If anyone is struggling with sleep, I highly recommend episode 1-3 of the Huberman Lab podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-XfCl-HpRM), it has literally changed my life. Dr. Huberman is a Neurobiologist at Stanford and explains the science of sleep vs just telling you to not look at bright screens at night.
I struggled with sleeping for 20+ years, now I easily wake up early.
The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.
>The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.
For me I had to also really avoid light at night. F.lux or Windows Night Mode is not enough. You gotta suffer with strong indoor lightblocker glasses, or use e-ink or something at night.
And in the winter there sometimes isn't enough sun. You need a LOT of lightbulbs to make up the difference. A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.
The real test if this will help you: think back to a time when you were camping, or maybe a child at a summer camp in the woods, or a vacation somewhere without lots of light at night and where you got lots of sun in the morning. Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.
> A minimum of 10 100-watt bulbs in my experience, and even more is better.
Plugging in some rough numbers, that seems equivalent to a ~170W LED flood light. A 200W version is $70 from Amazon (e.g. [1]). Are the emitted wavelengths crucial or is such a lamp on a timer a viable way to get early "sunlight" in the winter?
That may have been exactly the article I saw, there's certainly more useful information in there than I can answer. I pretty much just took away MORE BULBS.
The setup that I have... I have 5 led flood lights, 1 3000K, 2 4000K and 2 6000K.
I point them at the ceiling to get diffused light. I use different combination of some on / off to get the right warmness depending the time of day. Ie. 3000K in early morning / late in the day. Combination of 3000K and 4000K for around 9am. 2 4000K if I feel sleepy.
They work quite well. I suggest trying it out if you have seasonal affective disorder or trouble sleeping
> Did your sleep schedule naturally shift to become more more regular? If it did, then light therapy has a very high chance of helping you.
You just made me feel I might be on the brink of a startling discovery. Holy hell, I have tried a lot to improve sleep. I haven't tried this. And while there was one confounding variable in my case with camping, it did indeed shift my sleep rhythm to the day/night cycle of the country I was in!
Also remember that when you're out camping, you're probably getting more exercise, too, not just sunshine. A walk in the sunshine is both walk and sunshine. The two in combination may explain more than sunshine alone.
I've thought about trying to simulate an outdoors awakening. With Phillips hue lights you can simulate the sunrise, then a smart thermostat for having the air become warmer. You could play bird chirping noises as well. Can't do much about making the air smell different in the morning like it does outdoors.
you can definitely have one of those perfume sprayers, and there's bound to be lots of companies making a "morning woods" fragrance somewhere that you can plug in there
I also tried colored LED lighting in my computer space. I turn it down and red, kind of like those rooms where people develop photographic film. It works wonders for getting me to feel tired after a while.
I worked some pretty grueling swinging shift work as a Stationary Engineer in a high pressure steam boiler plant for a couple of years. I bought a "bright light therapy" lamp and it seemed to make a difference for a while, but I was never able to make it's usage a sustainable habit. Just throwing its existence out there in case it could be helpful to someone.
The suggestion is sunlight without sunglasses after waking up. That is extremely bright light hitting your eyes. Wake-up alarm clocks may be helping you, but not as a substitute for whatever is being suggested here.
> Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up.
I live in Florida - our license plates don’t call it the sunshine state for nothing - but even here the sun doesn’t rise at 5am. Short of blasting my retinas with bright lights soon after reveille, I don’t see where I’m going to obtain sunlight this early in the morning.
(It’s 07:21 local time now, and the sun is just now coming up. It’ll be a beautiful sunrise, but I’ve already been awake 2.5 hours…)
I have one of the Phillips alarms [0]. Do not currently use it, but regularly did for a year or two.
I don't feel it's bright enough to mimic true sunlight, but it is much brighter than typical light sources. Especially at full brightness on a nightstand.
I've never had problems waking up, so can't speak to those who do. But I would absolutely say it made the experience of waking up smoother and more pleasant.
I'd describe it as a normal waking being jarring, even without alarm, where I have a brief moment of confusion as my brain snaps into consciousness.
Whereas with the light almost every morning was a smoother transition, where I rose to consciousness more gradually, while still sleeping, and then basically opened my eyes already awake.
Even now. I've been awake since 5, it's now 9 am and we're just getting to the point where I would consider it day time. And that's 3 months away from the darkest day of the year. Changing to standard time changes a bit for a bit, but up here in Canada we go to work and come home in the dark.
I'm pretty allergic to Smart Home sort of stuff, but I've wondered if it makes sense to get a bunch of lights I program to be "Bright and sunlike" during the day and "dim and reddish" at night for my home.
It seems like this might be a passive way to add in some of the benefits of "morning walk in the sun" and "avoiding screens at night", and one that might be more robust to winter. Obviously the lifestyle improvements stemming from going for a walk and not doomscrolling twitter go beyond the light hitting you.
Man, I was able to go from barely able to wake up with alarm at 8:30 to waking up at 7 or even before by my own, even on weekend when I was up a little longer. And all it took was to force my self 2 times to get out of bed and have a coffee on the balcony to soak up the sun. That podcast is golden. I think the main help was to be able to go to sleep earlier thanks to tuning the system. I feel tired at 10-11 PM. That never happened to me before.
> Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up
Sure, that's super easy in summer. I wake up naturally no problem when the rise is up. I've thought many times of getting sun-equivalent lights that I can schedule to turn on for this reason.
Um, it actually does, if you have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder (for which one of the treatments is light therapy, aka getting sunlight in your eyes[1]).
Conversely, I'm not aware of any sleep disorders that are treated by drinking a glass of water in the morning.
I don't think that you have a sleep disorder, and so your anecdote isn't even usable as anecdata for those of us who do (including the top-level comment, which reads "I struggled with sleeping for 20+ years" - this isn't just "occasionally sleeping poorly").
It's not. I couldn't get through the first 2 episodes without rolling my eyes every 10 minutes. It's full of all the standard neuro-bunk that is everywhere these days. Making very obvious points about human behavior that neuroscience does not illuminate, but making it sound otherwise ("kids are more impulsive because their brains are different"...duh). And cherry picking studies to confirm some "blow-your-mind" point that is actually much more fuzzy and contentious than he is willing to describe ("brain rewiring ONLY occurs during sleep"...not remotely supported by any study anywhere, and conveniently he never posts any sources or studies in his description or on his website). The cherry on top was noticing that he invited noted neuro-bollocks offender Matt Walker (who wrote a book called "Why We Sleep" which literally never even attempts answer the titular question). I'd pass on this one.
I agree. Listened to the episode on ADHD and it was pretty lame, unstructured and somewhat wrong at times. Also saw there is an episode with Lex Fridman, so I guess it's the same pseudo intellectual bla bla bla sponsor juice. Not the best advertising for those big name universities, tbh.
Btw. I can wholeheartedly recommend the "big biology" podcast, if you are interested in biology in general.
I needed better sleeping and tried various things. In the end I stopped drinking coffee and tea. For me its now just hot or cold water, sometimes a herbal tea, and an occasional beer or orange juice.
First caffeine-free weekend I had terrible headaches, than came weeks of strong urges (I felt I was an addict). In these weeks I just fell asleep on the couch or even at my desk at work. I slept a lot these weeks, during the day, early in the evening, like my body had catching up to do.
Now I'm fine, I sleep like a baby. I feel really good and have strong concentration.
On moments I have a 'coffee urge' I take a little walk outside, for 10-20minutes. My colleagues know by now, I'm the guy who goes out once or twice a day for a little walk...
Reducing total caffeine intake has improved my sleep quality, but I find there are diminishing returns to making it nil consumption. My sweet spot is a single small cup of tea or coffee in the morning. Research suggests that some trace amounts of caffeine can remain in your system many hours.
Another anecdote: whenever I go off coffee I just feel a bit more dumb, and I don't like losing an easy mechanism to quickly boost my energy levels.
The first few weeks without caffeine are rough, then I just turn into a more boring version of myself: I go to bed early, have consistent energy levels throughout the day, and I'm a little less intelligent.
I don't really want my energy levels smoothed out throughout the day: getting out of the gate quickly in the morning and getting ahead of my goals for the day is far more important to me, and having a few hours each day where I'm really "on" is better than my brain being a little sluggish forever.
I don't personally have issues sleeping through the night though. (But with caffeine I do shift my sleep a bit later).
Cutting caffeine does seem to be a reasonable place to start for people who are having sleep issues, or anxiety, but for me I've decided the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
I can +1 this. I'm on caffeine now, but once a year or so I will "detox" from it to reset for a few months. The first days/weeks are exactly like you said.
The only difference is that after a month or so, I go back to coffee - just at a greatly reduced volume. That first cup is absolutely heavenly.
Agreed, went caffeine-free almost 3 years ago and feel so much better. Had initial brain fog, and like you described some pretty debilitating headaches and migraines from the caffeine withdrawal, but it passed after a couple weeks.
If you're interested, I found a not-quite-coffee alternative that seems to satisfy my craving. It's a dandelion root substitute, the brand I drink is Dandy Blend. More like instant coffee than a good ground bean coffee but it does the job.
Totally anecdotal, but I went through a period of insomnia a few years age. It would take several hours to get to sleep. I realised that I had recently started taking vitamin D supplements just before bed and figured it might be connected.
Changed to take the supplements in the morning and the insomnia went away.
Apparently D3 inhibits production of melatonin. Can't remember where I read this so not a hugely useful comment but I promise I didn't just make it up! Anecodtally, I've also experienced similar issues taking 1000 IU D3 before bed and having trouble sleeping. I moved the dose to the morning and Boom!, good sleep.
That's a good point. There's also a bunch of other confounding factors which affect sleep. E.g. circadian rhythm, variance of sleep/wake times, how physically tired you are, how much recent REM/deep and whether there is a deficit, how stressed you are, screen usage before bed, eating close to bed time, exercise close to bedtime, etc... Maybe the Vitamin D3 taken close to bedtime is enough to tip some people over the edge to some kind of insomnia, given the presence of other melatonin inhibitors.
Same here but mostly brown hair except red in the beard. I suspect it's not limited to red haired folks but that the gene occurs in people with relatively northern ancestors (Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia).
IIRC there were lots of red haired people in the continental Celtic population too. Would they have the same adaptation for less need of sunlight?
I read somewhere that white skin may have evolved to help supplement the vitamin D required in Europe because the prevailing crops (cereal, grains) lacked vitamin D.
EDIT yeah here is the reference [1]:
> In the food-production theory, the cereal-rich diet of Neolithic farmers lacked vitamin D, so Europeans rapidly lost their dark-skin pigmentation only once they switched to agriculture, because it was only at that point that they had to synthesize vitamin D from the sun more readily.
My ancestors are all Scottish or Celtic going back as far as the point where people didn't move around much.
I've heard red-beards often referred to politely as gingerchins. Which is oddly fun to say.
Having worked for Scandinavian insurance companies, I can tell you that life insurance near to the arctic circle is much higher as people find it hard living without lots of light.
Sure but most people in the west have chronically low serum vitamin d levels. Proper D levels have a ton of other known beneficial effects including protecting against several types of cancer, proper calcium regulation, disease prevention etc etc.
The current recommendation is keeping serum levels at least above 30, and more like 40-60. Many many people aren’t in that range.
my doc orders the test every year at my physical exam. i'm not sure it would normally be included in blood tests they order for your physical (like cholesterol), at least in the US.
Improving sleep quality does not mean the same thing as alleviating symptoms of insomnia, exactly. It would appear vitamin D could improve quality in most people.
I had been living in an area that’s particularly gloomy in the later fall and winter months. My wife had not been feeling great. At her regular checkup, my wife was prescribed ergocalciferol for a rather pronounced vitamin D deficiency. She said she felt like a new person after taking it.
Has anyone here managed to reduce the frequency of waking to pee at night (e.g. by controlling liquid intake)? For me it’s 2 times/ night with difficulty going back to sleep so fairly huge disturbance.
Eliminate diuretics at least after lunch, like caffeine and alcohol. I would also recommend drinking more water throughout the day (vs other drinks). Reducing sugary consumption at least after lunch can also help.
Physical activity can also help. My theory is that it can help sitting at a computer all day can sometimes cause me to retain fluid and that it's the retained fluid that is being processed when lying flat. If you notice your calves/feet/etc being slightly swollen this could be a sign.
I always drink a glass of water before sleeping and never have to pee before morning. I'm not sure that's normal. How how are you drinking right before going to bed?
> At the end of the study, the data on 89 subjects (44 in intervention group and 45 people in placebo group) were examined.
And in the conclusion they add
> Based on the results of the present study, at the end of the study sleep score (PSQI) reduced significantly in vitamin recipients as compared with placebo recipients (P < 0.05). This difference was significant even after modifying confounding variables (P < 0.05).
It’s 44 vs 45 why don’t they use the simple language they started with. It would have been great if they also said how many people felt better by placebo alone.
I actually think they may need to use a different kind of glass or something in the future because people spend so much time indoors that they aren't getting exposed to the UV that induces the D3 production or whatever. And normal glass blocks it.
Where was this study done? Was it done in a place with mostly sunny days, or mostly cloudy and dark?
In the location where this study was done, what kind of lives to these people lead?
Do people living in more relaxed, sunny, quiet, dark-at-night environments sleep better than people who live in cities with constant street noise, much less direct sunlight, and more light pollution at night?
Megadosing D3 on the rare occasion is similar to gradually taking normal amounts as far as serum levels go. It's common to see in studies. You wanna be careful doing it without supervision obviously but I don't see why there would be a difference in a study if the hypothesis is that deficiency is causing the sleep problems.
As far as the study goes, it was significant at a p 0.05 level so will wait for replication.
I keep reading about these “IU”s on HN, what on earth are they? Here in the uk you just buy “Vitamin D” and take one pill per day. No fine-tuning, unless you need specialised therapy perhaps.
International units. OTC quantities tend to be quite low, e.g 300-400 IUs, which aren't sufficient unless you're also getting daily sunlight not through a window. 1000-2000 IU is better - widely regarded as safe and no cases I've ever read of of hypervitaminosis, but it's above usual OTC doses. 4000+ daily is pushing it and I have read of cases of toxicity above that, but if you're struggling to get serum levels up then perhaps it's needed.
One thing to be careful about in selecting a supplement is the reputation/testing of the brand since they are loosely regulated. Specifically, how accurate and even are the doses in each batch and capsule? 50 micrograms is small quantity to measure accurately and consistently unless the right equipment and process is followed. There have been a number of supplements and manufacturers over the years who's doses from batch to batch or even capsule to capsule vary wildly.
Honestly, OTC quantities vary depending on what is legal where you live. It has been 8-9 years since I lived in the US but nevertheless: At the time, you could buy 1000-2000iu strengths. I worked at a large pharmacy chain and stocked vitamins weekly.
Then I moved to Norway. One strength is sold in most stores - 400iu per tablet. You might be able to buy stronger in the pharmacy, but I had to have a prescription for a higher strength when I had low levels.
And to be fair, 2 of those store tablets keeps my levels high enough. So while 400 might be inadequate, 800 certainly isn't. Even without enough sunlight: I literally cannot get enough during the winter because the sun simply isn't strong enough when it happens to be up.
Is it possible they sell a lower strength because the nordic diet tends to include a lot of seafood which has vitamin D? Or is it just a legal thing about selling weaker supplements?
I don't know the answer to this. If I were to guess, though, it is more about selling reasonable strengths to folks self-treating. First, supplements are generally recommended to everyone living here as part of being healthy, and truly stressed for immigrants. Even eating fish just isn't always enough, especially if you do not have the very fair skin that is common here. Second.. well, melatonin was prescription when I moved here.
It would depend on individual ability to metabolize D3 and amount of outdoors sunlight and the extent that local food is fortified with D3. So everyone's situation is unique.
I'm confident that 2,000 IU daily is safe, though.
It would depend on individual ability to metabolize D3 and amount of outdoors sunlight and the extent that local food is fortified with D3
The issue is that I fairly far north. You can miss the entirety of daylight in December if you work first shift at a factory (there will be a glow of twilight as you go home). The sunlight we do get in the winter is of poor quality. I'm not even above the arctic circle - it gets worse up there with no direct sunlight. I'm not sure of the extent of food being fortified: I can't see where they've added it to the milk (for example). I could be wrong about this last bit.
There is a lot of fish in the diet, but nonetheless, they recommend the general population take some vitamin D in the wintertime.
Here in UK, like everywhere else, Vitamin D dosage is measured in IU.
You probably never noticed it, or your pills have low-strength dosages (400 IU), which are quite common to find in pharmacies, and personally I don't even bother with those.
Some figures to provide some perspective on the wild numbers thrown around in other comments. Recommended daily doses for adults for some vitamins are:
Eh as someone also in the UK this seems false. If you check the packaging it will (in my experience) always give you the dose is IU. I know someone recently prescribed Vitamin D, and again, it was a specific dose. If you take it as part of a multi-vitamin dosage may not be made as clear.
IUs are used in the UK - my prescription is given as "Colecalciferol 800unit capsules" and many supplements list it. Some only list the μg value though.
My vitamin D level is only optimal when taking an average of 11000 IU / day (D3 + K2). It hasn't improved my sleep quality. As an example, I woke up at 3:30 am this morning and feel like I haven't slept at all.
Not that I'm an expert in sleep but I would recommend assessing your cortisol levels - you can do a blood test and I think there are also saliva tests - if you are regularly waking up early. I'd also recommend reflecting on whether there are any chronic stressors in your life - sometimes these things affect you for so long you almost become unaware of them!
I guess you alrready know this but 11000 IU is a massive dose of D3 and probably isn't healthy long term.
My cortisol levels were way out of whack. Getting them under control helped. Definitely my first treatment resulting in real benefits.
For some of us, insomnia is a multi-factor disease. So I had to do All The Things. My sleep hygiene regiment is a superset of everything listed here.
Ultimately, I needed proper diagnosis and then treatment of my sources of chronic pain to attain somewhat healthy sleep patterns. Pinched nerves, aka "bone spurs", in my spine.
I definitely had to jump thru all the hoops to get to this point.
My naturopath prescribed supplements. Lots of stuff for night time, going to bed. Like chamomile tea, melatonin, magnesium ortate (for muscle pain), ashwagandha, and L-theanine. And some stuff to perk up in the morning, like DHEA drops. The general idea is to over time nudge the daily cortisol and adrenaline cycle back to "normal".
I'm not recommending this stuff. Just relating what I did, experimented with. For all I know, all the benefits were due to placebo effect. And being very motivated to fix my sleep.
I had first read up on each supplement. I figured none were harmful (to me). So the worst that'd happen is I'd waste some money.
2)
I'm skeptical of naturopathy and against homeopathy. In the future, I believe we'll call the good (useful) bits "nutrition", which will just be rolled up into wellness and eating right.
Probably the biggest benefit of having a naturopath (that I liked) was life coach stuff, being accountable to someone. In that way, I got lucky with the 3rd practitioner. The first two I consulted were total quacks.
3)
I did test my daily cortisol level cycle. Spit tests. At the time, the support for the accuracy of these tests was pretty thin. Even so, my tests before, during, after adopting my sleep hygiene regiment seemed to indicate that my cycle became "normal".
These tests seemed to correlation with my lived experience. Which means almost nothing. Self reporting is notoriously unreliable, which I've experienced many, many times.
Magnesium helps with that as well [1] (see my comment above in this thread). In general, magnesium is involved in lots of biological processes, but especially those involving hormones.
If OTC magnesium citrate upsets your stomach, maybe try the other variations. I settled on magnesium glycinate lysinate. (Cheaper than magnesium orotate, which also worked for me.)
Anaerobic exercise may have a temporary bad effect on cortisol, how are the long-term effects though? In moderation I suspect it is a net positive long-term.
It's a good question that I don't really know the answer to but I can offer some experience. I do a lot of running and 80% of my training is below the aerobic threshold, with 20% above (so anaerobic). After aerobic sessions you recover quickly and can do them day in day out for prolonged periods of time with no increase in chronic stress. E.g. running 100km/week. Effects are higher HRV, lower cortisol and lower resting heart rate. Anerobic workouts, on the otherhand (including any weights sessions I do), need to be done sparingly. The day after a hard workout your HRV will be lower, resting heart rate will be higher, cortisol will be higher. Too many anerobic sessions in a row and you'll start getting into over-training syndrome territory, so you really need to be careful! So I guess the TL;DR is the only way anerobic exercise decreases stress/cortisol is by not doing it or doing it sparingly. E.g. It is my opinion that people who only lift weights are probably unhealthy because they have consistently high levels of chronic stress.
I do a lot of running as well and have observed the same effects. After anaerobic sprints or a race of up to 10k, sleep HRV drops / HR is higher and running HR:pace is elevated for up to a week. However, usually this is then followed by some improvement in all of these metrics compared to the baseline before the hard workout. Anaerobic exercise builds/maintains especially fast-twitch muscles, and higher muscle mass has positive influence on many health markers; as we get older we slowly lose muscle mass, but the losses are predominantly fast-twitch muscles [1]. So I believe anaerobic workouts are very important, despite causing quite some stress temporarily. Totally agree they require a lot of recovery inbetween.
Unrelated, out of curiosity, when you say 80% of your training: is it in mileage/time? Or some effort metric like TRIMP, calories, avg. HR, or so? Or something else?
That's good you've observed the same effects and definitely agree that anaerobic training improves fitness and teh associated markers over time. When in my teens I did a lot of running but back then I didn't have a HR monitor and probably most of my training was anaerobic and still managed to improve well over the years. I suspect I was taking on high levels of stress which ultimately led me to quit running when I started university.
Interesting that you mention sleep HRV. I use the Oura ring and have observed that my sleep HRV is super super low at the moment, like 15/20ms but when I check it in the morning with my polar H10 strap then it will usually come out between 60-80ms. Tried to figure out what causes it but not had any luck so far. I don't think I'm over-training or have any other issues.
I follow Phil Maffetone's training methodology [1], which has worked quite well for me. So currently, 80% of my training by distance/time is between 135bpm and 145bpm. The training is mostly steady runs between 7km to 25km. The remaining 20% is a mixture of progression runs, speed training, and intervals.
Initially, for the first 6 months of training, all my training was below 145 bpm and was quite slow at 6min/km but now I can do 4.30min/km at 140bpm and I'm still getting faster!
Coincidentally I have the Oura ring too, and my sleep HRV oscilates around 100ms; haven't compared with a strap in the morning though. Strange that you get such low values, maybe something faulty with the ring, or finger placement? It's possible also that the absolute values are not extremely accurate, but the relative trends are. Garmin for example requires a strap to measure HRV stress, even though the watch has an optical HR sensor, which leads me to think optical sensors are not so precise.
What an amazing improvement to 4:30 pace at 140 bpm btw! I've had a similar relative improvement over the first year when I think about it, from around 7:00 to 5:20-5:30 at 140 bpm. But my training was mostly 1km intervals at high end of zone 3 (still quite below threshold), translating to a lot of tempo running on average, plus one session of 200s or 400s faster intervals per week. Been stuck with little progress for a while though, and was thinking to try a more polarized approach like yours with higher volume; thanks for explaining it!
Incorrect. The RDA and TUL amounts for vitamin D are wrong. 10k IU/day is safe. Dr. Fauci takes 6k IU/day.
My levels of 25(OH)D3 are optimal. It takes slightly over what the real average TUL should be because of my mass and apparently poor absorption.
Edit: Cortisol levels are fine. I also had a complete HPA/G/T workup by an endocrinologist. The results were unremarkable. I even had testing for pheochromocytoma, although this does not rule out other types of adenomas.
And no to that too. RDAs try to be one-size-fits-all guesstimates.
For Vitamin D3 in particular:
"The model developed for UL derivation was summarized in 1998 (IOM, 1998), and it acknowledged that the lack of data would affect the ability to derive precise estimates." [0]
Furthermore, an RDA and a UL doesn't work for D3 because the ranges across people don't harmonize to specific "safe" or "adequate" numbers for a given demographic. 1000 IU is too much for some people. [0]
Blood tests trump RDAs. I need over 10k IU per day, but this could cause hypercalcemia, calcification of tissues, and/or calcium kidney stones in other people.
Try taking a good magnesium supplement. It should be a chelate (for example magnesium glycinate), and depending on your diet somewhere around 2000mg/day of that (chelates are only about 8-15% elemental magnesium). Avoid magnesium oxide (which is what is in a lot of multi-vitamins), it's very poorly absorbed.
Most people are noticeable calmer and sleep better when they start supplementing magnesium. Magnesium deficiency is extremely common, and even if you eat a really good diet with lots of whole grains and vegetables you might not be getting quite enough (but in that case about half the above dose may be enough to top you off). Anyway, it won't hurt to try and it's not expensive... if it helps, the cost-benefit is huge.
Also a personal anecdote, I've gotten ocular migraines since my teenage years. Five or so years ago I read a study that seemed to have evidence supporting magnesium supplementation for migraines and figured I should try it. It works for me. I rarely get them anymore, but when I do it's almost always when I've run out of the supplement, forgotten to buy more, and haven't taken any for a few weeks (happened two days ago to me actually).
Yeap. Lots of specialists. Many areas are under investigation.
One is activation of the There is a possibility of an autoimmune disease like lupus or MS causing dysautonomia. I also have inappropriate sinus tachycardia and hypertension without obvious causes. All roads point towards the autonomic nervous system.
Anecdotal, but several accounts I heard from people I know (and some I’ve read — even in this HN discussion, but the most n=1 scientific is gwern) indicate you need to take the vitamin D early in the day or it would harm your sleep quality. It also makes sense biologically, given that you need sunlight to generate it yourself.
Again, anecdotal - but detrimental to my sleep if taken after midday. If I can’t take it until 10am, I skip that day
Yes, taking that much vitamin D every day puts you at risk of developing dangerously high blood levels. One of the things it can do is screw with your calcium levels which screws with your nerves which can, for example, make your heart beat abnormal.
Don’t do this without the advice of a doctor and regular serum level testing.
Magnesium (in the form of ZMA) is known to increase the vividness of dreams for some reason. Or maybe it's something else in ZMA. I did take it daily when I was lifting heavy, and I can confirm. It's a side benefit in my book, unless your dreams are nightmares.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Seriously though, I can attest that it seems to do something for sleep/dreams, though it's hard to pin down what. Either I remember more dreams, or maybe it makes dreams more distinct as opposed to merely "things you were thinking of as you fell asleep".
Another one of these "eggs are good"/"eggs are bad" flip flops that happens every few years. Before this the "science" was that too much vitamin D disrupts sleep. In fact it seems to have disrupted mine. It's 4AM, and I can't sleep even after taking a MJ brownie. I take 2000IUs daily and my values are "normal" now. And yet I've been suffering from insomnia shortly after I started taking this supplement. Who do I believe now, my own body or someone at the NIH?
Maybe, but I only take it when it's particularly bad, and only started recently, so I'm pretty sure it's not THC. If it's between Ambien (benzodiazepine, impossible to get off of) and a non-addictive alternative, I pick the latter. Besides, I'm pretty sure there will be another study in 2-3 years stating the exact opposite.
That being said the key to it all for a relatively healthy person is mental and physical fatigue and lack of stress.
On the other hand... my wife used to live near loading-unloading train station and worked at 2 jobs for some time. Takes her 10 minutes to fall asleep regardless.
Try doing the same in New York, to say nothing of places like Stockholm.
Getting outside a bit is a great advice most everywhere, though. It's not always going to produce a lot of vitamin D, when you wear clothes mostly covering your skin, but it has other advantages.
As the circadian rhythm is concerned, exposure to light through your eyes is what's important, not skin (though I believe for vitamin D levels skin contact matters). All that matter is that it's done in the morning and throughout most of the day, while avoiding blue light at night.
I struggled with sleeping for 20+ years, now I easily wake up early.
The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. Try morning walks for 1 week (without sunglasses) and your life will be changed.