Sleep issues

[Craig Brown]

Just a note of thanks for stating the obvious to all who did- cut back my fluid intake after about 3 hours before sleep and am sleeping great. If it was a snake...

[Reed Winn]

I found an interesting paper that is partly about sleep quality. It's an assortment of self-experiments done by a grad student apparently. I admire his rigor!

http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/117/

Little is known about how to generate plausible new scientific ideas. So it is noteworthy that 12 years of self-experimentation led to the discovery of several surprising cause-effect relationships and suggested a new theory of weight control, an unusually high rate of new ideas. The cause-effect relationships were: (1) Seeing faces in the morning on television decreased mood in the evening (>10 hrs later) and improved mood the next day (>24 hrs later), yet had no detectable effect before that (0–10 hrs later). The effect was strongest if the faces were life-sized and at a conversational distance. Travel across time zones reduced the effect for a few weeks. (2) Standing 8 hours per day reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative, even though more standing was associated with less sleep. (3) Morning light (1 hr/day) reduced early awakening and made sleep more restorative. (4) Breakfast increased early awakening. (5) Standing and morning light together eliminated colds (upper respiratory tract infections) for more than 5 years. (6) Drinking lots of water, eating low-glycemic-index foods, and eating sushi each caused a modest weight loss. (7) Drinking unflavored fructose water caused a large weight loss that has lasted more than 1 year. While losing weight, hunger was much less than usual. Unflavored sucrose water had a similar effect. The new theory of weight control, which helped discover this effect, assumes that flavors associated with calories raise the body-fat set point: The stronger the association, the greater the increase. Between meals the set point declines. Self-experimentation lasting months or years seems to be a good way to generate plausible new ideas.

[Greg Davis]

Hey Liam- any update on how you're doing with the sleep issues?

I've been dealing with similar problems- I fall asleep fine and sleep well but keep waking up about 2 hours before I need to. (ie. around 3.30am when my alarm is set for 5.30am).. I find one of the biggest determinants to be making sure I get my dinner down at least a few hours before bedtime (as well as all the other stuff people chimed in with).

Still trying to sort this out tho.

[Greg Davis]

Originally Posted by Garrett Smith

Liam,

3. I recently significantly increased my intake of a new controlled-release alpha-lipoic acid. I do very well on low-carbs, so an improved insulin sensitivity may play a role here (I'm linking this to the diabetes brought up previously).

This is a pretty delayed question but do you find ALA stacks best in the AM mostly or would it be a good idea to take with most meals?

[Garrett Smith]

Greg,
That I don't know. I would definitely take it with the higher/-est carb meals of the day for sure, other than that, it is up to you.