Chocolate 'can give you nightmares'

Chocolate may aggravate a sleep disorder in which people act out violent nightmares.

About one in 200 people, mostly men, suffer from the condition, called rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, or RBD.

Normally, people are paralysed while dreaming, but those with RBD thrash about and shout in their sleep.

The sufferer acts out what's happening in his dream - which could mean punching and kicking their partner.

Researchers were first alerted to the chocolate link by a patient who lashed out during recurrent dreams in which he tried to protect his home against intruders.

The patient had found that the outbursts happened after he ate chocolate biscuits, ice cream or syrup.

Robert Vorona, from the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in the U.S. state of Virginia, said the problems started after the patient suffered head injuries in a car accident.

But chocolate made the symptoms much worse.

'Far be it from me to say chocolate caused the problem,' Vorona told the magazine New Scientist.

'All it probably did was exacerbate it.'

In a report due to appear in the journal Sleep Medicine, Vorona suggests chocolate might help block a natural process that paralyses sleepers when they dream.

He has successfully treated the man with a sedative, but says the symptoms recur if he eats chocolate.

Maurice Ohayon, from the Sleep Disorders Centre at Stanford University, California, stressed there was no evidence linking chocolate to violent sleep patterns in the general population.

'There's no cause for panic or to stop eating good chocolate,' he added.

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