After a restless night of sleep, filled with nightmares where velociraptors and chainsaw-wielding maniacs chase you down, you wake up and wonder what caused such vivid, frightful dreams. Could it have been that spicy Thai food you had before bed?

Actually, there is some evidence that eating a spicy meal shortly before going to sleep can lead to some wacko dreams. In fact, eating anything too close to bedtime can trigger more dreams, because the late night snacks increase the body’s metabolism and temperature, explains Dr. Charles Bae, MD, a sleep medicine doctor at Sleep Disorders Center at the Cleveland Clinic. Heightened metabolism and temperature can lead to more brain activity, prompting more action during rapid eye movement sleep, or REM.

About every 90 minutes people experience rapid eye movement sleep as they cycle through the stages of sleep. In REM, when people dream the most, the body’s muscle tone slackens. During REM the brain becomes active, like it does when awake, and the eyes flutter behind the lids. Nightmares only happen during REM and while nightmares are simply dreams with negative emotions, they stand apart because they rouse the sleeper. It’s one of the reasons why it’s easier to recall nightmares than run-of-the-mill dreams. While little is understood about nightmares, experts know that frequent nightmare sufferers often show dysfunction in the frontal lobe and it fails to control the amygdala, which regulates memory and emotions. Disturbances in these regions might impact people without problematic nightmares, contributing to vivid dreams.

So can that extra spicy Pad Thai lead to velociraptors tearing through your dreams?

Lisa Medalie, a clinical associate of psychiatry at University of Chicago Hospitals writes via email: “If our bodies are working hard to digest heavy or spicy foods, it interferes with sleep continuity. We typically advise patients to avoid heavy or spicy foods within [two to three] hours of their bedtime.”

It’s not a subject that has been studied often, but one Canadian report suggested that 8.5 percent of the 389 study subjects blamed bad dreams on food.

“It is … possible that spicy foods—or other foods such as dairy or greasy fast foods—at least occasionally induce nightmares or other bizarre dreams. It might be that some people are sensitive to the chemical composition of certain foods,” writes Tore Nielsen, professor at the Université de Montreal and director of the dream and nightmare laboratory at Sacré-Coeur Hospital, via email.

Related:

Sleep on your stomach and have sexier dreams?

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He's the man you fall asleep beside every night, and the first person you see every single morning. So why isn't your husband making a cameo in your actual dreams? And why, when he does show up, are you both dressed in elf costumes and bickering about adopting a cat?

How Do You Express Anger?

Chances are, there's an explanation for these nighttime curiosities--and understanding what dreams mean might actually make your relationship healthier. "The subconscious is going to produce whatever dream it feels is appropriate at the time," says Cindy Nodland, PhD, a Denver-based dream therapist. "If there's something we need to know or understand, we'll dream about it."

Typically, our significant others play a considerable role in dreams: A new study out of Germany estimates that romantic partners are present in at least 20 percent of nocturnal imaginings. But it isn't because we spend so much time with them during the day. Rather, Nodland explains, our dreams often represent unresolved problems and feelings--and we tend to have a lot of both where our relationship is concerned.

The Sleep Position For Sexier Dreams

To better understand your own dreams, Nodland recommends keeping a dream journal--preferably next to your bed--and taking note of a dream's key players, settings, events, and any associated feelings. "The most important piece is the feeling you have in the dream," she says. "Are you sad? Frightened? Jealous? That will often give you the biggest clue about what the message of the dream is."

Curious about what your latest head-trip is trying to tell you? We asked Nodland to decode five of the most common relationship-oriented dreams.
If you were cheating on him. "This could indicate that your husband or boyfriend isn't meeting all of your needs," Nodland says. "An affair in a dream could indicate a desire for more passion in the waking relationship."

Why Infidelity Is Increasing In Monogamous Relationships?

If you're having dinner together. "Eating together is a very good dream," Nodland says. "It can actually represent the sexual relationship. Food, after all, is a nurturing and fulfilling component of our lives, and "sitting down and sharing a meal is a very intimate thing to do." But if you're having recurring dreams about repetitive meals, "again and again at Taco Bell," ask yourself whether those bedroom exploits are getting stale.

If someone else is in his place. Let's say you're dressed in that elf costume, bickering with your husband in dreamland...except your "husband" appears to be your high school boyfriend. Huh? "You could still be dreaming about your current relationship," Nodland says. "It means your current situation relates somehow to that guy from the past." Interpret the dream by mulling what the two of them have in common.

If he died in your dreams. This nightmarish scenario shouldn't be taken literally, Nodland says. "This could actually be a fear of abandonment. Generally, if we dream someone dies, it is symbolic of some kind of other death. It could mean the relationship is dying, not the person."

The Health Benefits Of Thinking About Death

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Tom Merton / Getty Images stock

Consider yourself lucky people if you’re one of those people who fall asleep easily, and stay asleep until the alarm goes off. Not so for David K. Randall, author of the new book "Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep."

Three years ago he woke up one night and instead of rolling over in his bed, he found himself in his hallway with a bruised knee and back.  It’s not like Randall’s loving wife kicked him out of the sack. Instead, he’s among the one in seven Americans with a long-term sleep disorder. Randall talks to NBCNews.com about the state of sleep research, why some of us just can’t seem to get enough  Zzzzzs, and also about those sometimes humorous, but more often dangerous, nighttime rambles.

Q: It stands to reason that finding yourself in your hallway instead of your bed was pretty much of a “eureka” moment in terms that something was wrong with you.

A: Absolutely. I went to my doctor and basically said that I didn’t want to run into another wall, so what can be done to help me. He said that they really didn’t know much about sleep, so just try and take it easy. This was the summer of 2009, and was the first sleepwalking episode that I had that I was actually aware of. I probably had more.

I know I used to laugh and sing and talk in my sleep all the time. But being mobile really freaked me out. I wanted to find out more about sleep, and after I started working on the book I found that sleepwalking could be due to stress, depression, accumulated lack of sleep, or even have a genetic component. I realized my dad told me that he was a sleepwalker. He grew up on a farm in Kansas and once found himself in a corn field, which sounds more like an alien abduction, but it was a sleepwalking episode. So it’s probably in my genes.

Q: Science recognizes some 75 sleep disorders, yet you say science really doesn’t know that much about sleep.

A: Well, actually, most studies are actually focused on sleep deprivation, rather than just sleep itself. We know that lack of sleep, for example, can cause a lot of issues from high blood pressure and diabetes to poor work or athletic performance, among other problems. But science still can’t answer the basic question on why we need to sleep. I was really surprised by that.

Q: So what do we know about sleep deprivation?

One study showed that rats will die from sleep deprivation after 11 days. That’s a terrible way to go. The most extensively documented study on a human was done in the 1960s when a subject went without sleep for 11 days. He developed paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and problems with short-term memory.

Q: But most of us don’t go without sleep for 11 days. We turn to medications even if we have one lousy night of sleep. What’s your take on pharmaceuticals?

A: I think there’s a two-part issue. First, with over-the-counter aids, some people take them every night, when they are supposed to be used short-term. Then, while there may not be a physical dependency, there is a mental dependency.  Prescription drugs, like Ambien and Lunesta, really don’t have that great of an effect. Studies show they may make you go to sleep 10 minutes earlier and sleep 10 minutes longer. That’s it. Plus, potential drug side effects like sleep eating and sleep driving, for example, aren’t a lot of fun.

Q: Everyone blames a sleepless night on modern-day stressors like a bad economy, a bad job, a bad fill-in-the-blank. So did our ancestors sleep better?

A: Maybe. But it’s kind of hard to say how sleep was for people in 500 A.D. when they probably slept on straw or were afraid of being eaten by some animal. But what we do know in pre-industrial times, people would sleep for a few hours, wake for an hour around midnight, and then go back to sleep until daybreak. Studies show that if people are deprived of artificial lighting, they will naturally sleep in this pattern. There’s been some work that shows that our gadgets like TV’s, computers, cell phones, and computer tablets are helping to destroy our sleep patterns.

Q: What about dreams? Is that still looked at as voodoo science?

A: I had a dream researcher tell me that he still gets weird glances from colleagues who think the work is a little to “new agey.”  I never used to think dreams meant anything, now I’m not so sure.

Q: Why not?

A: There are some studies showing our dreams are pretty true to life, minus the logic of the dream world, which can be very strange.

Researchers know that we tend to dream of things that make us anxious, and most dreams are unpleasant. That could be due to the fact that nothing else is competing for our attention when we’re dreaming. And letting our minds experience some anxious moment while dreaming could possibly function as a dress rehearsal for life. Plus, there is some work showing that that dreams could possibly play a role in how we pick up a new skill or come up with a solution to a problem.

Q: How are you sleeping now?

A: I think sleepwalking will be with me my whole life. But then again, I also have a two-month old son. So I’m not sure I’m going to get a good night’s sleep until he’s about 18.

Related:

• Sleep on your stomach and have sexier dreams?
• Sleep-punching disorder may be linked to Parkinson's
• Some insomniacs may just be afraid of the dark

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In the classic movie White Christmas, Bing Crosby jokingly tells Rosemary Clooney that by eating the right sandwich before bed, he can make sure he dreams about redheads, or blondes. If only we could all influence the content of our dreams so easily.

Well, a dream researcher in Hong Kong named Calvin Kai-Ching Yu, of Shue Yan University, says we can, at least a little.

For a study released last week in the journal Dreaming, he sampled 670 people, mostly university students, two-thirds of whom were females. He had them complete surveys about the intensities of their dreams, how often their dreams contained specific themes (such as flying, being chased, suffocation, and so on), and personality traits. They also indicated how often they slept on their sides, face up (supine), or face down (prone) on a five point scale from “never” to “almost every time.”

When he analyzed the numbers, he found that the prone sleepers, as a group, were much more likely to score highly on what he calls the Dream Motif Scale (DMS), regardless of their personality type. Motifs like “persecution,” “erotomania,” and “sex” appeared significantly more frequently.

He concluded that “this study provides the evidence that dream experiences, and in particular dream content, can be influenced by body posture during sleep.”

In other words, sleeping face down is more likely to give you intense dreams featuring several common themes. Among the persecution motifs, for example, people reported “being tied up,” “being locked up,” and “unable to move.”

But why would position so influence the content of our dreams? Kai-Ching Yu believes that the prone position provides more intense physical stimulus, making it tougher to breathe, for example, and making our bodies feel more constricted.

“The unconscious brains of the dreamers try to make sense, and even make use of, the external stimuli,” he told NBCNews.com.

It’s something like the dreams we have – common across cultures – when we have to urinate. We’re sleeping, but the pressure begins influencing our dream content so we start dreaming about bathrooms, or having to go. Also, when we’re face down, our genitals are receiving more stimulus from the bed and sheets, he speculates, so our brains incorporate that into sex-related dreaming.

He may be right, but there are reasons to be skeptical. First, a common problem in dream research is that people often don’t accurately recall their dreams even when they’ve just awakened. Also, while many people may think they know what position they sleep in, they’re often wrong. The dream scales Kai-Ching Yu used in his study were invented by him and, he said, they have not been validated by other researchers, though he has used them in many studies and gotten consistent results.

But the biggest reason for skepticism is that other scientists argue we’re cut off from the external world when we’re asleep. We’re in a completely internal realm – at the mercy of what sleep researchers from Harvard have called “a virtual reality system” without meaningful responses to the outside world, like the touch of sheets or the pressure of our bodies laying face down.

He doesn’t completely disagree, but said “I believe that the brain during sleep is not at all totally detached from the external world, and somatosensory stimuli, including those stemming from the environment, are probably incorporated into dream content more often than people observe or are aware of.” This is especially true, he thinks, at the unconscious level. That’s where our brains try to make sense, even if distorted, of what the body’s feeling.

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com) to be published Sept. 13.

Related:

Some insomniacs may just be afraid of the dark

Waking a sleepwalker is totally safe -- for them

Why our school days haunt our anxiety dreams

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience

When your head hits the pillow, for many it's lights out for the conscious part of you. But the cells firing in your brain are very much awake, sparking enough energy to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the rapid-eye-movement stage of your sleep.

Why do some people have nightmares while others really spend their nights in bliss? Like sleep, dreams are mysterious phenomena. But as scientists are able to probe deeper into our minds, they are finding some of those answers.

Here's some of what we know about what goes on in dreamland.

1. Violent dreams can be a warning sign

As if nightmares weren't bad enough, a rare sleep disorder — called REM sleep behavior disorder — causes people to act out their dreams, sometimes with violent thrashes, kicks and screams. Such violent dreams may be an early sign of brain disorders down the line, including Parkinson's disease and dementia, according to research published online July 28, 2010, in the journal Neurology. The results suggest the incipient stages of these neurodegenerative disorders might begin decades before a person, or doctor, knows it.

2. Night owls have more nightmares

Staying up late has its perks, but whimsical dreaming is not one of them. Research published in 2011 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms, revealed that night owls are more likely than their early-bird counterparts to experience nightmares.

In the study 264 university students rated how often they experienced nightmares on a scale from 0 to 4, never to always, respectively. The stay-up-late types scored, on average, a 2.10, compared with the morning types who averaged a 1.23. The researchers said the difference was a significant one, however, they aren’t sure what's causing a link between sleep habits and nightmares. Among their ideas is the stress hormone cortisol, which peaks in the morning right before we wake up, a time when people are more prone to be in REM, or dream, sleep. If you’re still sleeping at that time, the cortisol rise could trigger vivid dreams or nightmares, the researchers speculate. [ Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders ]

3. Men dream about sex

As in their wake hours, men also dream about sex more than women do. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn-on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, suggests doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

She found women's dreams/nightmares could be grouped into three categories: fearful dreams (being chased or having their life threatened); dreams involving the loss of a loved one; or confused dreams.

4. You can control your dreams

If you're interested in lucid dreaming, you may want to take up video gaming. The link? Both represent alternate realities, said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.

"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," Gackenbach told LiveScience in 2010. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Her past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they were also better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character.

That level of control may also help gamers turn a bloodcurdling nightmare into a carefree dream, she found in a 2008 study. This ability could help war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Gackenbach reasoned.

5. Why we dream

Scientists have long wondered why we dream, with answers ranging from Sigmund Freud's idea that dreams fulfill our wishes to the speculation that these wistful journeys are just a side effect of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Turns out, at least part of the reason may be critical thinking, suggests Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett who presented her theory in 2010 at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in Boston.

Her research revealed that our slumbering hours may help us solve puzzles that have plagued us during daylight hours. The visual and often illogical aspects of dreams make them perfect for the out-of-the-box thinking that is necessary to solve some problems, she speculates.

So while dreams may have originally evolved for another purpose, they have likely been refined over time for multiple tasks, including helping the brain reboot and helping us solve problems, she said.

What's the strangest dream you remember? Tell us on Facebook

More from LiveScience:
Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena

Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders

Earlier today, we wrote about anxiety dreams, and whether they serve a purpose, or if they exist just to torment us. You shared so many hilarious examples of your own recurring dreams -- so we decided we had to round up the best ones up for an additional post. Here are 10 of our favorites.

From comments on the blog:

mwc1108:
"I dreamed last night that my gender had been mis-assigned at birth (i'm almost 50!) and I was actually a man.

It was extremely awkward not just because I've always been a woman, with a very curvy figure, but I also had just gotten a date with a really cute boy for a fraternity formal or the prom.  I told him that I was actually a boy but that I would still go to the party with him if he wanted me to and he said "sure." Then I asked him if he wanted me to got as a boy or a girl and he told me to choose!

WTH could a dream like that mean?  I have always had wild dreams but that one was a REAL doozy!"

Saraki:
"My recurring anxiety dream is when my teeth fall out. Usually I'll be talking to someone in the dream, and I'll feel my teeth start to loosen. I touch them with my tongue and they wiggle and then begin to fall out. I frantically try to catch them all and push them back in, and just when I really start to panic, I wake up (and immediately feel to be sure my teeth are still there!)"

Virginia-3572375:
"I have a dream repeatedly that I need to shower . The shower is always located in a room that is not a bathroom. I cannot find my shampoo., there are people in the room. the water will not continue running and I am left half finished. Another is while traveling, I will begin in a car. The car changes to a bicycle then the bicycle to a tricycle. I come to a river that has alligators in it and have to cross. These have been going on for years."

BubaloosIzzy:
"I keep having this dream that I have a couple of fish tanks full of scary fish and I forget to feed them and they are VERY angry! They are in their tanks glowering at me and I become very afraid of them! They are usually in a darkened room. What the heck is that about?"

Minnie-517207:
"My recurring and annoying dream involves moving back into the home we lived in for 21 years- despite it being owned and lived in by someone else. I keep thinking it will all be ok and that they won't mind if we just come "home" again. Obviously, I just long to "go home" again- which will never happen. It makes me very sad, tho. Not a good dream, at all."

And over on our Facebook page:

Donna Rawlins:
"I used to dream about having a piece of string/dental floss hanging out of my mouth. the more I pulled the more came out. It was like a clown pulling out scarves. I never was able to get it out."

Lesa Atherton Pinker:
"My reoccuring anxiety dream harkens back to my days of working in retail. For some reason, the store is dark (as though the power has gone out) but we still have to help the customers, and it is always really busy and stessful. I never had the power go out when I worked retail, so I don't really know what that's about. Maybe feeling like you don't really know how to do your job and being 'in the dark'?"

Jannette Thoennes:
"Recurring theme...random dreams will find me with a "gimpy" right leg, can barely walk and it feels numb up to my hip...dreams are always different, but that bad leg turned up frequently in my late teens and twenties, eased up for a few years, but its back again and I am now 41"

Jackie Peterson Tadeo:
"I keep dreaming that I have a baby and lose it. I forget who had it last, where I left and its always different scenetios but dame theme: I have no idea where my baby is."

Melissa Gwyther:
"I had this nightmare for years that I could not find my HS sweethearts phone number and I was panicked that I would never get to speak to him ever again. A lost love. After my divorce I ran into him again, and now we've been together 2 years. I always felt since have this horrible dream, it must have meant, 'once you see him, never let him go again!'"

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For Theo Pauline Nestor, it’s always the “waitress nightmare.”

“I’m the only server on duty and suddenly the dining room fills with hungry customers,” says the 49-year-old writer from Seattle. “It takes me forever to take all their orders. And then by the time I do, the kitchen’s dark and the chefs have gone home.”

Nestor says the dream always ends with her having to return to the dining room to tell the hungry customers their dinners won’t be arriving.

“I’m filled with dread,” says Nestor, who hasn’t waited tables for 20 years. “I think it’s a dream about not being able to keep everyone happy no matter how hard I work. I have it about once a year, whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

Anxiety dreams come in all shapes and sizes -- but whether they take you back to a hated job or the high school hallways, repetitive ones like Nestor’s waitress nightmare are very common, explains Berkeley-based dream expert Dr. Marcia Emery. But do they serve any purpose -- other than to freak us out?

“I call them ‘lost locker’ dreams,” she says. “You’re back in college, cramming for a final but you can’t find the locker or the textbook or the classroom. Or you’re giving a speech but can’t remember the words. You wake up in a sweat.”

 While the dreams can be upsetting, Emery says they definitely serve a function.

“They help you check yourself out,” she says. “Their function is to get you to ask what you’re afraid of, what’s unfinished, where do you feel unprepared. They’re a wake-up call. There’s something that’s unresolved, usually an unresolved emotional problem.”

Nestor’s waitress dream, for instance, is an “overwhelm alert,” says Emery.

“With that dream, you’re on alert that you’re doing too much, that your hands are too full,” she says.

Other anxiety dreams can mean you’re ignoring something you shouldn’t.

“I knew someone who had a lost locker dream,” she says. “In his dream, he went to basketball practice but couldn’t find his locker. Or remember his combination. When he woke up, he realized he wasn’t spending much time playing basketball anymore. His dream was telling him to reclaim his athletic side that had been lost.”

Why do so many of these repetitive dreams take us back to high school, college or those horrible first jobs?

“I don’t want to oversimplify, but a lot of times it’s attached to an issue that goes back to that time,” says Emery. “If it’s high school, it’s going back to a time when you might have felt unworthy or uncomfortable about not completing your assignments. It often goes back to the time when these feelings were first generated -- when you first felt overloaded or overworked or overwhelmed.”

Dr. Beverly Thorn, a University of Alabama psychologist who specializes in stress, says one of the downsides of the repetitive anxiety dream is that the mere fact we’re having the same dream over and over stresses us out.

“We think ‘Oh my god, what does this mean? Why is this happening repeatedly?’” she says. “You set yourself up for being anxious about it and then it’s more likely to happen again. Instead, try thinking, ‘This is a normal process. This, too, shall pass.’”

She also says it’s important to reassure yourself that it’s only a dream.

“The brain does lots of wild things while we’re asleep and a lot of them have no real basis in reality,” she says. “Look at violent dreams: we don’t exactly know the purpose for them, but they’re normal and in no way suggest you’re going crazy. The more you normalize an anxiety dream and turn your attention to other things in your life, the more you’ll relax and you won’t be bothered by the dream much longer.”

Do you have any recurring anxiety dreams? Leave a comment telling us about it.

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