do pork rinds give you nightmares

Dont worry! You havent actually lost all your teeth and showed up to work in your underwear. It was just a bad dream. But if you’re tired of being woken up in a cold sweat, all you have to do is think about what you ate right before you went to sleep.

Yes, theres a chance that scary nightmare was caused by your late night Ben and Jerrys indulgence.

Scholars have written about the correlation between diets and bad dreams, well, basically forever. Hippocrates, who is regarded as the father of medicine, was one of the first to note a connection. Today, more than 2,000 years later, there is finally a study (in the journal Frontiers in Psychology) that backs up what he said.

396 college students in Canada were asked about their diet and dreams every day for two weeks for the study. The questions that they answered delved into diet habits, psychological function, overall health, sleep, and dream habits. The researchers were able to make a list of foods that give people nightmares after going through all of their answers. You know, the dreams that wake you up, throw off your sleep schedule, and raise your cortisol levels so much that you gain weight?

We looked into the study data to find the foods that are most likely to give you nightmares. This will help you keep the Boogeyman and extra belly fat at bay. Get rid of them, and while you’re at it, read these tips on what to do before bed to lose weight and get more out of your sleep.

Dairy does contain tryptophan, which is a building block for the hormone serotonin that makes you sleepy, but people who ate dairy products (like cheese!) before bed had more unpleasant dreams. Sounds like a great reason to ditch the caloric late night pizza if you ask us.

Spicy foods eaten before bed made it hard for students to fall asleep and stay asleep, according to the study. They also reported having stressful dreams. The reason is that spicy foods raise the body’s temperature, which, according to the study, changes the way dreams are formed during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. That doesnt mean you have to totally ditch the hot sauce and spicy grub, though. Just stop six hours before bed, and make sure you stick to one of the hot sauces from our special report, Hot Sauces Ranked by Nutrition, that Eat This! says is healthy.

The dreams you have the night after drinking are scarier than a bad hangover. Alcohol before bed can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. People in the study who had nightmares or stressful dreams after drinking said it made it harder to fall asleep.

In the study, 31% of the “bizarre dreams” that people reported happened after they ate sugary foods like cake and cookies. If you want to eat something sweet before bed, you should choose one of these best low-sugar snacks for weight loss instead.

After dairy products, sweets and chocolate were the second most common group of foods said to affect dreams. The most common types of dreams were described as “bizarre” or “disturbing.” Lauren Kelly, MS, RD, CDN of Kelly Wellness in New York City tells us, “Remember that chocolate has sugar and a lot of caffeine, which can make it harder to fall asleep deeply.” This means that eating chocolate before bed might not be the best idea. Kelly says that you should eat the healthy dark variety as a snack in the afternoon instead of a dessert after dinner. Cutting back on the size of your portions might help if you need something sweet after dinner.

Just because chips dont have sugar or caffeine doesnt mean theyre a good before-bed snack. About 12. Five percent of the bad dreams in the study were caused by eating “greasy junk food” like chips. Thats not the only reason to stay away either. The grease can hurt your stomach and make it hard to sleep. Instead of a heavy potato chip, eat something crunchy like carrot sticks or a small handful of nuts before bed.

What a surprise that the mix of sugar and milk in hot cocoa can give you bad dreams. We already told you that the white granular stuff and dairy could bring out the monsters in the closet. Before bed, if you want a warm drink to calm you down, choose warm water with lemon or a caffeine-free detox tea. The calming valerian and hop varieties are two of our favorites—just dont forget to hold the milk.

People in the study who ate pasta or bread before bed said they had bad dreams, which isn’t a surprise since eating sugar before bed had the same effect. Its a little-known fact, but carbs actually convert to glucose (a form of sugar) in the body. So, try to eat your carbs earlier in the day so your body has time to use them up before you go to sleep. Other ways to cut carbs are to leave off the top bun on your burger and replace your noodles with spiralized zoodles, which are just fancy words for zucchini noodles.

People in the study who drank soda, even early in the day, said they had nightmares. This is probably because of the caffeine and sugar in the soda. Want another reason not to drink soda? Many of them contain dyes (like caramel coloring) and other gross ingredients (like glycerol ester of rosin, also known as wood resin) that may cause cancer.

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