Want to remember your dreams? Try taking vitamin B6

Jovialis

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New research from the University of Adelaide has found that taking vitamin B6 could help people to recall their dreams.

The study published online ahead of print in Perceptual and Motor Skills, included 100 participants from around Australia taking high-dose vitamin B6 supplements before going to bed for five consecutive days.

"Our results show that taking vitamin B6 improved people's ability to recall dreams compared to a placebo," says research author Dr. Denholm Aspy, from the University's School of Psychology.

"Vitamin B6 did not affect the vividness, bizarreness or colour of their dreams, and did not affect other aspects of their sleep patterns.

"This is the first time that such a study into the effects of vitamin B6 and other B vitamins on dreams has been carried out on a large and diverse group of people," Dr. Aspy says.

The randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study saw participants taking 240mg of vitamin B6 immediately before bed.

Prior to taking the supplements, many of the participants rarely remembered their dreams, but they reported improvements by the end of the study.

"It seems as time went on my dreams were clearer and clearer and easier to remember. I also did not lose fragments as the day went on," said one of the participants after completing the study.

According to another participant of the study, "My dreams were more real, I couldn't wait to go to bed and dream!"

Dr. Aspy says: "The average person spends around six years of their lives dreaming. If we are able to become lucid and control our dreams, we can then use our dreaming time more productively.

"Lucid dreaming, where you know that you are dreaming while the dream is still happening, has many potential benefits. For example, it may be possible to use lucid dreaming for overcoming nightmares, treating phobias, creative problem solving, refining motor skills and even helping with rehabilitation from physical trauma.

"In order to have lucid dreams it is very important to first be able to recall dreams on a regular basis. This study suggests that vitamin B6 may be one way to help people have lucid dreams."

Vitamin B6 occurs naturally in various foods, including whole grain cereals, legumes, fruits (such as banana and avocado), vegetables (such as spinach and potato), milk, cheese, eggs, red meat, liver, and fish.

"Further research is needed to investigate whether the effects of vitamin B6 vary according to how much is obtained from the diet. If vitamin B6 is only effective for people with low dietary intake, its effects on dreaming may diminish with prolonged supplementation," says Dr. Aspy.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-vitamin-b6.html
 
B6 generally improves sleep. It is usually combined with melatonin, magnesium and/or 5-HTP for that purpose.
 
Interesting. I've always had vivid recall of my dreams, for good or ill, but then, I eat all those foods. :) As Coriolan is implying, I think, perhaps it's just a function of sleeping better if you get more nutrients, and so you're going normally through all the cycles of sleep.

Some people, if they wake up in the night, write their dreams down. I'm afraid if I do that I won't go back to sleep.

I don't know if it's true for everyone, but sometimes the dreams are about unpleasant things that I either know are happening, or which might very well happen in real life, and yet it's much more terrifying in the dream. I wonder if we sort of experience it at its height in the dream, and then go about coping.
 
Interesting. I've always had vivid recall of my dreams, for good or ill, but then, I eat all those foods. :) As Coriolan is implying, I think, perhaps it's just a function of sleeping better if you get more nutrients, and so you're going normally through all the cycles of sleep.

Some people, if they wake up in the night, write their dreams down. I'm afraid if I do that I won't go back to sleep.

I don't know if it's true for everyone, but sometimes the dreams are about unpleasant things that I either know are happening, or which might very well happen in real life, and yet it's much more terrifying in the dream. I wonder if we sort of experience it at its height in the dream, and then go about coping.

I think it's possible it could be used for coping, because it would give dreams a practical purpose for occurring.

I sometimes have lucid dreams where I'm at the cusp of falling asleep, where my thoughts trail off into what seems like I'm in another situation.

Then there are sort of mundane dreams where I'm at work.

Sometimes, if I have a nightmare, I'll be unable to fall back asleep. But it's usually if I dream about something really spooky. Anxiety can definitely cause bad dreams as well, I had a lot of it when I was working on my degree. Though I tend to always wake up in the middle of the night, even if I don't remember a dream, but I usually fall back asleep. Usually to get a drink of water.

A while ago I read that 8 hours of straight sleep is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past people normally woke up after a first sleeping session, and even met with their neighbors sometimes.

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.


In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.


It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.


Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.


During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.


And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".


Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.


By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.


He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783
 
I think it's possible it could be used for coping, because it would give dreams a practical purpose for occurring.

I sometimes have lucid dreams where I'm at the cusp of falling asleep, where my thoughts trail off into what seems like I'm in another situation.

Then there are sort of mundane dreams where I'm at work.

Sometimes, if I have a nightmare, I'll be unable to fall back asleep. But it's usually if I dream about something really spooky. Anxiety can definitely cause bad dreams as well, I had a lot of it when I was working on my degree. Though I tend to always wake up in the middle of the night, even if I don't remember a dream, but I usually fall back asleep. Usually to get a drink of water.

A while ago I read that 8 hours of straight sleep is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past people normally woke up after a first sleeping session, and even met with their neighbors sometimes.

Yes, it would be a function of time. We can't afford ten to eleven hours of "down" time.

Still, I think some people just aren't cut out for interrupted sleep. I was completely sleep deprived after my children were born until they slept through the night. I just couldn't and even now have a hard time falling asleep again if I'm woken in the middle of the night. I was "getting by" on only about four hours of sleep. Everybody would tell me to sleep during the day when the babies napped, but I still can't sleep during the day. By six months, in one case, I was almost ready for the looney bin. :)
 
Yes, it would be a function of time. We can't afford ten to eleven hours of "down" time.

Still, I think some people just aren't cut out for interrupted sleep. I was completely sleep deprived after my children were born until they slept through the night. I just couldn't and even now have a hard time falling asleep again if I'm woken in the middle of the night. I was "getting by" on only about four hours of sleep. Everybody would tell me to sleep during the day when the babies napped, but I still can't sleep during the day. By six months, in one case, I was almost ready for the looney bin. :)

Reminds me of this video my friend had shared recently :)


I can't sleep during the day as well. If I do, and wake up in the afternoon or evening, I feel kind of odd.
 
Reminds me of this video my friend had shared recently :)


I can't sleep during the day as well. If I do, and wake up in the afternoon or evening, I feel kind of odd.

DNAPassport (Helix) has the B6 results. If you have an iPhone get the App. (I’m not sure if an Android version is available, and until recently they wouldn’t show the results on the website, I also don’t know if that has changed).

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