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.
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 dose of D3 and probably isn't healthy long term.
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. Pinched nerves, aka "bone spurs", in my spine.
I definitely had to jump thru all the hoops to get to this point.
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.
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.
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.)
Anaerobic exercise may have a temporary bad effect on cortisol, how are the long-term effects though? In moderation I suspect it is a net positive long-term.
It's a good question that I don't really know the answer to but I can offer some experience. I do a lot of running and 80% of my training is below the aerobic threshold, with 20% above (so anaerobic). After aerobic sessions you recover quickly and can do them day in day out for prolonged periods of time with no increase in chronic stress. E.g. running 100km/week. Effects are higher HRV, lower cortisol and lower resting heart rate. Anerobic workouts, on the otherhand (including any weights sessions I do), need to be done sparingly. The day after a hard workout your HRV will be lower, resting heart rate will be higher, cortisol will be higher. Too many anerobic sessions in a row and you'll start getting into over-training syndrome territory, so you really need to be careful! So I guess the TL;DR is the only way anerobic exercise decreases stress/cortisol is by not doing it or doing it sparingly. E.g. It is my opinion that people who only lift weights are probably unhealthy because they have consistently high levels of chronic stress.
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, although this does not rule out other types of adenomas.
And no to that too. RDAs try to be one-size-fits-all guesstimates.
For Vitamin D3 in particular:
"The model developed for UL derivation was summarized in 1998 (IOM, 1998), and it acknowledged that the lack of data would affect the ability to derive precise estimates." [0]
Furthermore, an RDA and a UL doesn't work for D3 because the ranges across people don't harmonize to specific "safe" or "adequate" numbers for a given demographic. 1000 IU is too much for some people. [0]
Blood tests trump RDAs. I need over 10k IU per day, but this could cause hypercalcemia, calcification of tissues, and/or calcium kidney stones in other people.
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 deficiency is extremely common, and even if you eat a really good diet with lots of whole grains and vegetables you might not be getting quite enough (but in that case about half the above dose may be enough to top you off). Anyway, it won't hurt to try and it's not expensive... if it helps, the cost-benefit is huge.
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).
Yeap. Lots of specialists. Many areas are under investigation.
One is activation of the There is a possibility of an autoimmune disease like lupus or MS causing dysautonomia. I also have inappropriate sinus tachycardia and hypertension without obvious causes. All roads point towards the autonomic nervous system.
Anecdotal, but several accounts I heard from people I know (and some I’ve read — even in this HN discussion, but the most n=1 scientific is gwern) indicate you need to take the vitamin D early in the day or it would harm your sleep quality. It also makes sense biologically, given that you need sunlight to generate it yourself.
Again, anecdotal - but detrimental to my sleep if taken after midday. If I can’t take it until 10am, I skip that day
Yes, taking that much vitamin D every day puts you at risk of developing dangerously high blood levels. One of the things it can do is screw with your calcium levels which screws with your nerves which can, for example, make your heart beat abnormal.
Don’t do this without the advice of a doctor and regular serum level testing.
Magnesium (in the form of ZMA) is known to increase the vividness of dreams for some reason. Or maybe it's something else in ZMA. I did take it daily when I was lifting heavy, and I can confirm. It's a side benefit in my book, unless your dreams are nightmares.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Seriously though, I can attest that it seems to do something for sleep/dreams, though it's hard to pin down what. Either I remember more dreams, or maybe it makes dreams more distinct as opposed to merely "things you were thinking of as you fell asleep".
I guess you alrready know this but 11000 IU is a massive dose of D3 and probably isn't healthy long term.