Gluten Free Dreams

[silk]

I'm just curious. I have been gluten free for the past two weeks and after years of barely ever remembering dreaming at all, I have had really weird and vivid dreams and nightmares for the past week or so.

It seems like I read somewhere here that someone else was having a similar experience but I can't find the post now.

Are there others who have experienced this and is it related to being gluten free and if so, can anyone explain why?

[buffettbride]

My daughter had nightmares about being glutened for about 2 months after diagnosis.

[AnneM]

I have been gluten free for 20 months now and i dream about gluten at least twice a month. In my dreams I am surrounded by gluten filled foods and I look down at my plate and it's filled with all kinds of goodies I can't eat. I realize it and don't eat any of it, i don't think it's related to gluten but more of our mental thing, we know we can't have gluten, but we still crave it. I know for me there are days when I am upset about not be able to eat gluten, then other days where I don't care, it doesn't bother me, but watching my hubby eat donuts, pizza, cookies..it starts to bother me.

That is when i dream about it, so i believe its more of a mental thing.

I will NEVER eat gluten again, it's a powerful mental struggle.

[gfp]

I'm just curious. I have been gluten free for the past two weeks and after years of barely ever remembering dreaming at all, I have had really weird and vivid dreams and nightmares for the past week or so.

It seems like I read somewhere here that someone else was having a similar experience but I can't find the post now.

Are there others who have experienced this and is it related to being gluten free and if so, can anyone explain why?

Yep, its heroine withdrawal... or VERY similar.

Gluten is classed as an exorphin, it binds to the opiate/endorphin receptors and you are basically undergoing a type of withdrawal.

Unfortunately gluten doesn't bind very well to the receptors, it actually damages them. You may also be experiencing a bit of depression and mood swings.

It will go away.... you might dream a little more vividly than before (think of it as being drugged with something that makes your brain all fuzzy) but the nightmares will dissapear. The second part is you are probably adsorbing MORE in the day. Dreams are a time when this is organised but removing gluten has probably mean't you are seeing/hearing more... most normal people filter this automatically and irrelevant detail is taken out. Some of us have to actually do this almost manually and by force of effort .. I happen to be one of the latter (unfortunately) I find crowds overwhelming and easily suffer information overload unless I actually exert an effort to filter.

Perhaps those others can share techniques for this ... (but be warned it might sound very strange and you might not be in this class)

I personally imagine rooms full of cabinets with cabinets full of files and files full of folders. The rooms themselves are in areas of similar subject including a whole area marked TRASH.

During the day I imagine 'filing' everything loosley.. I put thoughts about TV shows or celeb gossip into TRASH. I put thoughts about work into one area, fantasy in another (nope I won't go further on this one, Im guy just guess!)

I'm presently learning Italian for instance and this gets put rather untidly in the Latin Languages rooms unless I make a bigger effort and put it in Italian.

This means i get terribly mixed up with French and Spanish until I actually organise these loose files.

Celiac info has its own room for instance ...

This is sorta what most people do automatically I just have to exert a will over it and I adsorb more random information than most people in the coarse of the day.

To make life simpler I deliberatly stay away from sources of dense information unless they are relevant. If not I have to manually throw these out.

Examples are film credits .. I will switch off the TV, walk out of the film or just close my eyes to avoid seeing film credits, if I don't I remember every damned irrelevant line. Random stock info on tickers is a killer and programs with news in the ticker on the bottom...

Since I'm a bit weird (my brain seems to be missing some mechanisms) I actually have to deal with this manually but 'normal' people do to, they just do it unconsciously. The more of this irrelevant info you can miss out on in the day the less your mind has to organise in your sleep.

Perhaps you could try some or all of these techniques and by simplyfing the brains organisation the dreams become less vivid and 'disorganised'. (If the dreams jump around wildly for instance) .. Are the dreams lucid? Can you actually control the dreams? Are they logical or illogical? Are they jumbled following a theme or jumping erratically?

I haven't had nightmares since I was a child, I find I can turn the most irrational nightmare into a lucid dream by force of will. Like being trapped in a burning tower block I will turn around and force myself to find a way out.. it might be 'hard work' in the dream but I somehow do it.

What buffetbride and AnneM are describing are called DAMT (dreams of absent minded transgression).

These are actually positive, studies show that people having these after quiting smoking for instance have a better chance of success than controls subjects.