The Effects of Cheese on Dreams

Author: Siddrah Alhindi
My project is a study that is researching the effects of consuming cheese before bedtime, and specifically how cheese can affect our dreams. I studied it because I always have weird dreams, and I try to connect that back to the last thing I ate before sleeping. Cheese also happens to be one of my go-to midnight snacks, and I want to figure out what is factual and what is mere folklore in terms of the common idea that cheese gives nightmares or weird dreams. It is also good to know if this food should be avoided before sleeping in order to better a sleeping experience. Especially since sleeping is an essential part of our lives, and we should be doing it correctly. I studied my project by conducting an experiment. The experiment consisted of 3 subjects (including myself) who ate cheese before bed and then were questioned about how their dreams/quality of sleep were that night. The subjects ate cheese before sleeping for a duration of a week, alternating through the days. On the days they would skip the cheese, their sleep and dreams would still be surveyed to compare the results of eating/omitting the cheese. The subjects were asked about the unusuality of their dreams, which would be measured in terms of a nightmare or a dream with very odd behavior that goes against the subject’s everyday life. The results of my project were that that cheese did prove to cause unusual or nightmarish dreams when consumed before bedtime. The data collected helps prove this point because there was a higher number of odd dreams on the days where cheese was consumed. On the days where cheese was avoided, there were barely any nightmares or even any dreams at all.
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