Dreams

March 27, 2019

There is an old tale that says eating cheese before going to bed makes for bad dreams. There seems no real foundation to this except, perhaps, the reference in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Scrooge blamed a “crumb of cheese” for his night time visitations. Seems he may have been wrong.

According to the British Cheese Board and their 2005, two hundred volunteer, week long experiment that is. There seems no correlation at all. In fact, results indicate some cheeses, depending on type, seem to make for significant and interesting but totally pleasant slumber! For example…

 

  • Blue cheese (in this case Stilton) seemed to herald pleasant but ‘odd and vivid’ dreams for 75% of the men and 85% of the women
  • Red Leicester apparently set the bedtime stage for nostalgic childhood recall in 60% of the overall participants
  • Cheddar conjured up visions of ‘celebrities and glamour’ for two thirds of the volunteers.
  • Cheshire proved to be ‘neutral’, and half of the group had nothing but a deep and dreamless slumber.

 

This study was informal and may not show up in the archives of medicine any time soon, but I say… what a great experiment to try at home!