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Side Effect of Vegetarianism?

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  • rock127
    rock127 Posts: 369 Member
    I went vegetarian in late 2004 and kept with it until early November, 2012 when I decided to add fish to my diet (for many reasons, but they're irrelevant to this).

    Backing up a little, sometime during 2009 I began having extremely vivid nightmares somewhat sporadically. Off and on every few weeks, I'd go a week where every night, I dreamed about truly awful things. A lot of the dreams still haunt me a bit. >.>

    Anyway, before I went pescetarian I had heard/read somewhere (don't remember where) that vegetarianism can cause a deficiency which can mess with sleep and dreams. I'm not sure if perhaps this is merely the placebo effect, but since I went pescetarian I've had only one nightmare like I used to.

    So here's the question: does anyone know of any data or anecdotal accounts related to this? I have googled it, but I can't seem to find anything on it. I'd like to know if this is a coincidence or if maybe I was very low on something essential that my body needed.

    Other potentially relevant things:
    - I tried a bunch of different things to get rid of the nightmares including: stop watching/reading/playing anything violent (I like horror movies, so this sucked and didn't help one bit); stop eating late at night; relaxation exercises before sleep; sleeping alone; sleeping without any white noise; sleeping with white noise; foods that are supposed to calm you (chamomile, etc.); avoiding spicy foods; no screen-time close to bed; thinking about happy things before bed
    - the nightmares seemed to happen whether I was stressed or not
    - the nightmares tended to be very violent
    - they stopped pretty quickly after I went pescetarian, and I've only had one since then (though I have had regular, run of the mill nightmares - being late to something, failing a final, etc.)

    LOL!

    Nightmares connected with veggi diet??? :huh: First of it's kind I hear this. Deficiency related to veggi?? :noway:

    Strange! I guess you can check out with a Physiatrist if it's getting serious as it might be linked to some thought process only and has no relation between veggi,deficiency and nightmares .
  • albertabeefy
    albertabeefy Posts: 1,169 Member
    LOL!

    Nightmares connected with veggi diet??? :huh: First of it's kind I hear this. Deficiency related to veggi?? :noway:

    Strange! I guess you can check out with a Physiatrist if it's getting serious as it might be linked to some thought process only and has no relation between veggi,deficiency and nightmares .
    Well, lets be honest - you can be nutrient deficient on ANY category of diet if you don't eat proper nutrients ...

    You're from India where a vegetarian diet has been common for ... oh, around 1,500 years ... :smile: ... and a large majority of Indian vegetarians still consume plenty of dairy - giving them the B12 that so many western vegetarians (over half of them) and vegans (depending on study between 80 -93% of them) are deficient in.

    In the US and Canada it's very common for people to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet without realizing they should (in the case of vegetarians) and MUST (in the case of vegans) supplement b12.
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