or bloating may be sneaking into your dreams and disrupting restful sleep.
Dr. Tore Nielsen of Université de Montréal, lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Psychology, explained, “Nightmare severity is robustly associated with lactose intolerance and other food allergies. These new findings imply that changing eating habits for people with some food sensitivities could alleviate nightmares. They could also explain why people so often blame dairy for bad dreams!”
A Curious Link Between Food and Dreams
To explore the link between diet and sleep, researchers surveyed 1,082 students at MacEwan University. Participants answered questions about their sleep patterns, dream experiences, overall health, and eating habits.
Roughly a third of students reported frequent nightmares. Women were more likely to experience poor sleep, remember their dreams, and report food intolerances or allergies. Around 40 percent of participants believed certain foods or eating late affected their sleep, and 25 percent said specific foods seemed to make their sleep worse.
The results also showed that students who ate less healthy diets tended to have more unpleasant dreams and were less likely to remember them.
While it’s long been a popular belief that food can influence dreams, scientific evidence has been limited. This new study helps fill that gap. “We are routinely asked whether food affects dreaming — especially by journalists on food-centric holidays,” said Nielsen. “Now we have some answers.”
Dairy, Sweets, and Nightmare Triggers
Most participants who blamed their bad sleep on food thought sweets, spicy foods, or dairy were responsible. Only a comparatively small proportion — 5.5% of respondents — felt that what they ate affected the tone of their dreams, but many of these people said they thought sweets or dairy made their dreams more disturbing or bizarre.
When the authors compared reports of food intolerances to reports of bad dreams and poor sleep, they found that lactose intolerance was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, nightmares, and low sleep quality. It’s possible that eating dairy activates gastrointestinal disturbance, and the resulting discomfort affects people’s dreams and the quality of their rest.
Gut Discomfort Hijacks REM
“Nightmares are worse for lactose-intolerant people who suffer severe gastrointestinal symptoms and whose sleep is disrupted,” said Nielsen. “This makes sense, because we know that other bodily sensations can affect dreaming. Nightmares can be very disruptive, especially if they occur often, because they tend to awaken people from sleep in a dysphoric state. They might also produce sleep avoidance behaviors. Both symptoms can rob you of restful sleep.”
This could also explain why fewer participants reported a link between their food and their dreams than in a previous study by Nielsen and his colleague, Dr. Russell Powell of MacEwan University, conducted eleven years earlier on a similar population. Improved awareness of food intolerances could mean that the students in the present study ate fewer foods likely to activate their intolerances and affect their sleep. If this is the case, then simple dietary interventions could potentially help people improve their sleep and overall health.
Unraveling Diet–Dream Mysteries
However, besides the robust link between lactose intolerance and nightmares, it’s not clear how the relationship between sleep and diet works. It’s possible that people sleep less well because they eat less well, but it’s also possible that people don’t eat well because they don’t sleep well, or that another factor influences both sleep and diet. Further research will be needed to confirm these links and identify the underlying mechanisms.
“We need to study more people of different ages, from different walks of life, and with different dietary habits to determine if our results are truly generalizable to the larger population,” said Nielsen. “Experimental studies are also needed to determine if people can truly detect the effects of specific foods on dreams. We would like to run a study in which we ask people to ingest cheese products versus some control food before sleep to see if this alters their sleep or dreams.”
Reference: “More dreams of the rarebit fiend: food sensitivity and dietary correlates of sleep and dreaming” by Tore Nielsen, Jade Radke, Claudia Picard-Deland and Russell Arnold Powell, 28 April 2025, Frontiers in Psychology.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1544475
Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.
Follow us on Google and Google News.
2 Comments
Actually, it’s quite simple. As per L. Ron Hubbard in “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” 1955, and Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, “German New Medicine” (online), severe trauma tends to create unconscious associations between the incidents and foods in the system at the time. Multiple traumas with the same foods in the system tend to create psychosomatic food allergies which can cause mild inflammation and rapid pulse (Dr. Arthur F. Coca, “The Pulse Test,” 1956), minimally, which can disrupt sleep (e.g., insomnia) and/or cause nightmares. Learning and practicing secular mind power methods since late 1975, I find that the body/mind system wants to be healthy and will relive the trauma experiences, symbolically, in one’s sleep to allow the opportunity to discharge negative emotions arising from such incidents by embracing and dealing with the struggles in the nightmares (DIY psychotherapy). Also, some trauma appears to be too severe to ‘dream away’ and/or with the tonsils and appendix possibly being a trauma/food/allergy feedback loop to the brain (my lay postulation), in the absence of one or both of those structures (both, myself) that natural function may be disabled. I believe my kind of food allergies are very common, and exacerbated by some officially (FDA in the US) approved toxic food additives (added MSG, minimally).
If you’re having bad dreams and nightmares, try this:
get an EMF detector
test the area surrounding your bed, this includes underneath the bed (EMFs can go through walls, floors, ceilings, etc.)
Either move the bed out of any EMFs or move the device creating the EMF away from the bed.
Once I did this, my bad dreams stopped. I maybe get a bad dream/nightmare once a year or less now.
If even a small part of your body is in an EMF, it will cause nightmares. Even if it’s just your foot. Don’t ask me how, it just does. Alarm clock radios are a major culprit. They have a 2-3 ft. radius EMF and usually right near your head.
I discovered this by accident after I bought an EMF detector for unrelated reasons and just out of curiosity I went around the house looking for EMFs. I discovered that the refrigerator in the kitchen was creating an EMF that went through the wall into the bedroom and covered the entire lower end of my bed. I moved my bed just because I didn’t like the idea of sleeping in a high EMF. After a few months I realized my bad dreams and nightmares had stopped completely. I started thinking….when I was a kid I had a lot of bad dreams and nightmares and I always had my alarm clock radio right there by the head of the bed. I couldn’t believe I had never made the connection before. All the times I had been camping with my family…I never had a nightmare while sleeping in a tent. I still never made the connection. Well, now I know.