We’re all familiar with “A Christmas Carol” and the old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge who achieves enlightenment after a night of ghostly visits. But it turns out that Scrooge’s haunts might have been helped along by something he ate or drank.

Eating and drinking (especially the extreme forms practiced throughout the holiday season) can impact your body enough to cause memorable dreams, nightmares, and sometimes hallucinations.

Below, I’ll explore the mental effects of holiday food through the lens of Scrooge’s misadventures. What actions might explain Scrooge’s nocturnal visits from a troupe of formidable ghosts? What does it mean for you? Let’s find out…

He Could Have Eaten a Hallucinogenic Food

I’m not saying that old Ebenezer was purposefully tripping on magic mushrooms. Quite a few foods might have contributed to his visions, or even cause you to see some weird things after Christmas dinner.

Moldy Bread

Specifically, Moldy rye bread. Ergot or (Claviceps Purpurea) is a fungus common on grasses, cereal crops, and ryes. It’s also the source of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Scrooge’s cold, wet, pantry would have favored the growth of this fungus, which causes hallucinations when ingested.

Ergot has such extreme effects that researchers Linnda Caporael and Mary L. Matossian have linked it to the Salem Witch Trials. If it could have caused that hysteria, it could have caused Scrooge’s ghostly episode.

Nutmeg

Nutmeg becomes psychoactive when taken in large quantities. How much? More than the amount that usually dusts a mug of eggnog. It would take more than two tablespoons (two whole seeds) to produce any hallucinogenic effects. Nutmeg has mind altering properties because it contains myristicin, a chemical similar to amphetamine and mescaline.

Would Scrooge consume enough nutmeg to trip? In his day, men were sometimes known to carry around their own nutmeg graters in case an appropriate beverage presented itself. Nutmeg was used for headaches, and turkeys were even stuffed with it. While it’s unlikely that he was judiciously grinding copious amounts of nutmeg into his eggnog, it’s almost certainly something he could access. You shouldn’t worry though, unless you’re really planning on overindulging in nutmeg this holiday season.

Fish

Hallucinatory fish poisoning, or ichthyoallyeinotoxism, is a rare type of food poisoning that causes central nervous system disturbances, especially hallucinations and nightmares. Ciguatera poisoning is the most well-known type of hallucinatory fish poisoning. Fish become contaminated with ciguatoxins when they eat the toxin-producing seaplant, dinoflagellates. They can also become contaminated by eating another fish with ciguatoxins in its system.

Eating exotic fish usually causes hallucinatory fish poisoning, so it’s unlikely that London-dwelling Scrooge would have this to blame for his visit by ghosts.

What this means for your holiday: If you’re hoping to avoid holiday hallucinations, steer clear of strange new fish, don’t overdose on the nutmeg, and check your bread twice for suspicious mold spores.

He Could Have Been Over-Caffeinated

If Scrooge was in fact such a “tight-fisted hand at the grindstone”, maybe he owed his disciplined work ethic to profuse amounts of caffeine. And too much caffeine could lead to hallucinations, says this Durham University Study.

The researchers found that heavy caffeine users–those who drink the amount in seven cups of coffee or more a day–were more likely to have hallucinations or hear voices than low caffeine users.

Why does this happen? It might be stress, which caffeine tends to heighten, even physiologically. A stressed body releases the hormone cortisol, and a stressed and caffeinated body releases even more. The researchers believe the extra release of cortisol might be where the hallucinations come in, but they need to do more research to tell for certain.

What it means for your holiday: If you’re sleep deprived over the holidays, go ahead and have more caffeine, but draw the line at seven cups.

He Could Have Eaten Some Cheese

Could cheese cause vivid dreams? A study by the British Cheese Board suggests there might be some truth to this–if Scrooge had nodded off and dreamt of Marley, that is. The study found that consuming different types of cheese could encourage different types of dreams. Listen to this NPR spot to find out more.

Other scientific studies investigating a cheese-dream connection are limited. But preliminary results of a study on vitamin B-6, of which cheese is an excellent source, produced some compelling information. The results showed that people taking higher doses of vitamin B-6 reported higher dream salience; their dreams were more vivid, emotional, colorful, or just plain bizarre.

What it means for your holiday: If you want to have vivid dreams, taking a tour through the old holiday cheese plate might not be a bad idea.

He Might Have Just Eaten Too Much and Nodded Off

Scrooge lived alone. He also was trying to save money by keeping his house sparsely lit. Darkness + quiet = a perfect recipe for nodding off in the easy chair. Scrooge could have drifted off to sleep as soon as the stimulation provided by his sparse dinner had ended. Eating just before bed might be the perfect recipe for weird dreams, including those featuring the return of a deceased former boss.

Food has been shown to affect the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain that control time spent in rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep. You are most likely to dream in REM sleep.

For example, the chemical tyramine-a (found in dairy, meat, poultry and fish) increases brain levels of noradrenaline, also called norepinephrine. Noradrenaline produces the body’s response to fear and is sometimes even referred to as the “fight or flight” chemical. If your noradrenaline levels peak and you have a nightmare, your heart rate increases and your muscles tense up in response. Your heightened response to the visions in your nightmares would make them more memorable upon waking. Noradrenaline also makes blood pressure rise which could make dreams more nightmarish.

Other experts suggest a less complex explanation for vivid dreams following a late night binge. With an uncomfortably full stomach, you tend to toss and turn more, waking yourself up and interrupting your dreams. Dream interruptions often lead to heightened memories of the dream and the general sense that you’ve had more dreams than usual.

What it means for your holiday: If you tend to have nightmares, you might want to steer clear of the fridge on your way to bed. Those holiday leftovers could wreak havoc on your dreams.

He Might Have Had Too Much “Holiday Spirit”

It was hardly uncommon for gentlemen in those days to have a “nightcap” (stiff drink) before bed. They thought it might keep them warm throughout their nights like the actual nightcaps they wore on their heads. Scrooge wanted to save money on coal for heating, so he might have indulged in this nightly ritual. Little did he know that drinking so close to bedtime can lead to disturbed sleep and nightmares.

Alcohol interferes with REM sleep and leads to frequent sleep interruptions, just like overeating. So again, you can remember your dreams more vividly. Also drinking alcohol suppresses REM sleep and your brain tries to make up for lost time later on. So, in the morning, your brain might try to cram in some REM sleep and your dreams might become more bizarre and frightening as result.

What it means for your holiday: Craving a holiday night cap? Just drink it at least three hours before bedtime or prepare for some nightmares.

He Might Have Had an Alcohol Problem

Without any concerned family or friends to stage an intervention, Scrooge could have been a closet alcoholic. In rare cases, chronic alcohol abuse could lead to psychosis, the state of losing contact with reality.

Alcohol is a neurotoxin that can have many damaging effects on the brain. It can even induce alcohol related psychosis. Psychosis has been observed:

• during heavy intoxication
• as a symptom of alcohol withdrawal
• in disorders resulting from years of alcohol dependency

Long time alcoholics might be thiamine (B1) deficient which could lead to Korsakoff syndrome, a brain disorder associated with hallucinations, loss of memory, and confabulation.

What it means for your holiday: Even if you’ve had one too many eggnogs, you probably won’t start having visions. Alcohol induced psychosis is a concern for chronic alcohol abusers.

He Could Have One of These Conditions

Aside from one-off actions that might lead strange visions, some seemingly commonplace medical conditions cause hallucinations. Many of them could result from dietary choices like, gastroenteritis, gastritis, peptic ulcers, vitamin B12 deficiency, and low blood sugar. Scrooge could have suffered from any of these, and been none the wiser.

What it means for your holiday: Having a blood sugar crash after a unwise cookie binge? It might be the reason you’re hearing friendly voices telling you to eat even more…

A Hallucination Sidenote  

Don’t get too scared. Food-induced hallucinations like these occur rarely. But experiencing a hallucination doesn’t automatically diagnose you with mental illness.

This video explains how anyone can hallucinate:

Pass the Sugar Plums, Please

So there could be an easy explanation for what happened to Ebenezer Scrooge. The ghosts he saw might have been encouraged by beef, gravy, or an underdone potato. Now that you know what you know about the possible effects of holiday eating, you can prepare accordingly.

The hallucinations are pretty rare so you probably don’t need to worry about that. The worst your holiday eating and drinking will probably do is cause nightmares and disturbed sleep. Luckily, it’s not totally out of your control. This blogger has some advice to ensure your dreams are full of sugar plums and not sinister spirits:

• Eat dinner about 4 hours before bed.
• Stop drinking (everything) 90 minutes before bed.
• If you do have late night snacks, keep them high in carbohydrates and medium to low on the protein. A slice of whole wheat toast topped with peanut butter or cheese is an excellent choice.
• Steer clear of anything too acidic, like pasta with red sauce, that might lead to acid reflux.

Sweet dreams and happy holidays!

Resources

Primary

Durham University: High Caffeine Intake Linked to Hallucination Proneness

Med Scape: Alcohol-Related Psychosis

Centre Antipoison: Hallucinatory Fish Poisoning (ichthyoallyeinotoxism): Two Case Reports From the Western Mediterranean and Literature Review

NIH: Effects of Pyridoxine on Dreaming: a Preliminary Study

Additional

Bon Appetit: Foods That Make You Hallucinate

New Scientist: The Nightmare Before Christmas

Psychology Today: Psychoactive Spices – Bon Appetite!

NPR: Study: Eating Cheese Can Alter Your Dreams

Live Strong: Do B Vitamins Give People Vivid Dreams?

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell communicates about health and wellness every day as a non-profit Program Manager. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics from the College of William and Mary, and loves to investigate what changes in healthy policy and research might mean for the future. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Holiday Hallucinations: Can You Really Have Visions of Sugar Plums? appeared first on Law Street.

I was going to attempt to be more upbeat about the law this week, but I’m not there yet. Sorry in advance.

Anyway, one of my favorite people on the planet has decided to move across the country. I’m devastated. Inconsolable. Lonely. Sad. Jealous. Miserable.  [Insert other dramatic adjective.] The reason for my friend’s cross-country trip is that she is chasing her dreams. She took the brave steps of leaving her job, breaking her lease, selling her belongings, and pursuing an uncertain goal. She’s so brave, but I could literally never.

That’s the problem: my friend is following her gut, and I haven’t listened to mine in years. If I am going to be completely honest here, I’ve not been completely satisfied with the decisions that I’ve made in my life these past three or four years. It’s nobody’s fault buy my own, so I’m hoping that Law Street readers will use my story as a cautionary tale.

The gist of this story is to not be afraid to follow your instincts in life. I know that I always went with my gut when I was younger — specifically in high school and college. I think that as I grew older, and became an “adult” in my mind, I stopped trusting myself. Instead of doing what I felt was right for my own life, I jumped on a path that seemed to make the most sense.

I graduated college in 2008 and started my job two days later. I had no time to transition from the unrealistically fantastic experience of college to the very adult and very un-fun world of paying rent and bills. I freaked out about that change, and I have yet to stop freaking out. I decided then that I had to start doing adult things: working certain jobs and ultimately applying to graduate school. In making those adults decisions, though, I have been unfulfilled in my life. Here’s hoping you don’t find yourself in a similar position.

I’ve mentioned before the fact that I knew law school wasn’t for me. What I haven’t mentioned is that after my 1L summer, I called my parents and floated the idea by them of dropping out of law school. Being the amazing parents that they are, they said that I should think about it longer, mainly because they wouldn’t want me to have the legacy of a quitter (Side note: the old “we’re not angry at you, just disappointed” move STILL works. How do parents do that?!). I thought about it for a while longer, and with less than a week between 1L summer and the beginning of 2L year/OCI, I frantically called one of my law school friends. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: “Hey, are you back in town yet?”

Peter: “No, I’m still in New York.  I don’t know if I’m coming back. I don’t know if it’s worth being so unhappy.”

F: “Stop it — you have to come back. The hardest part is over, it can only get better.”*

P: “Yeah, but I don’t know if I want to be a lawyer. I don’t know if I want this life.”

F: “You’re being stupid, nobody wants this life! See you next week at school.”

P:  “You’re a terribly unsupportive friend and I will regret this immensely. Namaste.”**

And with that, I decided to come back to law school. I stayed and eventually graduated.  In a heartless, soulless way it all worked out, and is working out so far.

There are still so many things I want to do though, and I sometimes get a feeling that I should just “go for it,” and “take the next step.” Unlike my friend, though, I can’t bring myself to make decisions without a safety net beneath me. One of these days, though, it’s happening.

As the crapfest that is 2013 comes to an end (Thank You, Jesus!), I’ve decided that 2014 is the year of exploration, re-invention, and following my gut more.***  Who’s with me?!

*LIES

**This was at the beginning of my yogidom.

***Maybe

All .gifs provided by T. Kyle MacMahon from Reality TV .gifs.

Featured image courtesy of [Flickr]

—

Peter Davidson is a recent graduate of law school who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy.

Featured image courtesy of [Duncan Hull via Flickr]

Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Gut Check appeared first on Law Street.