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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogabam Here. If you've ever had

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Speaker 1: a meat lover's stuffed pressed pizza before bed and then

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Speaker 1: spent your dreams being chased around by a saber toothed,

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Speaker 1: willed beast wearing a top hat, you might have blamed

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Speaker 1: this bizarre and unsettling experience on your evening snack. This

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Speaker 1: tendency is so prevalent, yet any hard data is so

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Speaker 1: lacking that a study published in the journal Frontiers in

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Speaker 1: Psychology endeavored to crack this supposed a relationship between diet

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Speaker 1: and dreams. For the article that this episode is based

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Speaker 1: on how stuff works. That spoke by email with study

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Speaker 1: co author Dr Torrey Nielsen, psychiatry professor and director of

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Speaker 1: the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Center for Advanced

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Speaker 1: Research in Sleep Medicine at the University of Montreal. He said,

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Speaker 1: there's extremely little information available and all so some important

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Speaker 1: misinformation that keeps getting recycled. This research was motivated in

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Speaker 1: large part by the media itself. Questions about food and

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Speaker 1: dreams are among the most frequent questions we are asked.

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Speaker 1: These questions come up particularly around food center holidays, which

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Speaker 1: in our culture most holidays are the most commonly blamed

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Speaker 1: nightmare inducing culprits are cheese, spicy foods, and eating too

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Speaker 1: much right before bedtime? But is there any truth to

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Speaker 1: this folklore? Nielsen and his team surveyed nearly four hundred

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Speaker 1: participants on a range of topics such as sleep and

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Speaker 1: diet quality, and asked them to report whether they thought

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Speaker 1: food affected their dreams or not. Almost eighteen percent of

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Speaker 1: the participants indicated that they thought eating certain foods or

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Speaker 1: eating right before bed made a difference in the development

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Speaker 1: of disturbing dreams, with dairy products like milk, cheese, yogurt,

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Speaker 1: and ice cream, as well as pizza being the most

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Speaker 1: commonly listed by thirty of participants. Also blamed for disturbing dreams,

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Speaker 1: but to a lesser extent than dairy, were foods of

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Speaker 1: the spicy, starchy, or meat based varieties. Overall, sweets and

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Speaker 1: chocolates were the second most frequently mentioned category for dream

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Speaker 1: inducing foods after dairy, but they were considered most likely

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Speaker 1: to foster bizarre dreams not necessarily unpleasant but still strange,

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Speaker 1: like being able to fly, as opposed to more disturbing dreams.

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Speaker 1: Like being chased by a werewolf. The second part of

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Speaker 1: the study delved deeper into the subjects themselves. Nielsen explained,

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Speaker 1: when we broke down our sample into subjects who reported

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Speaker 1: disturbing dreams and those who reported vivid but not disturbing dreams,

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Speaker 1: we found that there were two very different profiles. Disturbed

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Speaker 1: dreamers at higher pathological indicators like poorer sleep, binge eating,

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Speaker 1: or emotional eating, whereas the vivid dreamers had high your

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Speaker 1: wellness indicators like better sleep, healthier diet, and longer times

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Speaker 1: between eating, what we consider a proxy measure of fasting.

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Speaker 1: The fasting note struck a chord with the scientists because

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Speaker 1: various cultures have long documented the effect of the practice

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Speaker 1: on dreams. Nielsen said the finding for fasting in particular

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Speaker 1: was of interest because of very old literature documenting how

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Speaker 1: different peoples have used fasting to induce the recall of

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Speaker 1: spiritual and life guiding dreams called vivid dreams. In our study,

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Speaker 1: although it might be a stretch to recommend fasting if

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Speaker 1: you're looking for some type of nocturnal intervention, it's certainly

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Speaker 1: preferable to dream vividly in place of a nightmare starring

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Speaker 1: a deranged as murderer. There are any number of theories

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Speaker 1: on why certain foods affect our dreams, and certainly people

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Speaker 1: with certain health considerations like gastrosophageal reflux disease, have different

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Speaker 1: sensitivities than others. How stuff works also spoke by email

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Speaker 1: with Amy corn Reavis of Emery Sleep Solutions in Orlando, Florida.

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Speaker 1: She explained foods that affect gastrosophical reflex disease tend to

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Speaker 1: be either spicy or fatty foods. The closer you eat

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Speaker 1: them to bedtime, the more likely they are to affect you.

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Speaker 1: This is because they are heavier and produce more acids

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Speaker 1: to digest. This causes people with weak muscles at the

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Speaker 1: top of their stomach to have acid move into their esophagus.

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Speaker 1: This effort may impact the time and length of valuable

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Speaker 1: R e M sleep, thereby affecting the type and duration

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Speaker 1: of dreams. She added that spikes or drops in blood

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Speaker 1: glucose levels, especially from desserts and other foods high and

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Speaker 1: simple sugars, may also affect R e M sleep, but

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Speaker 1: that there isn't solid research yet to back all of

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Speaker 1: this up. It seems that indeed the study of these

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Speaker 1: phenomena is just beginning. Nielsen said, we need to start

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Speaker 1: experimental studies that systematically vary what people eat and when,

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Speaker 1: and whether this induces any regular change in their dream content.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Pizza Nightmares. Can

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Speaker 1: your diet Determine Your Dreams? On how stuff works dot Com?

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Speaker 1: Written by Leo Hoyt. Brain Stuff is production by Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and

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Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts for my

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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows