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Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

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Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#111

Post by getpost »

stooliepidgin wrote: post #90
rojeee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dos…

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, alth…

No, even 5000iu/day is too much for some people, as previously discussed on HN at length. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261948

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#112

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

TomJansen wrote: post #99
carabiner wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Opening a window?

Less helpful in winter.

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#113

Post by wyldfire »

chartpath wrote: post #79
brainwipe wrote: post #26

Being a blue-skinned ginger, I just need to have someone describe sunlight to me and I start producing Vit D. I also sleep like the dead.

Thanks for the chuckle. 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? Also makes me wonder how the Inuit manage…

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.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/42838-european-hunter-gatherer-g...

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#114

Post by gedy »

slothtrop wrote: post #84
FrankyHollywood wrote: post #56

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…

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.

Same here, I ironically found I was more tense & jittery after no caffeine for a year.

Found one coffee or tea a day made me feel much more relaxed at end of day.

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#115

Post by originalvichy »

nisegami wrote: post #36
tylerwhipple wrote: post #33

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…

>The biggest game changer: Sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking up. I don't think the sun rises for another hour after I wake up for work.

Buy a wake-up light alarm clock. Costs max. 50€ for a base version. Popular here in the Nordics for obvious reasons.

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#116

Post by originalvichy »

j1elo wrote: post #55
tylerwhipple wrote: post #33

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 my city during winter the Sun rises at 8:30am... so I'm afraid that won't be possible for people wanting (or needing) to wake up too early. Do you think one of those "simulates natural light" LED lamps are actually equivalent in terms of faking real sunlight?

Yes they are. It really does make a difference.

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#117

Post by specialist »

stooliepidgin wrote: post #91
specialist wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Pinch…

How would someone control their cortisol levels? Maslow's hierarchy of needs, medical/pharma interventions, and/or something else?

Having done it, I still honestly can't say what worked. Per @rojeee, this list is more or less the kind of stuff I did.

"11 Natural Ways to Lower Your Cortisol Levels"

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ways-to-lower-cortisol

Additionally:

1)

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.

YMMV.

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#118

Post by mtalantikite »

jbotz wrote: post #107
stooliepidgin wrote: post #3

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.

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 deficien…

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).

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#119

Post by specialist »

jbotz wrote: post #110
rojeee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More aerobic exercise, less anerobic exercise, more meditation, etc.

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. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33030273/

Yes and:

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.)

Re: Clinical trial shows that the use of Vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality

#120

Post by caturopath »

tylerwhipple wrote: post #33

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…

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.

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