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I had a good imagination as a kid. This was a highly useful trait during daylight hours. While other students suffered through Mrs Pearson’s slow and painful explanations of long division, I was planning Magic card games in my head.

At night time it was more of a double edged sword. I was just as likely to be sweating through some terrible nightmare where I forgot to wear my pants to school as I was to be dreaming that I had learned how to fly from flapping my arms

Some people however, love to dream. Their dreams are full of happy adventures and fantasies. For those people, some recent neuroscience research brings good news. The secrets to both dreaming more and also having more vivid and real dreams lies in a vitamin by the name of B6.

Aspy et al. (2018)[¹] builds upon previous dream research in investigating whether a group of subjects given vitamin B6 before sleeping experienced more frequent and vivid dreams when compared to a control group given a placebo. The study was investigating a certain type of dream- lucid dreams. Lucid dreams were defined as:[²]

dreams in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming while the dream is still happening.

The focus of the study was on increasing the quantity and quality of lucid dreams

Now why would I want to do that?

I will go into the specific findings in the study later on in this article, but first let’s look at some of the benefits of lucid dreams. It’s important to note that all of this is still theoretical, although supported by research evidence. Like the human brain itself, dreams are still poorly understood.

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1. Increase Creativity

Lucid dreams can help you in solving creative problems. That was the finding in Stumbrys & Daniels, 2010[³]. Ability to solve logical problems was not improved. This is consistent with other dream research. The right hemisphere of the brain seems to be more active than the left during lucid dreaming. It is well-established in neuroscience that the right side of the brain is more involved in tasks such as language or creative thinking.

2. Learn Quicker

Practising a skill during lucid dreams it is just as effective as mental preparation while awake or even physical practice. In fact, in Stumbrys et al. (2016)[⁴] subjects who practised a complex typing skill during a lucid dream showed even MORE improvement than the group which did actual physical practice. This seems like quite an amazing result, but again it is consistent with some theories about the purpose of dreams. Dreams may be a time when our mind consolidates knowledge it has gained during the day, forming memories and strengthening neural pathways that support skills we want to improve.

You might ask how they were able to cause a group of people in the study to have these lucid dreams about the typing task on demand. It turns out that some people are able to reliably have these type of dreams, and then control the events of the dream once they are in them. The researchers found a group of these people online. It’s a part of the Internet I have never ventured into, but a lot of people like to meet online and talk about their dreams.

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3. Reduce Nightmares

Finally, lucid dreaming has been found to help in combination with gestalt therapy to reduce nightmares.[⁵] Lucid dreaming can benefit people like me too.

Where Can We Find Vitamin B6?

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As you can see in the picture we can find B6 six across a lot of different food groups. In addition to the foods pictured, milk, eggs, and whole grains are also high in B6. The findings in Aspy et al. (2018)[¹] combined with previous research suggests that increasing B6 will have the greatest impact on increasing lucid dreams when the person was previously quite low in B6. So if a large part of your diet consists of pizza and beer your nights might get quite interesting if you add a lot of B6 to your diet.

The mechanism by which B6 increases lucid dreaming seems to be by elevating levels of serotonin in the brain soon after falling asleep (assuming it is taken just before going to sleep). Elevated serotonin suppresses REM sleep, which is the sleep stage when most dreaming occurs. The suppression of REM sleep early in the night causes a rebound effect during later sleep, leading to increased REM sleep.[¹] Of course there needs to be later sleep for a person to experience this effect, meaning that you need a decent night’s sleep. Six hours plus.

I hope I have motivated you to increase B6 in your diet. With foods like whole grains and fish being high in B6, not only will you be more creative, quick to learn new skills, and experience less nightmares, you will also be more healthy!

REFERENCES

1.Aspy D. J., Madden N. A., Delfabro P. (2018) Effects of Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) and a B Complex Preparation on Dreaming and Sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills. doi:10.1177/0031512518770326

2.LaBerge, S., Rheingold, H. (1991) Exploring the world of lucid dreaming, Toronto, Canada: The Ballantine Publishing Group.

3.Stumbrys, T., Erlacher, D., Schredl, M. (2016) Effectiveness of motor practice in lucid dreams: A comparison with physical and mental practice. Journal of Sports Sciences 34: 27–34.

4.Stumbrys, T., Daniels, M. (2010) An exploratory study of creative problem solving in lucid dreams: Preliminary findings and methodological considerations. International Journal of Dream Research 3: 121–129.

5.Holzinger, B., Klösch, G., Saletu, B. (2015) Studies with lucid dreaming as add-on therapy to Gestalt therapy. Acta Neurol Scand 131: 355–363.