Seth's Blog

A month ago I blogged about a “stunning discovery”: Primal Girl’s sleep got much better when she took Vitamin D3 in the early morning instead of much later (afternoon or evening). Others pointed out a similar observation: Taking Vitamin D3 in the evening caused insomnia. These observations suggest that Vitamin D3 resembles sunlight in its effect on sleep: morning exposure good, evening exposure bad. Sunlight, of course, is hard to control and sometimes hard to get (which is why Primal Girl tried Vitamin D3). Sunlight is also time-consuming: it takes an hour to get one hour of sunlight. The timing and dosage of Vitamin D3 is much easier to control.

Now I’ve tried it. This isn’t the first time. I’ve taken Vitamin D3 on and off several times through the years. Each time I didn’t notice any change so I stopped. But then I’d hear an interesting argument (never anything as clear as what Primal Girl found), and try again. And stop again. This time I took the Vitamin D3 around 8 am. (In previous attempts, I never controlled the timing and never took it early in the orning.)  I started with 2000 IU/day. I did that for nine days. No clear effect. Then I increased the dose to 4000 IU/day. The change was unmistakeable: I started to wake up feeling somewhat more rested and, for the first time,  with a pleasant warm feeling. So far it’s been eight days. Something is different and better.

I am writing about this now because the results are already interesting. My experience so far “proves” nothing, of course. Let me make clear the limitations: 1. You might consider the effect small. I was already sleeping well. I fell asleep quickly, did not wake up during the night, and woke up feeling rested. Now I wake up feeling more rested. 2. Eight days isn’t much. Maybe the effect will go away. 3. Maybe the effect doesn’t depend on time of day. I haven’t yet tried taking Vitamin D3 at other times of day.

Why do I think this is so important?

1. Sleep is central to health. You fight off infection while you are asleep. When I improved my sleep, I stopped getting noticeable colds. I’m sure if people slept better, they would get sick less often. Heart attacks are more common in the winter. People sleep worse in winter.

2. Sleep is a huge problem. As far as I can tell, most adult Americans complain about their sleep.

3. No one expected this. Nutrition researchers, dieticians, and so on obviously didn’t expect it. Nor did circadian rhythm researchers. They (or we) think that everyone, including plants, has one or more internal circadian clocks that is/are synchronized (= set) by the environment. The general public thinks that sunlight affects the clock. Lots of research supports this, but circadian-rhythm researchers know something the public does not: that those rhythms are also affected by the time of food and social contact. All three (sunlight, food, social contact) are part of the environment. Their power over our sleep makes sense (e.g., we should be awake when food is available.) Vitamin D3 is not part of the environment. Its power doesn’t make sense. No one in the paleo community expected this. Stone-Agers got a lot of sunshine, yes. They did not take Vitamin D3 pills. Sure, many in the paleo community praise Vitamin D3 but I have never heard anyone say you should take it in the morning.

4. Vitamin D3 is safe, cheap, and widely available. It probably has many benefits, not just better sleep.

5. Taking pills is easy. There presently are no safe sleeping pills. Nor are there any cheap sleeping pills. Nor will drug companies ever invent them, if the past is any guide.

The first sentence of this article is:

The soaring popularity of a fat-rich fad diet has depleted stocks of butter in Norway creating a looming Christmas culinary crisis.

Except it’s not a fad diet. It’s not going to go away, I predict. I eat lots of butter because I discovered it made my brain work better than a similar amount of pork fat. Pork fat made me sleep better. Desire for better sleep and a better-working brain are not desires that come and go. I haven’t even mentioned the conventional benefits (e.g., weight loss). The article continues:

Norwegians have eaten up the country’s entire stockpile of butter, partly as the result of a “low-carb” diet sweeping the Nordic nation which emphasizes a higher intake of fats.

“Sales all of a sudden just soared, 20 percent in October then 30 percent in November,” said Lars Galtung, the head of communications at TINE, the country’s biggest farmer-owned cooperative. . . .

Butter is now selling on Norway’s top auction website, with a 250-gram piece starting at around $13 (8.28 pounds), roughly four times its normal price.

At the Beijing store closest to me that sells butter, I seem to buy more butter than all other customers combined. Chairman Mao noticed the value of pork fat. What happens when the Chinese realize the value of butter?

Thanks to Dave Lull.

• A brash high-school student discovers — maybe by accident — how much famous writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, and John Updike, don’t want to write. Any excuse to avoid writing will do.
• A pretty good  talk by John Cochrane, a University of Chicago professor of economics, called “Restoring Robust Economic Growth in America”. What’s most interesting is what’s missing. At one point he asks: “Why are we stagnating? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows, really. That’s why we’re here at this fascinating conference.” In spite of this topic, his talk contains nothing about what controls the rate of innovation. Not only does he not know anything about this (judging by this talk), he doesn’t even realize the gap in his knowledge (judging by this talk).  Shades of Thomas Sargent. It’s as if a Harvard Medical School professor spoke about how to fight disease without mentioning the immune system, without even appearing to know that the immune system exists. (Which happens.)
• Garum, a fermented fish sauce. It was the “supreme condiment” of ancient Rome.

Thanks to Allan Jackson and Peter Couvares.

In May, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), as everyone knows, was accused of raping a maid. The story received huge worldwide coverage, reaching billions of people within days. Strauss-Kahn was greatly damaged. A week ago Edward Jay Epstein, whose work I’ve praised, published an article in The New York Review of Books with many new details that implied what happened was not as simple as the first reports suggested. Was DSK set up (a possibility not mentioned in the initial media reports)? New facts in Epstein’s article — which I called “great journalism” — made this a lot more plausible.

One such fact is that soon after the assault was reported to 911 (after a long delay), two men involved in the call performed what Epstein called a “victory dance”. A plausible explanation of the celebration (which Epstein doesn’t state, it’s obvious) is that they were celebrating because they had succeeded in entrapping DSK and would get a huge payoff from his enemies. Epstein’s article said the dance lasted three minutes. Critics of his article said the dance lasted eight seconds. Amy Davidson of The New Yorker had the poor taste to joke about it.”But maybe it’s all true, and the BlackBerry is not a red herring but the key, and another cell phone was passed in the soccer match box, with news of a character assassination, whereupon Sarkozy did his own dance of celebration,” she wrote. Yesterday The New York Review of Books issued a correction: The dance lasted thirteen seconds (a correction with which Epstein agrees). Davidson continued her dismissiveness. “The victim of some sort of insidious conspiracy.” The victory dance, she wrote, “doesn’t seem outlandish, given the sorts of things men do in New York, particularly when talking about sport.”

Missing from criticism of Epstein’s article, which does suggest conspiracy, was a plausible alternative explanation. Why were the men celebrating? They can’t remember. Both of them. In spite of all the attention. Which began within hours. Perhaps a sport event, they said, but no such event has been identified. Excitement usually improves memory. The men are clearly excited. Failure to come up with a plausible alternative explanation supports Epstein’s point that there is something very important about this we don’t know.

What makes this especially interesting, at least to me, is that you can judge for yourself. (This blog is all about that.) Epstein has posted on his website three items: (a) a recording of the 911 call that led to DSK’s arrest (“she doesn’t have any sustained injuries,” says the caller), (b) CCTV video showing the security area at the time of the phone call, and (c) CCTV video showing the victory dance, which includes one man picking up the other man and swinging him around.

• Tale of two workers. “Worker A is in the bottom quintile of income. . . .Worker B is in the upper quintile of income. . . .Worker A is a college drop-out. . . . .Worker B has a Bachelor of Arts, a Masters, and a doctorate.”
• Citizen scientists. “More than a decade ago, in hopes of advancing research on the rare genetic disease that afflicts her children, Sharon Terry let two different researchers draw their blood for study. But when she asked for the results of the investigations, the scientists gave her a startling response. Information generated from her own children’s DNA, they said, didn’t belong to her.”
• Ten academic frauds.

Thanks to Tucker Max, Dave Lull and Chuck Currie.