Seth's Blog

I recently learned that a reader named Paul improved his sleep — he now falls asleep more easily — by taking Vitamin D3 first thing in the morning. He had previously taken the same amount of D3 at other times of day for five months with no obvious effect. Because of my first post about D3 first thing in the morning, he started to take his D3 at that time. Right then his sleep improved.

I asked him for details.

Tell me about yourself.

I live in Jersey City, NJ. I work in advertising. I’m 39 years old, 6 foot 1 inch, and 180 pounds.

How much D3 do you take?

5000 IU/day.

What time?

Usually around 8:00 a.m., but sometimes as early as 7:15 or as late as 10:30.

What brand, etc.?

I take Mason softgels. Each softgel is 5000 IU, “from fish liver oil.”  Other ingredients are soybean oil, gelatin, glycerin, and purified water.

Tell me more about what happened?

Before taking D3 first thing in the morning, I was having trouble getting to sleep quite often:  I’d say 3 times a week on average.  I would just feel wound up for no apparent reason.  I would toss and turn, usually till 1:00 or 2:00 but sometimes until the sun came up.  (It’s possible this was caused by taking D3 in the evening, which I sometimes did.  But this had happened to some extent for as long as I can remember, going back to my childhood.)  I read your blog post this past November 2 about “Primal Girl”‘s experience with D3, and began taking it right after getting up.  Right away (I don’t remember whether it was the first night or not, but it couldn’t have taken more than 2 days because it felt immediate), I started getting tired right around 11:00 or 11:30, which is when I ought to be falling asleep.

Not just “tired,” though—extremely tired.  So tired that if I didn’t get to bed I’d fall asleep on the spot.  It took me by surprise at first, so that I had to struggle to stay awake while I took out my contact lenses and brushed my teeth.  When I went to bed I was out like a light.  This continued through most of December.

Over the holidays I went out of town for 8 days and wasn’t taking D3.  By the end of my vacation I was having insomnia again.  When I got home, I forgot to start taking it again right away and noticed that I was not getting tired like I had been last Fall.  I started taking D3 again around the 4th or 5th of January with the same result as previously.  I continue to take it and experience the same result.

Addendum by Seth. One reason this story is interesting is that it supports the idea that Vitamin D3 acts like sunlight — which is different than acting like a stimulant (e.g., caffeine). A stimulant will push you toward being  awake a few hours after you ingest it. Sunlight, on the other hand, will push you toward being awake a few hours after you are exposed to it and push you toward sleep a dozen hours after that.

• Drug industry now the biggest defrauder of the US government, as measured by False Claims Act payments.
• CT scans linked with cancer. Even worse, “doses of radiation from the scans varied wildly, according to the study, even within the same procedure at the same hospital. Some patients got only one-tenth the radiation that others got.” As if the concepts of calibration and maintenance are foreign to the operators of this exceedingly dangerous equipment.
• Fermentation in Montreal.
• Edward Jay Epstein on Hollywood’s Pirates of the Internet.

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Anne Weiss.

One hundred years ago (January, 1912), at the annual meeting of the Geological Association in Frankfurt, Germany, Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist, presented his theory of continental drift for the first time. It was almost uniformly dismissed by geologists. One of them called it “mere geopoetry”. Much later, he was proved right.

To me, this is a classic example of the power of what I call insider/outsiders. Wegener had a great deal of scientific training, including a Ph.D. in astronomy. Unlike professional geologists, however, (a) he had the freedom to say whatever he wanted about geology without endangering his job (as a meteorologist) or prospects for advancement and (b) was under no pressure to publish. He could spend as much time on his theory as he wanted.

In November, I wrote about Tara Grant (aka Primal Girl)’s discovery that taking Vitamin D first thing in the morning rather than later improved her sleep. Then several people commented that they had observed something similar — some in response to my post (my post led them to try it), some independently. Perhaps people who tested her observation and found it wasn’t true didn’t comment.

One way to assess this possibility is to ask people who have tried it what happened. In the comments to one of my posts about this, Tyler Tyssedal said he would try it. A few days ago I asked him what had happened. Here’s his reply (shortened):

I have been tweaking the timing of my Vitamin D3 intake since I made that comment [on December 13 -- one month ago]. I have also made a few other life changes (such as supplements), so the changes I’ve experienced cannot be attributed only to Vitamin D3 (5000 IU) timing. But yes, taking D3 first thing in the morning instead of later noticeably improved my sleep quality. I have been experiencing perpetual, involuntary biphasic sleep on and off for years. I would go to bed around 11 and wake up every day between 4 and 6 am, conscious enough to check the time and sigh. I had been taking my D3 with lunch or dinner, sometimes never. I changed my D3 intake to first thing in the morning. Within a week I noticed I would wake up two out of three nights, around 6 (so a little later), a marked improvement.

I am a 6’2″, 160-lb male. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Desk job, lift 2-3 times per week, 45 min-1 hr per session with 15 min walking to and from gym.  I typically eat two meals a day (1-2 pm and 6-8 pm). In the morning (between 7:30 and 10am) I consume about 20-30 oz of coffee with 1-3 T cream. I also eat 1 T coconut oil with my coffee and 1 T of it with my dinner.

When I changed my 400 mg magnesium citrate supplement to early afternoon rather than right before bed, I experienced even better sleep. After all these changes, I no longer wake up in the middle of the night. I sleep straight through. A week and a half ago I started taking ALA and NALC with my D3, coconut oil and coffee in the morning. The results have been fantastic and I feel a strong clear headedness in the morning.

Here’s a summary:

WAKE (7:30-9:30am): 5000 IU D3, 500 mg acetyl l-carnitine, 250 mg alpha lipoic acid, 1 T coconut oil, 20-30 oz coffee, 1-3 T cream.

LUNCH (12-2pm): 30% food for the day, typically lowish carb, 400 mg magnesium citrate, 1.2 g EPA/DHA fish oil (on days I don’t consume sardines or salmon, which is 2-3 days a week), Vitamin K2 (1000 K2 MK4, 1000 K2 MK7).

DINNER & POST DINNER: Rest of food (100-150 g carbs post workout workout days; 50-100 g non workout days). On restless nights, 2-5 mg melatonin.

I’ve been pleased with 2-5 mg melatonin before bed on days when I am not heavy eyed by 9:30 pm. I have taken melatonin on and off for years and would still experience biphasic sleep, with or without it.

I use Google Analytics to measure web traffic to my blog, forums, and website. A few months ago a new version was introduced and, as far as I can tell, made the default. The new version is worse than the old version. Every time I use GA, I click on “old version”.

In an excess of confidence, the new version isn’t merely the default, it also has a link called “make this version default”. The old version has no such link. There seems to be no way to make the old version the default. It is a Google version of “this sentence is false.”

More Apparently someone from Google read this or was told about it. The problem has been fixed.

Even More And then someone changed it back — it remains unclear how to make the old version the default.