sci-fi author, beatmaker

Accumulated Sleep Tips

I’ve been sleeping better–much better–and it feels like a good time to do a complete roundup of all the methods that appear to have helped me, and also mention a few sacred cows of sleep tips that didn’t seem to help at all. For those of you new to this blog, my sleep went to hell in mid-January after the deaths of two family members within a single week. It’s been a slow climb back to a more-or-less normal sleep pattern ever since. Here’s what worked:

Mineral Supplementation

  • Before bed I started taking one tablet magnesium taurate (containing 100mg magnesium) and half a tablet of calcium citrate (containing 175mg calcium). Several times a week I also added 6mg boron.
  • I increased my dietary zinc, copper, and selenium by eating oysters at least twice a week.

Vitamin D/Sun

  • I increased my sun exposure, trying to get at least twenty minutes of sunlight on bare skin per day.
  • My vitamin D levels tested within normal range, but slightly on the low side, so I moderately increased my supplementation (to 4000IU every other morning).

Other Supplements

  • I found low-dose melatonin (under 1mg) to be helpful in terms of getting to sleep (though not as necessary since I started wearing amber glasses in the evening–see below). Doses over 1mg, for me, result in vivid dreams and less restful sleep.
  • I added 25mg niacinamide to my before-bed supplements. Some people use much higher doses for sleep. 25mg is the amount I take anyway (for various reasons) but I’ve switched the timing to right before bed.
  • L-ornithine 400mg is also part of my sleep stack, mostly because of this study.

Herbal Sleep Aids

  • Various herbals including passionflower, valerian, hops, chamomile, and ashwagandha may reduce sleep latency and improve sleep quality under various conditions. I’ve had mixed results, and I’m also wary of becoming dependent on strong herbal remedies (which I consider to be more like drugs, at least compared to low doses of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids). But a number of times I’ve been able to get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of night (and feeling wide awake) after using various combinations of the above. It’s hard to know what is placebo effect, but at the very least most of them have a calming influence on the nervous system.

General Diet

  • I added gelatin to my diet (about a tablespoon of this stuff in my morning coffee). Gelatin contains glycine and other amino acids that may assist relaxation and improve sleep quality.
  • I started using a lot of fresh lemon juice as a seasoning. Vitamin C may limit cortisol levels and generally increase stress resilience.
  • Though I generally eat a low-carb diet, I made sure to include some starch (beans, starchy vegetables, or brown rice) with dinner. Adequate carbohydrates are required for tryptophan intake in the brain, which is required for serotonin and melatonin production.
  • I started drinking tart cherry juice before bed. Tart cherry juice contains melatonin and improves sleep.

Drugs

  • I didn’t consider my sleep issues to be severe enough to warrant prescription medication, and I was wary of developing a physical dependency on any substance. However I did experiment with OTC Unisom Sleep tabs, half a tablet (12mg doxylamine succinate), and it did help me sleep when I used it. However sometimes I felt moody or “off” the next day. I never used this more than once a week.
  • I also experimented with both CBD oil and small amounts of marijuana edibles. Both helped me relax and contributed to better sleep and reduced sleep anxiety. For me, THC can go from “nice buzz” to complete dysphoria very quickly, so I’ll be sticking with CBD oil going forward, on an as needed basis (not every day).

Light in the Evenings

Bright light and blue-wavelength light block melatonin production, so I took a few steps to modulate my exposure.

  • I already had f.lux installed on my laptop, but I added similar software to my phone.
  • I bought some blue-blocking (amber colored) glasses and started wearing them in the evening, after 9pm or so.
  • I kept the lights down/dimmed in the evenings.

Cognitive/Psychological/Behavioral

  • I reframed my “insomnia” as a temporary reduced need for sleep. That’s what it felt like. I’ve experienced sleep deprivation–times during my life when I didn’t dedicate enough time to sleep–and this was completely different. It was as if my nervous system was telling me “Shit is going down, now is not the time for sleep.” I had many days operating on a just a couple hours of sleep where I basically felt normal. I didn’t feel good necessarily, but I could function.
  • I decided not to worry about the health effects of sleeping less. Reduced sleep is associated with all kinds of health risks, but so is poor eating and not exercising. I decided to focus on the aspects of my health that I could fully control (diet, exercise, meditation, etc.) and not worry about my sleep beyond taking certain common sense actions (reasonable supplementation, good sleep hygiene, and cognitive behavioral therapy).
  • I read up on cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, and implemented a number of those practices. Limiting my time in bed to about seven hours (11-6) was helpful for a period of time, though I’ve since relaxed that to eight hours. Currently I stay up until I’m sleepy, and get up no later than 7am (usually closer to 6). Trying to catch up on sleep by going to bed early (around 9pm) only resulted in more time in bed and a biphasic sleep cycle (two chunks of sleep with hours of being awake in the middle of the night). There’s nothing wrong with biphasic sleep (and I’ve tried it before, on purpose) but I found that a more compressed sleep cycle reduced my sleep anxiety.
  • While I do choose to share my health issues and troubleshooting/solutions publicly, I’ve always made it a point to not identify with any particular health condition, and I’ll continue that practice. Even if I go through another bad patch of sleep, I won’t be labeling myself an insomniac. 100% of human beings have health issues, and 100% of human beings eventually die of something–most often from complications of some kind of chronic health issue. But there are plenty of positive ways we can identify ourselves (by our profession, by our family roles, by our aspirations), and ultimately I believe that’s more healthful (psychologically, and ultimately physically) than identifying with any personal pathology (even for people with severe and/or chronic conditions).
  • I found that fear of sleep/sleep anxiety to be a real challenge, especially after my first few nights of almost no sleep. These feelings reduced over time by practicing acceptance, self-forgiveness (for some reason I felt guilty for not sleeping, as if I was doing something wrong), and various progressive muscle relaxation exercises. As much as possible, I tried to let go of trying to go sleep. This is easier said than done.
  • Unless I was wide awake and feeling restless, I tried to stay in bed and relax when I woke up in the middle of the night. This is somewhat contrary to what is recommended in CBT-I … I believe the general guideline is to get up and do something relaxing if you find yourself awake for more than twenty minutes. But often lying in bed, focussing on physical relaxation, calming images, and pleasant thoughts leads to drifting off without even realizing it. Many times I found myself in bed thinking “Oh well, I didn’t sleep for the last two hours” and then remembering a dream I had just had. But that didn’t happen when I got up every time I found myself awake.

Other Things That Helped

  • Wearing earplugs to block out distracting noise (but not wearing them all the time–sometimes background noise is calming).
  • A cool room.
  • A comfortable bed.
  • Enough blankets and clothing to feel warm (and/or a hot shower or bath before bed, the latter with Epsom salts). Wool socks/warm feet in particular helped me fall asleep faster.
  • Keeping the bedroom window slightly open to circulate more fresh air.
  • Very short naps or lie-downs (less than 20 minutes) were mentally refreshing on days following nights of poor sleep, and didn’t seem to reduce my sleep quality the following night.

What Didn’t Help Or Made Things Worse

  • Both supplemental tryptophan and 5HTP gave me strange dreams, restless sleep, and asthma symptoms.
  • Turning off the wifi router ultimately didn’t seem to make any difference (though I no longer sleep with my phone next to the bed).
  • Exercising hard, even up to an hour before bed, improves my sleep (the general recommendation is to avoid strenuous exercise with three or four hours of bedtime).
  • Reading listicle articles of sleep tips written by people who has obviously never experienced a sleepless night didn’t help. But reading pubmed studies about sleep did help.
  • Completely cutting out caffeine didn’t help, and adding back in moderate amounts of coffee, tea, and/or dark chocolate before 2pm (which was my previous rule before experiencing major sleep issues) may have even improved my sleep.

Going forward I still feel a small amount of sleep anxiety, and I’m still taking supplements to help my sleep, but I like the direction I’m trending. Hopefully, if you’re having trouble with sleep yourself, you’ll find something helpful in this post.

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6 Comments

  1. Linda Lancione

    That bed photo is hilarious!

  2. G.

    JD, I commented yesterday on one of your recent posts about sleep – I don’t think it was this post – with some tips that have helped for me, and I forgot to add a couple –

    Sometimes people find that methylfolate and methylcobalamin (often taken when people have certain MTHFR variants) can interfere with falling asleep at night, especially if they usually take them in the afternoon or evening rather than in the morning.

    And generally, if one is often having trouble going to sleep at night, it might help to experiment with taking most of one’s supplements (vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc.) in the morning
    (of course, not the ones that are said to work best specifically in the evening, such as magnesium and melatonin),
    to see if having a longer time between taking them and wanting to fall asleep helps.

    I’ve read that melatonin is more effective when it’s not taken daily, but with frequent breaks – such as taking 2 days off a week or taking it every other day instead of every day.

    When I wrote my first comment on sleep tips on a different page on your site yesterday, I hadn’t read this blog entry with your update on your quest for better sleep, and now that I have read this, it’s interesting to me to see that two of the “common wisdom” rules on getting better sleep that didn’t work for me also turned out not to work for you — the advice to limit caffeine, and the advice not to exercise in the late afternoon or evening.

    Also, my tip for wearing socks to bed also seems to be something that you found works well for you.

    It seems we have similar “constitutions”, which is why I found your blog a couple of years ago, I think. Compound heterozygous for MTHFR, blond hair/blue-eyed and health issues that can stem from that like actinic keratosis, certain dietary issues, earnest, sincere, thoughtful, thorough, helpful personality, etc. I think there were more similarities, because there was some other reason (which I don’t recall now) that your blog kept turning up in my health-related internet search results a couple of years ago. 🙂
    (Many differences too of course – I’m a gal, I’m not musical, science fiction holds no interest for me, and I’m from the other side of the country.)

    I’m glad to read here that you are doing better now.

    • G.

      Oh, I have now found my original comment on sleep, it was under the “plan your whole life” post.

      Thank you for your kind response there. 🙂


      I see that my two comments (the same one — I reposted it because it didn’t show up after I first clicked the “post comment” button) that I submitted under your gastritis blog post are still not showing up, so probably something got caught in a filter.

      I will edit out a couple of mentions that may have fallen afoul of the regulations (it was nothing rude, just mentioning a website and a brand name for something that helps me with my digestive system issues), and try to post it again this afternoon.

      If it is being directed to be moderated and there is anything that appears problematic, feel free to delete that part. I won’t mind.

      I use a pseudonym and pseudo email addresses to make online comments, plus shield my computer with ad and tracker blockers, so I often don’t see captcha screens and confirmation emails and the like, so maybe that is what tripped up that second post last night.

      At least my other comment on sleep aids did get posted, and I hope some of my tips may help another reader one day. 🙂


      By the way, a couple of months ago, I found out some info about niacinamide (which is the form of B3 that I’ve taken for years) which I hadn’t seen before which concerned me and I stopped taking it altogether.

      I moved over to the plain niacin (flushing kind) form, and I am so reactive that even 20 mg can give me an unpleasant niacin flush on occasion (I cut a 100 mg tablet into multiple pieces, usually 6).

      I don’t remember now what the concerning thing about niacinamide was — I know there are issues for methylation especially for people (like you, and like me) who have certain MTHFR variants — but I had known about that already, and what I found out a few months back was something else that could affect my health… oh dear, it slips my mind.


      I was looking into nicotinamide riboside during that time as well — I then tried a tiny dose of it, and, ooh, was it not for me; immediate and awful reaction.


      The niacinamide issue that concerned me might have had something to do with APOE E4 and brain/cognitive health…? I was looking that up a couple of months ago.

      [Do you have an Apoe E4 variant? Since we seem to be somewhat genetically similar, I wonder if you have one too.]


      I’ll look at the published studies that I saved from around that time period and see which ones mention niacinamide – I’ll add any relevant ones in a second post here. (If that post does not show up, then it means that the pub med urls were filtered out by the commenting system.)

      • G.

        Here are some of the articles I had skimmed and saved a few months ago regarding niacinamide.
        I have not returned to the original sources today to double-check my notes and the extracts.
        Also, I am not saying the articles and opinions are correct or up-to-date (or reason enough to give up niacinamide/nicotinamide in favor of nicotinic acid); just putting my notes about them here.


        http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/324/3/883.long
        Large doses of nicotinamide cause methyl donor depletion. Recommended intake is 0.3 mg kg (20 mg for an adult).
        …nicotinic acid increases NAD+ concentrations in liver and blood, similar to nicotinamide. In addition, NAD+ biosynthesis was increased in heart (50%) and kidney (100%) as well. These results show that nicotinic acid generally has a broader effect than nicotinamide for NAD+ increases in the body.
        …Although increased vitamin B3 intake may seem beneficial, higher dosages of nicotinamide or nicotinic acid have undesirable side effects. In addition to hepatotoxicity, nicotinamide at high doses can adversely affect thymine biosynthesis and cause an increase of DNA damage caused by depleted thymidine levels in the cell.


        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25399625
        A review of nicotinamide: treatment of skin diseases and potential side effects.
        Nicotinamide, also known as niacinamide, is the amide form of vitamin B3. It is a precursor of essential coenzymes for numerous reactions in the body including adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. Nicotinic acid, also known as niacin, is converted into nicotinamide in the body. The use of topical nicotinamide in the treatment of acne vulgaris; melasma; atopic dermatitis; rosacea; and oral nicotinamide in preventing nonmelanoma skin cancer is discussed.
        The possible side effects and consequences of excessive nicotinamide exposure are reviewed, including suggestions nicotinamide might have a role in the development of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and liver damage.


        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318212/
        Nicotinamide and NAD deficiency from poor diet or high expenditure causes pellagra, an ageing and dementing disorder with lost robustness to infection and stress.
        Nicotinamide and stress induce Nicotinamide-N-methyltransferase (NNMT) improving choline retention but consume methyl groups. High NNMT activity is linked to Parkinson’s, cancers, and diseases of affluence.
        Optimising nicotinamide and choline/methyl group availability is important for brain development and increased during our evolution raising metabolic and methylome ceilings through dietary/metabolic symbiotic means but strict energy constraints remain and life-history tradeoffs are the rule.
        An optimal energy, NAD and methyl group supply, avoiding hypo and hyper-vitaminoses nicotinamide and choline, is important to healthy ageing and avoids utilising double-edged symbionts or uncontrolled autophagy or reversions to fermentation reactions in inflammatory and cancerous tissue that all redistribute NAD(P)(H), but incur high allostatic costs.


        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874142/
        Chronic niacin overload may be involved in the increased prevalence of obesity in US children The appetite-stimulating effect of nicotinamide appears to involve oxidative stress. Excess niacin consumption may be a major factor in the increased obesity prevalence in US children. …excess nicotinamide, when co-administered with glucose, induces biphasic response: insulin resistance in the early phase characterized by more insulin release due to the enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and hypoglycemia in the late phase due to the different clearance rates of plasma ROS and insulin. The excess niacin-induced biphasic response may play a role in the development of obesity


        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23768418
        Nicotinamide supplementation induces detrimental metabolic and epigenetic changes in developing rats.


        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22249857
        Toxic effects of nicotinamide methylation on mouse brain striatum neuronal cells and its relation to manganese. Mn causes increased NNMT activity, thereby increasing MNA levels in the brain and bringing about neuron death. Daily absorption of Mn and NA may thus contribute to idiopathic Parkinson’s disease.


        from a discussion site: http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/67625-david-sinclair-strikes-again/page-1
        random commenter: I would certainly stay away from niacinamide, minimize it even in multivitamins. The chain that recycles nicotinamide back to NAD+ gets easily saturated AND the excess niacinamide hanging around will serve as a signal to limit the efficiency of other NAD+ production paths. Thus, it is not surprising that nicotinamide has issues with liver toxicity and may well play a key role in the western obesity and diabetes epidemic as niacinamide has been added to flours. Niacinamide is just one breakdown product in the NAD+ chain. It is a very artificial thing to boost such intermediary, the level of which is normally fairly stable in the body. Niacin, i.e. plain old rash producing nicotinic acid is better.
        another comment: My concern with niacinamide is that 1) its NAD synthetic pathway is saturated at low doses in human cells, and 2) it functions as a negative-feedback inhibitor of the NAD+ases including the sirtuins.
        another comment: Nicotinamide is toxic to the liver at fairly low doses. It is also the NAD+ breakdown product that the body uses to sense NAD+ levels. As the Nicotinamide to NAD+ path gets saturated fast, supplementing Niacinamide will quickly worsen metabolism and NAD+ levels. In fact, there is a compelling study on Nicotinamide being the culprit for the diabetes and syndrome X epidemic after it got added to flour. Avoid nicotinamide, save for really low doses in multivitamins. …20mg or less. Per day. Less is more. Essentially it works so that nicotinamide is the salvageable breakdown product that can be recycled back to NAD+. But that pathway gets saturated really easily. Excess nicotinamide floating around will be sensed by the body as there being too much NAD+ around. Which is not at all the case, if you just artificially boosted its breakdown product nicotinamide. This puts the brakes on NAD+ synthesis and all goes down the hill. This is also why nicotinamide is really really toxic to the liver, which is particularly dependent on NAD+. And similarly this is exactly why nicotinamide puts the brakes on SIRT1 expression, which depends on NAD+. So, if you want to mess up your metabolism, increase your risk for diabetes2/syndrome X and age FASTER..then by all means whine about niacin rash and opt for nicotinamide instead. …you can find 100.000 more references saying that nicotinamide is safe…I doubt that those studies look at what it actually does to SIRT-1 or NAD+ levels. …Nicotinamide is one of the most efficient sirtuin inhibitors. …nicotinamide is a pro-aging substance

        • Thanks for the research. I’ve been using low doses, about 25mg, and not every day. There do seem to be reasons for caution, and I’m not jumping on the nicotinamide riboside train.

          The occasional higher dose to facilitate sleep or reduce anxiety may be worth the small risks, especially with less-than-daily use.

  3. Hello,

    Wow you really hit this problem from a lot of different angles!

    I strongly recommend that you try a different pair of blue blockers. Those Gamma Ray ones are more appropriate for heavy daytime computer use. Like virtually all “blue blockers”, they filter out only the shorter wave blue light. To preserve melatonin production you need to block out light up to at least 500nm. Peak melatonin suppression happens about 479nm most blue blockers barely touch this range.

    These UVEX glasses completely block all blue and a portion of the green spectrum. They are ugly but, worth experimenting with.
    https://www.amazon.com/Uvex-Blocking-Computer-SCT-Orange-S1933X/dp/B000USRG90

    I typically recommend these for people to try out because they are less than $10. After the “proof of concept” you get a more expensive pair.

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