Seth's Blog

Patrick Tucker, an editor at The Futurist, posted a request on the Quantified Self Forums for “astounding” predictions based on self-quantification. He is writing a book about using data to make predictions.

Here are examples from my self-measurement:

1. Drinking sugar water causes weight loss. The self-quantification was measuring my weight. It began when I found a new way to lose weight, which pushed me to try to explain why it worked. The explanation I came up with — a new theory of weight control — made two predictions that via self-experimentation I found to be true. That gave me faith in the theory. Then the theory suggested a really surprising conclusion, that loss of appetite during a trip to Paris was due to the sugar-sweetened soft drinks I had been drinking. If so, drinking sugar water should cause weight loss. (The nearly-universal belief is that sugar causes weight gain, of course.) I tested this prediction and it was true. More.

2. Seeing faces in the morning improves mood the next day (but not the same day). This is so surprising I’ll spell it out: Seeing faces Monday morning improves my mood on Tuesday but not Monday. For years I measured my sleep trying to reduce early awakening. Finally I figured out that not eating breakfast helped. There was no breakfast during the Stone Age; this led me to take seriously the idea that other non-Stone-Age aspects of my life were also hurting my sleep. That was one reason I decided to watch to watch a certain TV show one morning. It had no immediate effect. However, the next morning I woke up feeling great. Via self-measurement of mood, I determined it was the faces on TV that produced the effect, confirmed the effect many times, and learned what details of the situation (e.g., face size) controlled the effect. More.

3. One-legged standing improves sleep. Via self-measurement I determined that how much I stood during a day controlled how well I slept. If I stood a long time, I slept better. Ten years later I woke one day after having slept much better than usual. The previous day had been unusual in many ways. One of them was so tiny that at first I overlooked it: I had stood on one leg a few times. Just for a few minutes. Yet it turned out that it was the one-legged standing that had improved my sleep. Without the previous work on ordinary standing I would have ignored the one-legged standing — it seemed trivial.

4. Butter is healthy. I found that butter improved how fast I can do arithmetic problems. No doubt it improves brain function measured in other ways. Because the optimum nutrition for the brain will be close to the optimum nutrition for the rest of the body — at least, this is what I believe — I predict that butter will turn out to be healthy for my whole body, not just my brain.

5. Mainstream Vitamin D research is all messed up. Via self-measurement I confirmed Tara Grant’s conclusion that taking Vitamin D3 in the morning (rather than later) improved her sleep. It improved my sleep, too. When I had taken it at other times of day I had noticed nothing. Apparently the timing of Vitamin D — the time of day that you take it — matters enormously. Take it at the right time in the morning: obvious good effect. Take it late in the evening: obvious bad effect. Vitamin D researchers haven’t realized this. They have neither controlled when Vitamin D is taken (in experiments) nor measured when it is taken (in surveys). Because timing matters so much it is as if they have done their research failing to control or measure dose. If you fail to control/measure dose, whatever conclusion you reach (good/no effect/bad) depends entirely on what dose your subjects happened to take. And you have no idea what dose that is.

I have blogged many times about biohacker Tara Grant’s discovery that she slept much better if she took Vitamin D3 in the morning rather than later. Many people reported similar experiences, with a few exceptions. Lots of professional research has studied Vitamin D3 but the researchers appear to have no idea of this effect. They don’t control the time of day that subjects take D3 and don’t measure sleep. If the time of day of Vitamin D3 makes a big difference, measuring Vitamin D3 status via blood levels makes no sense. Quite likely other benefits of Vitamin D3 require taking it at the right time of day. Taking Vitamin D3 at a bad time of day could easily produce the same blood level as taking it at a good time of day. (more…)

Is it better to take cod liver oil in the morning than at other times of day? Kim Øyhus’s experience suggests that:

Each mid winter and summer I tend to lose my feeling of when it is day or night, especially if I am in the northern parts of Norway, or if the weather is dark clouds for a long time, which often happens. So sorry, no statistics, just my sense of being unhinged from the diurnal cycle.

Taking 1-2 spoons of cod liver oil in the morning got me back to this rhythm in about 3-5 hours. It even works for fixing my diurnal rhythm after partying to sunrise, but only after a day’s rest.

I have posted many times about the value of taking Vitamin D3 in the morning.

I recently came across a 2005 survey, done in Texas, that found people with poor sleep were far more likely to be depressed or anxious than people with better sleep. Huge risk ratios:

People with insomnia . . . were 9.82 and 17.35 times as likely to have clinically significant depression and anxiety [than persons without insomnia.]

Other studies have found similar results. For example, a 1979 survey interviewed the same people twice, one year apart. People who had insomnia both times were 40 times more likely to be newly diagnosed with major depression during the intervening year than those who did not have insomnia at either time.

A simple thing to say about the sleep/mood correlation is that it supports my theory of depression, which says depression is often due to malfunction of two circadian oscillators (one controlled by light, the other by faces). If they are working properly (in sync, with large amplitude) you sleep well and are in a good mood when you are awake. If they are not working properly (e.g., not in sync) then you do not sleep well and are in a bad mood at least part of the time while you are awake. What is called depression (e.g., not wanting to do anything) is actually a good thing in the middle of the night. Not wanting to do anything — being still — is necessary to fall asleep.

A sad and more complicated thing about this correlation is that it is ignored. It is not explained by any theory of depression popular among psychotherapists, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, not to mention a dozen other explanations of depression (psychoanalytic, etc.) that psychotherapists favor. Nor is it explained by any pharmacological theory of depression. In other words, if you seek treatment for depression within our healthcare system the treatment you will receive will derive from a theory that cannot explain this result. Yet the correlation is so strong it must be telling us something important.

You can read endlessly about the high cost of health care. What if the high cost is not the core problem? What if it is only a symptom of something less obvious? What if health care costs a lot because we have a poor understanding of health and disease (as the failure of popular theories of depression to explain the sleep/mood correlation suggests)? What if we have a poor understanding of health and disease because health research is too concerned with allowing healthcare providers to make money?

A few weeks ago I got an email from a reader named Alexander Vinther:

I take Vitamin D3 (2000 units) in the morning (between 7 and 9 am) together with fish oil. My sleep is deeper and I don’t wake up at odd times during the night. I tried increasing my intake 3-fold [= to 6000 IU] but felt too energetic/restless when going to bed (regardless of the time). I stopped taking Vitamin D3 (the regular dose) for a while to check my results only to start waking up in the night (or waking up early).  Before this, my intake of D3 and fish oil was usually in the evening (everybody seems to recommend taking vitamins in the evening). The change from evening to morning was with both fish oil and D3 (I have always been taking them simultaneously) with huge improvement in sleep.

This is especially interesting because he made the evening-to-morning change long before I blogged about it. I asked for details.

Tell me about yourself.

Male, 24 years old. I live in Denmark and study philosophy. I exercise a lot (6 times a week, crossfit).

What were your sleep and energy like before you started taking D3 and fish oil in the morning?

My energy levels during the day would change a lot, sometimes with a huge surge in energy in the evening making falling asleep difficult. This would lead to few hours of sleep or a general feeling of not having slept at all (this in comparison to what I feel now, the feeling of “deep” sleep). [This is what happened when he was taking D3 and fish oil in the evening. --Seth]

Have you tried other D3 dosages?

I started out with 1400 units of Vitamin D3. I now take a multivitamin which has a small amount of D3, hence the 2000 units. I didn’t notice a difference between 1400 and 2000 units, but 6000 made me giddy/restless for the first week, which is for as long as I tried that particular dosage. 4000 units seems to have the same effect as 2000 units, but it is a dosage I haven’t taken for more than a week.

How long have you been taking Vitamin D3 in the morning?

I switched the time (from evening to morning) of my D3 intake about a year ago. Stumbling upon your blog confirmed my belief in or underlined the evidence for a difference in morning/evening intake.

How soon after you started D3 and fish oil in the morning (instead of the evening) did you notice better sleep?

I would say I see improvements in my sleep 3-4 days after D3 intake

What brands of Vitamin D3 and fish oil do you use?

My D3 brand is Danish: Naturdrogeriet D Mega. My fish oil brand is Biosym EPA-GLA+. I take 2 capsules containing a total of 1200 mg fish oil (DHA, EPA, GLA), 600 mg Borago oil and 700 mg soyalecithin.

• Older eyes block blue light more than young eyes, which may cause sleep problems.
• Caroline Rodgers makes a case (29 slides) that autism is often caused by prenatal ultrasound. This link is from the comments on my previous post about the danger of prenatal ultrasound.
• Why did Deep Throat leak the secrets that brought down President Nixon?
• Do bitters make a difference? A taste test. A better test would have been simpler: to ask, many times in paired comparisons, which is better: Drink X with bitters or drink X without bitters?

Thanks to David Cramer, Jahed Momand and Nancy Evans.

Someone who wishes to be anonymous wrote me:

I had been taking 400 IU D3+calcium morning noon and night for years. I usually fell asleep fitfully. My sleep was rarely uninterrupted throughout the night.

After reading your blog, I started taking all three pills in the morning. Getting to sleep was easier, but sleep was still usually fitful.

After more reading of your blog, I stopped the D3+calcium and switched to 7000 IU of D3 every morning. Within a couple days, my usual pattern became that I fell asleep quickly and slept soundly through the night.

It is now three weeks, and I continue to enjoy excellent sleep. I noticed no changes in energy or mood.

I asked some questions.

Tell me about yourself.

I’m an academic (professor of decision sciences), 52 years old. I live in Philadelphia.

What you mean by “I fell asleep fitfully”?

Even if I was tired, sleep did not come easily. I had no worries, so it wasn’t that.

How long did/does it usually took/take you to fall asleep under the three conditions?

Original 400 IU D3+ calcium 3 times/day: 1/2 hour was usual.
All 3 are taken in morning: 15-30 minutes, but still awakening in the night frequently
7000 IU in morning: 10-15 minutes, and sleeping like a log.

What time do you wake up? What time do you take the 7000 IU?

I usually wake between 7 and 7:15.  Sometimes I head straight for the kitchen (where the vitamins are stored) and I take them immediately.  Other times I head for the shower and then to the kitchen, whereupon I take the vitamins.

What brand of Vitamin D3 do you take now?

Vitamin Shoppe

Paleo Hacks has a thread about timing of Vitamin D3. Better in morning (my and several other people’s experience) or evening (Robb Wolf’s experience)?

This answer supports morning:

I prefer taking it in the morning. I think it helps set my circadian rhythm.

This answer supports night:

I prefer it at night. I find I sleep better.

This answer supports morning:

I had trouble sleeping when I started Paleo and was taking my D3 at night before bed. Was nervous and couldn’t seem to settle down. No problems since I went to morning, I have them with my fish oil right after breakfast.

By the time you read this there will probably be more evidence.

Thanks to Melissa McEwen.

Daniel Lemire, a Canadian computer science professor, left the following comment here

I have irregularly taken 1000 UI  in the morning for years with no noticeable effect.

For about two years, I have had poor sleeping patterns characterized mostly by the fact that I tend to go to bed at 1am or later (and I get up around 7:15 am [woken up by an alarm clock]). Whenever I would try to go to bed earlier, I would simply fail to fall asleep.

After reading this blog, I increased my intake of D3 to 4-5,000 IU. I’m now falling asleep about an hour earlier. This could be a placebo effect, of course, but I consider it a very significant improvement.

It is unclear whether I have more energy. I don’t know how to measure such an effect. I expect that I’m less irritable, but that’s a side-effect of getting more sleep.

I asked him for details. (more…)

A reader named Bob H left the following comment:

I’m on 1000 [IU] a day D3 in the morning. I have not noticed any difference in sleep, but my rosacea has cleared up considerably.

Rosacea is not usually believed to be due to Vitamin D3 deficiency. For example, Wikipedia lists many causes, but not that. Here is another list of causes that does not include Vitamin D3 deficiency. The Vitamin D Council says Vitamin D “cannot be used to prevent or treat rosacea” (but without supporting evidence). On the other hand, when people with rosacea consider the question, they find evidence that D3 helps rosacea. If you have rosacea and have tried D3, please comment or email me about what happened.

I asked Bob H for details.

Tell me about yourself.

47 year old, white, IT worker, 230 lbs, runner, beer drinker, Maryland, but I lived in the Netherlands from Jun-2008-Jul-2011.

When did you start taking 1000 IU/day D3 in the morning? Were you taking D3 before this?

I started taking it about 6-8 weeks ago, in the morning, about 9:00 am 1000 IU – my first time for D3.

Please describe your rosacea before you started 1000/day D3 in the morning. please describe your rosacea now.

I’ve had consistent rosacea for years on my chest. It has not gone away completely, but it’s much better.

Please describe your sleep.

My sleep was good before I started taking D3, and is still good.

Most of the success stories about Vitamin D3 in the morning have involved 4000 IU/day or more. Why did you decide to try 1000 IU/day?

I wanted to start out at a lower dose and build up.

What brand and form of D3 do you take?

1000 IU NatureMade gel.