Well, to give you an idea I started actively dreaming when I was 8 years old, 41 years ago and back then I could influence my dreams to dream what I want. I was lacking self-awareness up until I came across an article by Dr. Stephen LaBerge in an Omni-magazine called "Power Trips: Controlling Your Dreams" in 1987. Back then there wasn't a lot of good information on how to actually dream so I ended up becoming my own best teacher through trial and error because for me, dreaming was about having control, influence, and artistic license to create dream experiences I wanted to have, not the often random, noisy and weird ones that happen with passive dreaming or the wildness of our subconscious.

Not having the internet and all the misinformation and inventive gimmicks that we have today spared me from spinning the wheel on ineffectively blindly throwing darts in hopes of a bullseye and lots of advice on dreaming is exactly that. Inventive gimmicks that do not address foundational dream development and will only make a person spin their wheels who may want more skill and development with their dream experience.

I've helped a lot of people stuck on inventive dream gimmicks go from having one or two lucid dreams in 2 years of youtube videos and trying every recommended herb, supplement, crystal, etc to actually developing dreaming as a skill with knowledge backed by research that ardent dreamers such as myself and others do. But then I've been involved with some dream research as well as part of the ISAD with many actual dream researchers as friends over the years. On top of that, I'm very skilled at it from over 40 years of active dream programming as part of my practice.

If you understand the neuroscience of dreaming and how the brain develops or atrophies with dreaming in a manner that is similar to how we either develop our muscles or not. Dreaming emerges from information processing in the brain, and requires neural pathways and neurons to compute and render the dream interface.

The difference between developed dreamers and people who have stunted dream development is well studied by this point, so much so every region of the brain that is involved with processing dreaming has been mapped out with fMRI studies on dreaming. What they discovered is people who regularly dream have a higher density of white matter or neural pathways than people who don't. They also discovered in other regions grey matter density (actual neurons) is higher for specific dream tasks in those who can have lucidity etc than those who do not. This is the part of dream development 99% of the internet has zero clue on unless they are into neuralscience, most think it's just magic when it's really a natural process that takes place in every mammal and some birds.

To develop neural pathways those pathways need to be stimulated repeatedly over time so the mind learns to automate certain skills we learn. Language is a prime example of how our brain hardwires as we grow up to learn to speak. If a child is not introduced into language and grows up while the brain is still developing neural pathways up until the mid-'20s and the brain hardens (meaning no room left for new neural pathways so the brain has to now repurpose existing ones to adapt new skills). A feral adult can start to learn the language but will never learn to speak it fluently because the framework of developed neural pathways for language never happened.

They have stunted language development.
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

Well, dreaming is also a type of language between our conscious and subconscious minds. We also learn to dream and develop neurologically the more we participate with our dreams because this act of participation is providing stimulation which is helping develop neural pathways, or keeping them active so they are not repurposed for other tasks. Without use or stimulation, these pathways decline and go into atrophy and we actually see that in our dream content when certain aspects of dreaming is offline such as loss of sensory perception in dreaming. People who can only have audible/visual dreams when in fact dreams should be all five-senses in replay. This is because certain regions of the brain for those other lost senses are offline during the rendering of the dream content at 'run-time'.

If we don't participate in our ability to dream, the brain atrophies and our ability to dream becomes stunted. Just like our muscles will atrophy if we don't exercise them with a routine. Most people by the age of 60 will lose their ability to recall a dream by 99.98% from when they were 20. A staggering loss because most people don't treat dreaming like a developmental skill that needs regular routine and participation.

Here is a study on Age and dream recall and you will see the decline in dream recall with age, one of many studies out there but a solid study.
[link to www.frontiersin.org (secure)]

So the key to dreaming is the stimulation of neural pathways and neurons that produce the dream content so they develop and adapt for this skill, just like language development. In age and frequency studies most people opt out of dream participation in their lives and lose the ability to dream altogether. Many people have come to me with not having remembered a dream in a decade or longer to end up recovering from that problem through proper stimulation training for dream memory. The oldest person I worked with was 77 and hadn't remembered a dream in over a decade, started following a dream plan and dream routine for memory, and boom... like a kid in a candy store it all started to emerge and he was elated because the dreams were all about his most treasured memories and moments flooding back in. And that was it for him no interest in anything else because just having his dreams coming back for memory only was more than enough. I've helped people in the 60+ age range, the 50+ which believe it or not they come back really fast and of course younger. The ones I think struggle the most are the young adults and teens because they don't have the discipline to keep a routine going. The best dreamers I've had have been 30+ likely because they are more disciplined at sticking to a routine and realize the effort they put in is creating the results by this point.

If you want to participate in your already existing 3-5 dreams, it has to become an active skill. Not a passive skill as in just going to sleep and hoping you have a dream. This means you have to take the time to prepare to dream, and then prepare to remember the dream because the act of regular dream recall is what stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex where our dream recall takes place and those neural pathways come out of atrophy or if under 25 actually develop properly for dream recall. Read the fMRI research here on dream recall.
[link to www.frontiersin.org (secure)]

Since we have a dreaming mind that needs memory, perception and awareness to complete the fullness of a dream experience, each region of the brain that takes part in processing that information needs to be developed through simulation training (the act of getting those neural pathways to repeat the same task over and over again so they develop for that task ie stimulated).

So why eating cheese may or may not help you dream can be easily explained once you understand that dreaming is an active skill like learning to play the piano, draw a picture, speak a language and we develop this skill as we do any skill in life no exception and the brain adapts for this skill as it does every other skill we learn.

Is the cheese going to stimulate all the regions of the brain that produce the rendered dream content? Is the cheese going to do the work for you so this stimulation happens? It's like saying eating cheese will help you build muscle because it has protein but then never going to the gym to exercise because the cheese has protein and will just get the job done for you is misleading. Yes, eating cheese will help promote muscle growth if you exercise. If you just eat the cheese and don't do the exercise it will contribute the minimal amount of its protein as needed by the body and nothing more.

Cheese has fat in it and our brain does need the fat, so yes it could help promote better dream development but you still need to do the exercise to get the full benefit so neural pathways in atrophy come out of atrophy.

I've helped a lot of people over the years with dream development and always they have the same story of doing things they read on the internet for the quick-fix hope it helps me dream recommendations until they find out dreaming is really more about routine and training. Most never worked with stimulation training and the impact on their dream lives was dramatic.

For example, one lady in her 50s was an ardent dreamer she was heavily invested in dreaming for 30 years taking many courses and could recall her dreams every night except she only had visual audible dreams and seldom had lucid dreams despite all her efforts. She started doing stimulation training for dreaming and not only did her dream recall frequency improve, for the first time in 30 years she was able to have taste/touch/smell come back into the dream replay and her lucid dream frequency went from a couple a year to several a week.

How did she get to touch/taste/smell back online? Without a fad drug, a fad diet, and just simple training techniques to address sensory-replay in dreaming? Well, you just need to know how to train for that so the neural pathways for dream sensory-replay are being stimulated and it starts to emerge. Sure it took 1 week for touch, another week for taste, and another week for the smell but that is often the case with a developing skill, it takes time for the brain to adapt neurologically for those tasks.

I had another student big into lucid dreaming with very few successes in 2 years of chasing this skill from youtube videos etc to having regular lucid dreams in a very short period of time told me he wishes he had come across the idea that dreaming is like going to the gym and training the brain is needed because he realized he wasn't addressing the actual requirement of getting that region of the brain active through repeat stimulation. Doing simulation training for self-awareness suddenly improved his lucid dream frequency as it has many others I've helped.

This is why I don't promote any fad, gimmick, or trick to dream because a short-term quick-fix often has reduced gains overtime for anything. If the brain isn't developing neurologically it's just being chemically stimulated which doesn't promote the growth is all. Just learn to train the skill properly and bring the dreaming mind back online. Yes, it may take a week to get memory back first, then a few weeks to get other areas back but once they start to rehabilitate it gets easier and better the more you develop for dreaming.

I have a few people now that lucid dream every night just like me and no longer need to follow anyone courses and advice because they know how to address and recognize their own deficiencies themselves and adapt their dream training to fit their own requirements and that is my goal as a teacher, to get people the tools and techniques so they can progress knowing how to recognize atrophy and correct it for optimal dream experiences.

No one becomes a master pianist by just trying to play the piano in one day. Like any skill, we become masters of it through study, practice, routine and reap the results of our efforts. Having functional dreams where all regions of the dreaming mind are online and you can remember clearly, have full sensory-replay, and be fully self-aware is very rewarding. Especially if you are creative and enjoy creating your own dream worlds and content. Then it becomes a true art form where you are the dreamer, not the passenger of the subconscious.

Hope that helps explain why cheese may give a boost but ultimately won't help with the long-term development of this skill. Train that brain and get it out of stunted dream development and atrophy. That is when this practice becomes the next-level awesome sauce that it should be.