 What is the effect of diet and the foods you eat on your dreams and in particular your lucid dreams? So I teach lucid dreaming and I've been teaching lucid dreaming for a long time Several years actually and I one of the questions I often get and the question I actually got today From somebody who would like to remain anonymous is what does diet have to do with dreams? Is there a certain type of food or certain diets that you can eat? Which will give you more lucid dreams and the answer is yes There are several types of foods that you can eat which have a really big influence on not only the types of dreams You have and how often you lucid dream but how you feel and how like well rested you will be the next day as well So as you probably guessed the actual foods you eat do influence your dream They influence the way you sleep and the way you feel afterwards because your body is digesting things all the time So when you're sleeping your digestive system is active the foods you eat will determine How active your digestive system will be the foods are harder to eat will obviously take longer to digest They will require more caloric energy to digest as well And also they will make you sleep worse now It's not only just about what foods you eat But it's actually about when you eat the food as well if you eat foods like the last thing right before you go to bed in The evening then you're gonna have a very hard time Okay, because when we eat foods really late in the evening We don't digest them fully when we lay down and there is a little hack I'm gonna get on to in a second about how you can do it better But for the most part okay if you eat a massive meal and then go to bed an hour later You're not gonna digest it fast enough So your body will be digesting that meal while you're trying to sleep and the process won't work properly So you'll end up sleeping really badly It might not be obvious to you, but if you actually track your sleep like I do I mean I track my sleep every day with an Apple watch So I can tell what things influence my sleep quality and diet is a really big one So if I have a really big meal before I go to bed, especially if it's like a junk food meal Okay, and I'll get on to some warnings later I won't digest it properly and I'll sleep really bad. The sleep quality will be really bad I'll get not enough deep sleep. I won't have enough of a heart rate dip Okay, so my sleep quality will just be really a lot worse if I eat a meal an hour before bed Now there is one quick hack you can do with that and that is to it's called inclined bed therapy This is something I've experimented with for I guess about a year now But it's really simple. All I do is I stack some books underneath the headboard of my bed Sort of underneath the bed to prop the bed up so it's on a slight angle So instead of being flat like this, it'll be maybe tilted just a little bit too small for you to notice But enough that your digestive system can still push things using gravity through your body when you're sleeping and it works pretty well Okay, and my sleep quality has increased or improved as a result of that, but it's quite a small hack It's maybe it will increase your sleep quality 10% maybe 15% still worth doing right if you have a few old books lying around It's a very very easy thing to do, but there's loads of things that will influence your sleep So that's one of them. Okay, the next one is to consider the type of diet you eat And now before you go and watch another video and get angry here or something I'm gonna introduce you to the idea of a plant-based diet. Now diet is very polarizing I'm not gonna convince you why you should be vegan why you should be plant-based because that's you can watch other videos Well in relation to dreaming sleep and lucid dreaming if you eat a diet any diet Okay, plant-based in my opinion is the ideal diet But if you eat any diet that is really high in nutrients vitamins antioxidants and anti-inflammatories You're gonna have a very good time. Okay, you're gonna resist and reverse most diseases. You're gonna sleep well Your muscles are gonna be recovering faster. You're gonna feel better now That is the ideal regardless of how you do that. Okay, those four things in my experience I found that the easiest way to do that tends to be eating more plant foods because if you have like a Buddha bowl for example, which is like a collection of different highly nutrient dense foods most of which are vegan Typically a Buddha bowl is vegan if you eat that that has such high levels of nutrients and vitamins that it's gonna be a lot easier To get all of those nutrients and vitamins on a vegan diet. That's my opinion That's why I have been vegan for a long time that being said it There are some other things to consider as well like vitamin B6 Vitamin B6 is incredibly important for your sleep your memory and how vivid your dreams will be how much of them You will remember so there is a number of ways to get vitamin B6 However, it does more than just help your memory it regulates and helps your body to produce sleep hormones like serotonin and melatonin Through by having enough vitamin B6 You're able to produce more of these sleep hormones at the right times and the right quantities Which will ultimately let you sleep much better and vitamin B6 as I'm sure you're aware is highly concentrated in things like tofu sweet potato normal potato Avocados and bananas which on the vegan diet. I mean that's typically would form a large part of a vegan diet I mean just last night. I had avocado and tofu sushi So straight away I had two really high quality sources of vitamin B6 just in one meal and then the morning before You know, I had a smoothie with antioxidants vitamins berries all of that stuff What I'm trying to say is it's very easy to eat a healthy diet if you're eating plant-based foods Now don't misinterpret that for vegan because vegan can be very unhealthy You can have a very unhealthy vegan diet if you eat things like processed soy burgers and chips and chocolates all the time Yeah, they might be vegan, but they're not gonna be healthy So you need to consider the bulk of your calories should come from plant foods or grains Next we have omega 3 and 6 9 omega 3 6 9 is a powerful anti-inflammatory But more importantly it helps you strengthen and build the lipid layer in your brain cells This is very important for all kinds of neurochemistry all kinds of cognitive effects and benefits But specifically for dreams it helps with that as well There are other sleep vitamins or sleep nutrients known as zinc iron and calcium these are incredibly important And most people are deficient, especially men in zinc and magnesium However, when you are vegan there are many sources of those things especially soy milk and almond milk It's usually fortified with those vitamins and as a result we end up getting more than we need So this goes for vitamin B12 as well often when you go vegan you end up having a lot of different foods You have a variety of foods. You might take supplements, multivitamins, soy milk Okay, all of this stuff and in many cases they are fortified with things like zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin B6 So you end up getting more than you need anyway, which is a really good benefit But it's another way of improving your sleep And then finally when you switch diet if you're watching this and you're thinking okay Well, I'll give this vegan thing a go just while I'm in lockdown just to see how my dreams go See if I can lose a dream more often And if you just want to do this as an experiment what you'll notice as well Is that your dreams will end up being more vivid just as a result of you switching your diet When we change things whether it's you know our scenery the environment we're in the job We're doing the friends we're talking to or the diet We're having we end up having more vivid dreams and there's a variety of reasons for that Maybe it's day residue, you know It could just be that we by trying something new we stimulate our subconscious mind a bit more Maybe we're having like cravings for the foods that we used to eat or if you're used to eating a certain type of food Then you go vegan you might end up having cravings for the food that you wanted to eat But you're not eating now all kinds of things Okay, now I'm not trying to convince you to go vegan because that's I can't do that You need to research the stuff for yourself and come to conclusions on your own However, there's a lot of information out there now a lot of research So if you are interested in the perfect diet or an ideal optimum diet for sleeping energy Recovery and lucid dreaming dreaming and that kind of thing then luckily There is a lot of research out there now on the effect the long-term effects of diet and vegan plant-based diets So you can go check that out and just you know see what you think about that But in terms of dreaming and sleeping I would recommend you to try this out just for 30 days See how you get on for 30 days and see how you feel I certainly remember my dreams became a lot more vivid and not only that I used to have trouble remembering my dreams And I found that when I went vegan I tended to remember more dreams in more detail now That could be to do with all of the effects of the nutrients and vitamins I explained just now or it could also be because I also at the same time started supplementing more I took new tropics biohacking and health to a new level in my life And I ended up supplementing quite a lot so I would have done this if I hadn't been vegan by the way These supplements just sort of add to my nutrition You should never just supplement and hope that that will fix the problem You should always try and have a really good healthy nutrition base to start with and then supplement on top of that But that being said, you know I also supplement things like a multivitamin and all kinds of anti-inflammatories turmeric powder ginger powder and Various other new tropics, but so to answer the question Yes diet has a pretty powerful effect on dreams and lucid dreaming and if you would like to try the vegan diet out I recommend you to try it for at least 30 days at least 30 days is the optimum time Because that gives your body chance to adapt to it and and chance to start noticing changes from this If you just try it for one week, that's not really enough for your body to actually see the changes So give it a try and leave a comment below letting you know what you think about diet