Thread: Does what you eat before bed each night affect dream recall?

OK, I'm being a little selfish here, but my son needs something for his science fair experiment in the spring and I thought this would be a great place to get TONS of data.

This is just a crude outline now and I will add more info later. Right now I'm looking for volunteers.

Problem: Does they type of snack I eat before bed influence the number of dreams I can remember?

Hypothesis: type of snack each night before bed will cause me to remember more dreams each night than any other type of snack.

Variables: There are so many variables, all I can hope to accomplish is to monitor them and determine if one of them is a factor as well. Variables include: Age, sex, race, nationality, mood, fatigue level.

Control: Weeks 7 and 15 have no snack. Weeks 8 and 16 have a different snack each night. The type of snack that was expected to cause the best dream recall was witheld from the lab rats.

Procedure:
1) Identify snacks in each of the following catagories:
Salty
Sweet
Sour
Bitter
Spicy
Bland

2) This experiment will run for 16 weeks. Perform steps 3 and 4 using the snack selections for the right week. Be sure to eat the same snack all week. Example: Chips each night for salty, banana's each night for bland.
Week 1 - Salty snack every night
Week 2 - Sweet snack every night
Week 3 - Sour snack every night
Week 4 - Bitter snack every night
Week 5 - Spicy snack every night
Week 6 - Bland snack every night
Week 7 - No snack before bed this week
Week 8 - Salty on Monday, Sweet on Tuesday, Sour on Wednesday, Bitter on Thursday, Spicy on Friday, Bland on Saturday, no snack on Sunday
Week 9 - Salty snack every night
Week 10 - Sweet snack every night
Week 11 - Sour snack every night
Week 12 - Bitter snack every night
Week 13 - Spicy snack every night
Week 14 - Bland snack every night
Week 15 - No snack before bed this week
Week 16 - Salty on Monday, Sweet on Tuesday, Sour on Wednesday, Bitter on Thursday, Spicy on Friday, Bland on Saturday, No snack on Sunday

3) Before bed, eat the selected food and log the following information in your journal:
Food selected, mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc), physically rested or tired.

4) In the morning, record the number of dreams you remember

Like I said I will post more details soon. We will also need to know your age, race nationality, and sex

If you are interested in helping my son win in the biological catagory (and bring attention to dreamviews), post in this topic.

He is planning on putting a URL to this experiment on his display board. Who knows, I may even have my Dreamviews business cards ready by then and sitting next to the board.

( If we do this right, maybe some of you can use this as your experiment as well? )

What do you think? I would like to begin this on Monday October 18th so that there is time for two full runs through the food types.

I can defintely take part in this experiment as a "lab rat" . I stuff my face daily every night (3 packets of crisps & a huge jumbo sized cream pie before bed, usually), then go to sleep right after. It won't be too hard for me to do the stuff above at all. [Your son SHALL win the biological category! I have guns!]

It would also defintely be intresting to see the results, and perhaps stick them in as a tutorial or something (you know, "Food Before Bedtime" or something).

*cough**ahem*who's idea WAS this, oh, seeker the great*cough*

:-D

JK seeker but... check your private messages...

[quote]Eating a DELETEDo_O

K, erm, I'll try this.

Yeah wasup, I guess it was. It was just bouncing around in the back of my mind and made it to the front.

Hope you will consider participating as well.

We are now up to three people. I'de like to get 10-20 if possible

sign me up

I was gonna do the almost same science fair experiment on this subject, but my dad said it's too... well... I don't know the word

What an useful post.

So um, when do we got more details about this? I want release forms, money, etc.

EDIT: Ah, yes, I see the date now. We need some more people to help, I'll tell some people about it later. LDGuy will probably die with enthuiasm when I direct him here.

I'll do it.

Thanks everyone! I will put up a sample form. I've not decided yet on how to log data, but will probably have everyone make an initial post in this topic and then edit it with nightly results.

Everyone tell your friends! The more data points we get, the better science we can do.

Originally posted by Seeker
We will also need to know your age, race nationality, and sex

Why is that important?

Sigmund Freud did similar experiments. Try looking his work up for references.. I'll try and see if I can find it for you in the mean time.

I can tell you the answer is yes, however, how each food and vitamins effects your dreams is an interesting question. Are dreams somatically induced?

Originally posted by Identity X+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Identity X)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-Seeker

We will also need to know your age, race nationality, and sex

Why is that important?[/b]

Not important, but it WILL look impressive on the display if he can say someting like: "People from the following countries and races participated in the experiment."

i dont know whether i would be of any use. i dont usually try really hard to remember my dreams (im going to start trying now - to see if i can have more lucid dreams.. they are cool ), but i may be able to help out. also, 16 weeks is a long time to do this over - i may not be able to keep it up everyday, but i can try. anyway, i would be happy to try and help, let me know if you would like me to

I'll try.

Week 15 - No snack before bed this week

I don't think I can swing it. sorry.

Originally posted by Howetzer
Week 15 - No snack before bed this week

I don't think I can swing it. sorry.

Not even for science? =P

Hey Seeker!

I'll try this. I'll really try not to get off, but if I miss a day or two or three just thought I'd let you know.

Also, what kind of information in particular are you looking for. I was just thinking that on top of noting what food you ate, how about recording number of hours slept (and possibly whether they were normal sleeping hours or not), any vitamins or medications taken before bed, quantity of snack, quality/vividity of dream, whether person became lucid. Stuff like that. It's your project, but that's just an idea.

Experiment Week 1 starts on Monday night.
Thanks everyone that volunteered. It is still not too late if you there is anyone else out there that would like to participate.

Please hang on to your sheet and PM it to me at the end of the week, or each day if it is more convienient. I will try to send PMs as reminders to everyone.

Thanks again!


Here is the sheet for this week:

WEEK1: Eat something salty before bed each night.
Name:
Age:
Sex:
Nationality:
Race:

******** Monday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Tuesday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Wednesday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Thursday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Friday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Saturday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Sunday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

[/b]

So you can eat a different ( salty ) snack each day? Like one day have saltines, and the other have pretzels? Neat-o.

O_o
i'm not gonna do that experiment i might one time but now erm no

Originally posted by Haz2004
O_o
i'm not gonna do that experiment i might one time but now erm no

Well then why did you even post?

WEEK1: Eat something salty before bed each night.
Name: Mark
Age: 12
Sex: Male
Nationality: Scottish
Race: erm. Scottish. (tis as much as you will get)

******** Monday ********
Food eaten: Forgot tonight, sorry I didn't eat anything tonight.
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc): indifferent
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted): tired
Next morning, number of dreams remembered: 0

******** Tuesday ********
Food eaten: Teherm. Doing well, I am. Ate...nothing. Jeez. I'll get peanuts.
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc): happy
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted): tired
Next morning, number of dreams remembered: 2

******** Wednesday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Thursday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Friday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Saturday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

******** Sunday ********
Food eaten:
Mood(happy, sad, worried, excited, etc):
Physical tiredness( rested, tired, exhausted):
Next morning, number of dreams remembered:

Most logical foods/snacks that contain caffeine or msg could influence your dream awareness.
Also the ammount of food is prob of interest, like how much!
when you sleep your metabolism goes down..so eating a little snack
like a little piece of chocolate prob wont do much but eating a lot of something might pass the 8 hour
sleep schedule so it might for real influense your longer rem periods in your sleep.
Part of the far east yogi do that in there training, eating really much so they dream and remember
there dreams more. The logic is that u sleep then less deep also.
So i think much is better then less but also what you eat, like carbohydrates.
Fats take away a lot of oxygen to get burned so i dont know if fat food would be so good
for getting lucid, brain needs oxygen to.

I guess, lots of carbohydrates with a touch of caffeine and msg.
when the carbohydrates are broken of your bloodsugar level goes up
and serotonin prob levels a bit up with is good for getting lucid and
for sure will influence your dreams by raising endorphine levels to.
Also prob some spices, herbs mixed through those carbohydrates could have for real
some effect on your dreams. Stimulating i mean.

Mark, you PM it to him at the end of each week. Or each day. It would get messy in here otherwise.

Originally posted by pinkcheese+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(pinkcheese)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-Haz2004

O_o
i'm not gonna do that experiment i might one time but now erm no

Well then why did you even post?[/b]

Oh; that's easy. This: