Dairy disturbed: Is eating cheese before bed giving you nightmares?

The human body is not designed well to digest food while it is supposed to be resting during sleep. Any food close to bed time will affect the quality of sleep, but is dairy even worse? One cheese snack before bed might as well be doing worse for your body then a sleep friendly snack like a kiwi. 

Researchers from the Dream & Nightmare Lab (Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine), Université de Montréal, University of British Columbia, and Grant MacEwan University have published their findings on sleep and food to explore the topic further. Participants in the research have been asked to take a survey and the findings do point to dairy having somewhat of a bad effect on sleep!

Dairy and sleep: How does it affect everything?

As mentioned before, eating right before bed is usually not well for the body in any case. But due to the high fat and protein cheese contains, digestion takes an even harder hit while you sleep. This in turn causes the sleep cycles to be disturbed and stay on the “lighter” side, unlike the cheesy snack’s digestion. On top of the already harsh conditions dairy causes during sleep, the effects get even worse if there is lactose intolerance at play. 

With these in mind, a disturbed night’s sleep can in turn play a nightmare or two for sure. It all depends on how heavy dairy hits your body’s digestion, and how badly you are affected by a low quality sleep cycle.