Things to stay away from?

It hardly seems neccecary to say, but hard drugs would inhibit dreams. Besides that, I don’t know; it seems like a job for the lucid laboratory.

caffeine and alcohol are both supposed to inhibit REM activity and also cause poor dream recollection. i would assume chocolate does the same because it contains small amounts of caffeine.

Alcohol inhibits REM but only as long as its effects last. So tipicaly, alcohol’s concentration will decrease while you sleep; and after a time, a reflective effect appears, in which you have a longer REM period (usually longer than 1 hour).

i would say that it is bad to take every kind of ‘dream helping’ food, or any combination of such food

lol cause last night i ate a piece of cheese, a cup of milk, drank a cup of tea, ate a banana, ate some turkey, drank a coke, and ended up sleeping until 1:30 in the afternoon

It is true that alcohol inhibits REM in early stages of sleep, but in the next morning your brain tries to catch up and you will experience something called REM rebound, which is basicly that you get more REM within a short amount of time.

From my personal experience i have discovered that i have both more vivid dreams and also a much higher percentage of LDs the morning after drinking alcohol. So for me alcohol actually helps my lucid dreaming.
Doing WILD gets much easier for me as well.
But i guess it differs from person to person.

I think from now on I’m going to add in my DJ all the meals I’ve had the day of my ND or LD maybe I will discover some new things. I will keep you guys posted (other people should try it too and fill me in with you results)

Drugs (specifically seratonin depleting drugs such as ecstacy), alcohol, anticholinergase compounds (motion sickness medication such as TravelCalm, anything with hyoscamine or atropine or scopolamine like alkaloids).

‘Aloysia triphylla’ (lemon scented verbena) has been suggested for a long time to prevent dreams. Lemon verbena oil constitutes of citral, neral and geranial; further monoterpenoids found are limonene, carvone, dipentene, linalool, nerol and geraniol.

Citral/limonene are common chemicals, so this might suggest that citrus fruit may prevent dreaming. Also, a citrus mint is used to flavour earl gray tea, so this might also prevent dreams (based on the citrus theory).

One isomer of carvone is responsible for the smell of caraway, the other isomer is responsible for spearmint. People have suggested that mints increase dreams (peppermint especially), and the body is EXTREMELY sensetive to isomeristic changes, so its quite possible that spearmint (R-carvone) helps dreams, whilst caraway (D-carvone) prevents dreams.

All of you might already be aware of this, but sleeping pills are bad for your sweet lucidity as you get less REM sleep. Less REM=Less LD =(.

I’ve heard that milk is good to drink an hour before bed-time, but it must be warm? If it’s cold, will it have no effect at all?

Stay away from fatty and salty foods–your free to try the ice cream, though!

Oh, and watch out for those nights of ‘debauchery-eating’… :neutral:

I’ve been smoking a lot of pot this past week and my dream recall has gone down a lot. It tends to come back pretty quickly after you stop though, like a day or two at most, at least for me.

I smoke at each day and its true that the REM is lowering when you smoke.

But I can do lucid dreams and dreams too. However , yesterday I haved no dream… Probably because of the weed.

Its sure if I stopped right away from like 5 days my lucid dream will be crazy and my RC too.

n00dle gave a rounded summary.

I would avoid eating anything, especially a large meal, before bedtime. No matter what food it is that you are eating.

Country music :wink:

Supposedly having more yin than yang helps… SO less sugar/fat, more vegies and fruit. Also, I find that if you just do things for your dreams that subconsciously it just works.

lucky i tried that - the coke and i didnt sleep at all :tongue:

Stress, however it does not limit ND’s. (At least for me)

Ya overdid it, maybe? :content:

Definitely valerian root stay away from. While it may help you sleep it is very bad for your dream recall. Also, alcohol seems to cause me to have more vivid and exciting dreams. I don’t think I’ve had any lucid dreams from alcohol but I think it would set up the right conditions to have one.

More vivid from alcohol? Weird…it reduces the occurance of REM sleep…do you remember many dreams, though?

Yeah I usually always remember at least a few.