Eating dairy products before sleeping may not be a good idea, according to a study published on Frontiers in Psychologyespecially (and this is a rather obvious detail) if you are lactose intolerant. But who is should not avoid dairy products? Shouldin fact, but often either it is not aware of intolerance or does not know that the food that consumes contains dairy products.
In these cases thegastrointestinal weighing (generally swelling or stomach pain) it could disturb sleep causing nocturnal nightmares: the symptoms of intolerance are more serious, the more intense nightmares.
Food and sleep. The study was conducted on over 1,000 university students, to whom they were asked to report how well they slept, what their food habits were and what a connection they thought there was between the two. About a third of the participants – in particular women – reported that they had nightmares regularly: if 40% said they were convinced that what was consumed for dinner had the power to improve or worsen the quality of sleep, only 5.5% thought that food could also affect the types of dreams.
By comparing the food intolerances of the participants and reports on the quality of sleep and the nightmares, the scholars noted that Lactose intolerance was associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, nightmares and bad sleep quality.
Correlation, not certain causality. Despite the discovery of this strong link between lactose intolerance and nightmares, it is not yet completely clear how the relationship between diet and sleep works and it is therefore impossible Establish a clear cause-effect link.
It is possible that a person sleeps worse because he eats badly, or that you eat worse because he sleeps badly, or that another factor still affects the diet and sleep. “We have to study more people, of different ages, with different experiences of life and eating habits in order to generalize what has been discovered in our study”, concludes Tore Nielsen, coordinator of the research.
