When you’re practicing lucid dreaming, small things can make a big difference. For example, your diet can undermine or enhance your results. Are you sure you haven’t ruined your chances of success with foods, that cause lucid dreams?
Best Foods for the Phase
It’s scientifically proven that many foods can help you sleep better, especially if you consume them an hour before bedtime. For instance, a little wine, bananas, asparagus, kiwi, fish, milk, and many other products can be beneficial. Let’s list the top three!
Oatmeal takes third place. It contains tryptophan, amino acids, and carbohydrates. These ingredients work together to help you sleep better.
Nuts come in second. Walnuts and almonds can improve sleep due to their melatonin content. Additionally, these nuts contain healthy fats, amino acids, and B vitamins, which also enhance sleep quality.
Regular cherries (don’t confuse them with sweet cherries!) take first place. Cherry juice contains a lot of melatonin. You should definitely consider eating cherries if you have trouble sleeping or want to improve your diet and start eating foods for lucid dreaming.
On the other hand, it’s recommended to avoid eating chocolate (which contains caffeine), fried foods (which your body will struggle to digest), and spicy sauces (which may give you an upset stomach or increase your body temperature). Also, don’t drink alcohol (with the exception of a little wine) because it will disrupt your sleep cycles. Are you disappointed with this option?
What to Eat Before Trying to Enter the Phase
Sometimes, it’s better to think about not what you eat but when you eat it. For example, you shouldn’t fall asleep after overeating or when extremely hungry. You should feel comfortable before falling asleep and throughout the night.
One trick that can help you fall asleep better and experience more phases is to eat some carbohydrates, like cookies and candies, right before bed. The blood sugar spike will help you fall asleep much faster. The only problem is that after a couple of hours, your blood sugar will start to drop sharply, which can disrupt your sleep. For this reason, you should try this trick only during a daytime nap or when using the deferred method (when you wake up two hours before your final awakening and then fall asleep again, intending to enter the phase).
Conversely, if you sleep too deeply, it’s better to drink coffee or eat chocolate before falling asleep.
Best Food for Lucid Dreaming
Now let’s talk about specific diets. Let’s list the top three from a scientific point of view.
The Mediterranean diet takes third place. This diet has been proven to help people achieve healthy sleep habits. As you may know, the Mediterranean diet mimics the eating habits of the people of Italy and Greece. The main principle is a high consumption of fruits, unrefined grains, beans, olive oil, vegetables, and fish. It also includes the moderate consumption of cheese, yogurt, and wine, and a low consumption of meat except for fish. It is quite a balanced and good choice!
The ketogenic diet comes in second. This diet is scientifically proven to not only help people sleep better but also promote rapid sleep onset. This is just what we need! The keto diet is a very low-carb, high-fat diet. It forces your body to use fat as the main energy source instead of sugar. To follow this diet, try to eat only meat, eggs, cheese, milk, fish, butter, nuts, and low-carb vegetables like peppers and tomatoes. You can eat any other food, but only in very small amounts.
And the winner is the high glycemic index diet! This diet is one of the worst if you’re trying to stay in shape and need energy for your life. It can cause diabetes and is prohibited for people who have been diagnosed with the disease. However, some studies show that this is the best diet for practicing the phase because it makes you much sleepier than other diets. The main idea is to eat everything with a high glycemic index (e.g., white bread, cereal, honey, white rice, French fries, donuts, sweet drinks, and the sweetest fruits). Considering how dangerous a high glycemic index diet is, you shouldn’t follow it every day. But if you practice the phase a few days a week, you can follow this diet on those days or only for specific meals. One study shows that it’s much better to consume high glycemic index foods four hours before sleep, but in my experience, it works great right before falling asleep. So don’t blame me if I get fat — I might just be getting too carried away with lucid dreaming!
Sorry, but we can’t evaluate vegetarian diets. The problem is that there are several types of vegetarian diets, and people sleep differently when they first start such a diet and after they’ve been on it for a long time. For example, when you start a vegetarian diet, your sleep pattern will be disrupted — you’ve probably heard stories about this from your friends. Then, after a few weeks, your sleep may become even better than it was before you started the new diet, but only if you remember to eat a variety of foods.
Conclusions
What about meat? We know that the best sleep is possible when 20% of your diet is protein. But you don’t have to get this protein only from meat. It can come from other sources, such as beans and nuts, too. In fact, several studies show that meat can negatively affect our sleep, but this depends on many factors. Keep in mind that meat consumption is not a crucial factor in successful phase practice. Therefore, if you’re making mistakes during attempts to enter the phase, giving up meat won’t make it better. Moreover, if you don’t eat too much meat, its effect will be imperceptible.
Lucid Dreaming – Books from Authors-Practitioners
