Who Says Cheese Causes Nightmares?

Excerpt from Huffington Post blog

Who knew we’d snooze better after a snack on a slice of Cheddar or Stilton? That’s what the British Cheese Board says in study about the effect of cheese on sleep,

The study explored how cheese influences sleep and dreaming, and found that the impact of cheese on sleep was positive with regard to dreaming, rather than negative, which some believe happens when we sleep right after eating a meal.

Just in case you’ve never had one, a nightmare is also known as a “bad dream.” You know, the dreams that rattle you out of your sleep with fear or horror and you can’t get back to the zzz’s for some time. Maybe it’s stress or post-traumatic experiences that hurl your sleep into hell Can it be there’s anything going in the world right now that might induce stress?

Maybe the scenes inside your nighttime head are ones of danger, or psychological and physical distress. In my dream scenes though, Danger equals (usually) Adventure, so that could be a good dream for me. Chased by cops or jumping from cliff edge to cliff edge … you know, wild escapades like that.

Then there’s the high-fever bad dream, which, if you’ve ever taken drugs, you’ll have replicated that hallucinatory dream without a fever. Sometimes there might not be an easy explanation for a nightmare. In that case, you can always just think that the Devil has risen in you, so start humming that old blues tune, Devil With Blue Suede Shoes, and that’ll help you feel better.

Eating before bed is commonly said to act as another potential spur for nightmares because it triggers an increase in the body’s metabolism and brain activity. But 200 people in the British Cheese Study say differently. These volunteers ate a small piece of cheese, two-thirds of an ounce, about a half an hour before they went to bed. They participated in this British study over a fourteen-day period, or as the Brits say: a fortnight (but what’s so “forty” about the number 14?)

The majority of these cheese-eating sleepers claimed positive results from consuming cheese before sleeping. The verdict: Cheese promotes good sleep.

Here’s where it wacks out: the type of cheese the participants ate gave them different types of dreams. The dreams produced were specific to the type of cheese. Blue Stilton-eaters had vivid dreams. Cheddar, the most consumed cheese in Great Britain, produced a dream-theme about celebrities. Cheshire cheese people said they had “nice sleeps” but dreamless. Red Leicester cheese people dreamed nostalgia, about things in their childhood or families. Lancashire cheese eaters dreamed about work.

These cheeses are all British. I wonder what happens after eating French cheese before sleep. Does Brie before bed bring dreams about singing on a rooftop with Edith Piaf, or give us a chance to dream-perform in a video with the French rapper Abd al Malik? Does Camembert before bed drive us into a fast-paced Tour de France dream?

But what about sex? What can cheese enhance there?! I’ll get a post up when that study is completed.

Back to cheese, though. Let’s not even think about the scary prospect of what kind of sleep results after eating American processed pre-sliced yellow cheese-plastic.

A True Mutt of the 21st Century: a monk on a skateboard in China

(More about this skateboarding monk here: http://bit.ly/monk_skateboarding)

Now we’re talking about the  mutt condition! Who says a Buddhist monk can’t skateboard? Or why not a little ping-pong…and then pray?

This proves my theory that no matter how we’re “labeled,” we fit other categories as well. It’s part of the human condition. Help work to stomp out the trap of labels and categories for people.

Thought for the day:

Are you what others think you are, or are you what you think you are? Who are you going to let define you?

A Lump of Pure Gold…

…the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.

If only wisdom could spread that far, from so little.

Thought for the Day: While experience adds to wisdom, it doesn’t always lessen mistakes.

Welcome to the New World, China

There’s a color war going on in China.

It’s the kind of race battle we’re still trying to wrap our hands around in parts of the U.S. (consider the mixed race couple that was denied a marriage license in Louisiana…and that’s in 2009! Who forgot to tell that judge that we have a multiracial President?)

Lou Jing is Mandarin-speaking 20-year-old who competed in Shanghai’s version of American Idol. She’s the focus of a passionate public debate: what does it mean to be Chinese. And it’s all about the color of her skin. Lou Jing’s mother is Chinese, her father an African-American whom she’s never met.

For sure, it’s a controversy that boosts ratings. Wouldn’t Simon Cowell be all over  this?

China doesn’t easily accept mixed-race children as Chinese. When a child is born the  parents have to register the child as belonging to one of the fifty-six government-approved ethnic groups. There are no mixed-race categories. We have that same battle here in the U.S., only we have four groups: Black, White, Asian, Hispanic. Sometimes Native American and Pacific Islander are bunched in with Asian. There’s always the Other box – that’s me. You can read my brief bio here about what I used to write on race forms: 100-yard dash.

On rare occasion, a form lists Multiracial. We need that on EVERY form.

While the U.S. is just now rising out of its shame about race-crossing, what happened here to the Chinese pride about MADE IN CHINA?

Not everything that is faced can be changed …

But nothing can be changed until it is faced.    ~ JAMES BALDWIN.

I’ve figured out that if we are to live a life laced with possibility, it means meeting challenges and setbacks straight on, nothing sideways. With blinders removed, we can look at life’s bigger picture, and dive into the unknown.

Don’t you love that, though? The mystery,  adventure, and challenge of this exploration — this explosion called life.

Anyway, it’s better than the alternative.