15 Foods That Enhance Your Dreams


Discover the 15 foods that will enhance and intensify your dreams, to boost your dream recall and help you on your way to more lucid dreams.

Foods That Enhance Your Dreams

Some foods may naturally enhance your dreams thanks to their nutrient content.

Specifically, we're looking at foods that are rich in vitamin B6 and tryptophan - as both are linked with greater dream recall and intensity.

Although this is no magic bullet for lucid dreaming, certain foods are linked to a boost in dream recall and dream vividness.

You may also increases your chances of lucidity when paired with some basic techniques like dream journaling and reality checks.

Dream-Boosting Foods and Supplements

Before I run through a list of 15 foods that enhance your dreams, let's examine how and why these ingredients affect dream intensity.

I'll also explain what levels are safe to ingest, both in terms of food consumption and as a daily vitamin supplement.

Vitamin B6

In 2002, a double-blind study revealed that participants who took a daily 250mg B6 supplement reported a significant increase in dream content - as measured in dream vividness, bizarreness, emotionality and color.

This is actually greater than the recommended maximum daily intake for healthy adults, which is 100mg. In fact, you only need about 1.3mg of vitamin B6 each day, and you usually get that from the foods you eat.

So 100mg a day is a sizeable dose. In the study above, participants took the 250mg dose for just 3 days. This is not a long term experiment and should be maintained at your own discretion.

How much is too much? Doses of 500-1,000mg, taken daily for several months, can lead to sensory neuropathy (pain and numbness of the extremities).

Vitamin B6 for Lucid DreamsTo get started, know this: casual experiments by other dreamers have shown the amount of B6 needed to increase dream intensity varies from 100-500mg depending on the person.

I suggest starting with a 100mg supplement like Nature Made Vitamin B6 about two hours before bed for just a few nights in a row, then have a break. If you don't see any benefit, increase the nightly dose at your own risk, but remember not to do this on a prolonged basis.

Unfortunately, there are no foods sufficiently rich in vitamin B6 to noticeably affect your dreams. A cup of rice bran contains only 4.8mg, while yellow-fin tuna offers 0.88mg in a 3-ounce serving, which is why a supplement is the way to go.

Tryptophan

One of the roles of vitamin B6 is to convert the essential amino acid tryptophan into serotonin and niacin.

This helps the body regulate appetite, sleep patterns and mood. As a result, tryptophan is used therapeutically to treat insomnia, depression and anxiety. Low levels of tryptophan are also linked with poor dream recall.

The FDA has banned the sale of tryptophan as a supplement due to a suspected link with EMS (eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome). Though many experts now believe the 1989 scare was caused by a contaminated batch, tryptophan is now only available on prescription.

So, in order to increase your tryptophan intake, you need to eat tryptophan-rich foods. Luckily, it's not hard to eat sufficient tryptophan to affect your dream intensity. We'll look at the best food sources below.

15 Foods That Intensify Your Dreams

Here are 15 tryptophan-rich foods to enhance your dreams by ramping up your serotonin conversion.

Note: The recommended daily allowance for tryptophan is 392mg for men and 322mg for women, assuming a normal RDA-level protein intake. Doctors prescribe tryptophan therapeutically in doses exceeding 5g per day with no adverse effects.

When you're ready to begin the dream-intensity challenge, take your vitamin B6 supplement and fuel the fire with tryptophan-rich foods like:

  1. Chicken (4 oz) gives 0.41g tryptophan
  2. Soybeans (1 cup) gives 0.39g tryptophan
  3. Turkey (4 oz) gives 0.38g tryptophan
  4. Tuna (4 oz) gives 0.38g tryptophan
  5. Venison (4 oz) gives 0.36g tryptophan
  6. Lamb (4 oz) gives 0.35g tryptophan
  7. Salmon (4 oz) gives 0.35g tryptophan
  8. Halibut (4 oz) gives 0.34g tryptophan
  9. Shrimp (4 oz) gives 0.33g tryptophan
  10. Cod (4 oz) gives 0.29g tryptophan

Vegetarians may consider these options:

  1. Kidney Beans (1 cup) gives 0.18g tryptophan
  2. Pumpkin Seeds (0.25 cup) gives 0.17g tryptophan
  3. Tofu (4 oz) gives 0.14g tryptophan
  4. Cheese (1 oz) gives 0.09g tryptophan
  5. Soy Sauce (1 tbsp) gives 0.03g tryptophan

These foods are best consumed at night with your evening meal, a few hours before bed and around the same time as ingesting your vitamin B6 pill.

5-HTP Supplement5-HTP

If you want to skip the whole process of eating tryptophan-rich foods and take a supplement instead, there is another solution.

Instead of getting more tryptophan into your diet, take a supplement like Doctor's Best 5-HTP two hours before bed. This is what your body naturally converts tryptophan into before it becomes serotonin.

More Serotonin Production

The purpose of ingesting higher doses of vitamin B6, tryptophan and 5-HTP is to increase your serotonin levels, which play an important role in regulating the sleep/wake cycle. In particular, serotonin creates more vivid dreams.

You may be wondering why you can't just skip all the middle man and take serotonin supplements directly. Unfortunately serotonin can't easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Instead you must produce serotonin naturally.

So by taking supplements we're adding fuel to the fire that already burns inside your brain nightly.

Final Thoughts

You need to understand that the boost that these foods give you is likely to be mild at best.

You may not notice anything significant.

If you are serious about taking something to boost your dream life to the next level, forget foods and look into Lucid Dreaming Supplements.

This can lead to significantly more intense dreams, providing the springboard many beginners seek for having lucid dreams.


About The Author

About The Author

Rebecca Casale is a lucid dreamer and a science writer with a special interest in biology and the brain. She is the founder of World of Lucid Dreaming and Science Me.