A reader writes:

My eight-year-old son has autism, on the serious end of the spectrum, with equally serious sleep troubles. A month ago I tried giving honey at bedtime after reading about it on your blog. It has made a tremendous difference.

My son has had trouble sleeping since he was a toddler. Since age four he has seen a pediatric neurologist who is also a sleep disorder specialist. With the doctor’s guidance we have tried different over-the-counter and prescription-drug approaches, but none has given him regular sleep, and the side effects from the drugs make increasing dosages risky.

His basic problem is not insomnia (a general inability to sleep) but rather delayed sleep phase disorder. He could sleep fine from the wee hours of the morning to noon. But whenever we managed to advance sleep onset [= get him to fall asleep earlier], he would wake up early. It was hard when we struggled to get him to sleep by midnight and then struggled to wake him at 7:00 a.m. for school. But it was even harder when he would fall asleep at 9:00 p.m., then wake up at 4:30 a.m., often falling back to sleep at 6:30 a.m, just in time for us to wake him at 7:00 a.m.. It’s not safe for him to be awake on his own for hours, and he was desperate to go back to sleep until about 9:00 a.m.

Since we started giving him a teaspoon of honey at bedtime he has slept through the night. We still have to give him meds to go to sleep between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., but once he’s asleep he stays asleep all night until we wake him at 7:00 a.m. The one night, early on, when we forgot to give him honey, he woke up just as he used to.

One factor that may make honey particularly effective for my son is that we’ve been eating a low-carbohydrate paleo diet for the past two years (because it helps his autism symptoms). Before that he was an extremely picky eater who preferred baked goods, milk, and cheese. With high-glycemic foods all day long a teaspoon of honey at bedtime might not have had much effect.

This is the best my son has slept in his life, and it has been a huge improvement in his and our family’s lives. Before the past month, the last time my son had gotten three good nights of sleep in a row was because he’d had a concussion.

To recap: Three days ago I slept extremely well, better than usual. I wondered why. What had made the difference? That day (the day before the night I slept so well) had been different from previous days in at least five ways (e.g., chocolate, new brand of honey). I repeated four of them, and did not sleep better than usual. That suggested the remaining difference — I had eaten yogurt, blueberries (125 g) and honey (8 g?) a few hours before bedtime — was responsible. (Every night I had 1 tablespoon — 20 g — honey at bedtime. It wasn’t that.) Then I repeated all five elements, including yogurt, blueberries (125 g) and honey (14 g) two hours before bedtime. I woke up wired (jittery). Very rested, but wired, which wasn’t pleasant. Too much sugar, perhaps.

The next night I had a banana roughly two hours before bedtime. (In addition, I repeat, to 1 tablespoon honey at bedtime.) A banana has about 6 g glucose, 6 g fructose, and 3 g sucrose, similar to 1 tablespoon honey. I had a strong craving for something sweet at that time, which was new to me — I almost never eat dessert. In the evening I had more brain power than usual. Yet at bedtime I fell asleep quickly, in about a minute.

The next morning I woke up and felt great. Almost perfectly rested, neither tired nor wired. Even though I’d only slept 4.7 hours, a bit low for me. It really was the yogurt, blueberries and honey — almost surely their sugar, which is almost all they have in common with a banana — that had made me sleep so well.

Conclusion: For the best sleep, have sugar after dinner and sugar at bedtime. By sugar I mean a glucose/fructose mixture but for all I know sucrose would work, too.

A few days ago I noted that I had slept unusually well. I wondered why. The previous day had been unusual in five ways (yogurt blueberries and honey 2 hours before bedtime, only one blackout curtain, chocolate, unusual timing of morning faces, new brand of honey). Was one of them responsible? Or was it random variation?

The next day I repeated four of the five unusual things: only one blackout curtain, chocolate, unusual timing of morning faces, new brand of honey. Result: I did not sleep unusually well. This pointed to either yogurt blueberries and honey or random variation as the explanation. Those happened to be the explanations I had considered most plausible (yogurt blueberries and honey) and least plausible (random variation).

Yesterday I repeated all five of the unusual things. Yesterday evening it took longer than usual to fall asleep. Usually I fall asleep within a minute, but this time it took about 4 minutes. As I was lying there, I attributed the long latency to lack of exercise that day. In the morning, for the first time in my whole life, I woke up what a friend called “full of jitters”. Very rested, yes, but also too much energy. As if I’d had too much caffeine. Usually I have a cup of black tea first thing in the morning. I started to make one and realized it would make things worse, not better. As I said, this has never happened before.

So it was the yogurt blueberries and honey. The first time I had it I had added the honey just for sweetener and hadn’t measured it. The second time I did measure the honey — 14 g, about 2 teaspoons. Probably more than I had used the first time, which may explain the different results (1st time: very rested, 2nd time: very rested and jittery). Both times I ate 125 g blueberries, which has 12 g sugar (half glucose, half fructose). I doubt the yogurt (homemade, no sugar added) matters.

Perhaps the best dose (for me) will turn out to be one teaspoon honey 2 hours before bedtime and one tablespoon of honey at bedtime. I had tried taking more than one tablespoon of honey at bedtime; it seemed to produce the same effect as one tablespoon.

I want to test with and without blueberries, of course, and different amounts of honey 2 hours before bedtime. If honey alone is powerful, then I will test different forms of sugar. I don’t want to be at the mercy of differences between brands of honey, although honey is very convenient.

Let’s say it turns out to be the sugar in honey that produces these big improvements in sleep. Then it will turn out that the nutritionists of the world have been even more wrong about sugar than they were about saturated fat. All the data is not yet in, let me repeat. But the data so far unquestionably point in a surprising direction. It is entirely possible that sugar — in the right amounts at the right times of day — will turn out to be the greatest health food of all.

Which would explain what has never been well-explained: why we like it so much.

• Big time of day effect with aspirin. “Patients who took blood pressure medication at night were about a third as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as morning medication takers.”
• Health care cost comparison
• Beware young surgeons
• Benefits of cocoa both behavioral and neurological
• Michael Lissack’s thought-provoking library

Thanks to Saul Sternberg, Bob Levinson and Alex Chernavsky.

Last night I slept great. I woke up feeling very rested. I can remember only three situations when I woke up feeling more refreshed. (a) On a certain camping trip. (b) When I was on my feet for ten hours. (c) After eating a lot of pork fat. I cannot simulate camping trips, and standing ten hours/day was very hard. The pork-fat effect was repeatable, in the sense that I slept better after eating pork fat, but I never ate that much pork fat again. It was too much.

Why did I sleep so well? I can think of several possible reasons.

1. Random noise. Let’s say there are 20 factors that affect my sleep and they just happened to all line up in a good direction.

Another set of possible reasons derive from what was unusual about yesterday. I can think of five things:

2. I had yogurt and blueberries and honey about 6:30 pm. (In addition to 1 tablespoon honey at bedtime.)

3. I forgot to hang a blackout curtain that darkens my bedroom. Usually I hang two. Last night, by mistake, only one.

4. I started eating dark chocolate daily two days ago. Maybe the good stuff in it (the flavones) accumulates in the brain so that the good effects get larger day by day.

5. I watched faces in the morning a half-hour later than usual. Usually I start watching them at 6:00 am. Yesterday I started at 6:30 am. I had forgotten about this difference until I looked at my records.

6. I switched to a new brand of honey (from a German brand to a Canadian one).

#1 is unlikely. #2 vaguely corresponds to the idea that honey helps us sleep because it supplies energy. Maybe honey at 6:30 fills up the liver (with glycogen) and honey at bedtime goes into the blood. But I’ve eaten plenty of meals at 6:30 without any obvious effect. Maybe they were too low-carb. I don’t know if making my room very very dark (two curtains) is better than making my room dark (one curtain) but there is no obvious reason making my bedroom less dark would improve sleep (#3). I have never heard anyone say chocolate (#4) improved their sleep. Morning faces did improve sleep but the mood improvement was much more obvious (#5). I’ve tried several brands of honey; there was no obvious difference between them, arguing against #6.

As the day wore on I found myself in a good mood but not a great mood, arguing against #5.

I’d say #2 is the most plausible, the rest less plausible, with #1 the least plausible. But I will test all of them.

More (a day later) I did #3 (only one curtain), #4 (chocolate), #5 (later faces), and #6 (new honey) again. I did not sleep exceptionally well. That makes #1 and #2 more plausible.

In a 2010 forum discussion I found this:

SLEEPY HEAD I read that honey helps you sleep. I’ve tried it the past few night and have slept very well! I have had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep since I was born. I even take Ambien sometimes and still stay awake alllllll night long. I can’t believe how well I slept the past 2 nights. Just take one teaspoon of honey before bedtime and sleep like a puppy!

USER 967048 I took honey again last night and slept awesome. I have found that 2 tablespoons work the best.

USER 968407 I took honey again last night and slept like a baby again! This really works!

USER 602568 I’ve been sipping a cup of milk with a couple teaspoons of honey on nights I can’t sleep. It always works. But I thought it was the warm milk. I didn’t realize the honey was the key ingredient.

More evidence that as little as one teaspoon produces a big improvement. One teaspoon of a common food can greatly improve something as important as sleep!

 

• global warming: predicted versus actual
• possible yogurt strains
• Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World, on the latest PISA results. “M any complicated countries at the top of these rankings. Not just Poland (16% child poverty) but Estonia (15% child poverty), Canada (15%) and Vietnam!”
• Does resistant starch produce optimal gut biota? Maybe not. “ TaterTot has low firmicutes!. . . . Slow down on that victory lap, guys.”
• Healthy diets and science. A blog that describes many interesting studies. For example, one study found “those who consumed the most saturated fat had a 36% reduced risk of pancreatic cancer compared to those who consumed the least saturated fat.”
• Accuracy of Doctor’s Data Vitamin D test. The people who run Doctor’s Data have a poor understanding of calibration and related issues, as I’ve said. This is an improvement — at least there is data. But it is still mediocre. Better would be to include description of the conditions of the calibration measurements, such as when, who, where, and, especially, how long between blood spot deposition and measurement procedure (was this value realistic? when a customer uses the test this value may be a week).

In a recent post called “Government as useful irritant” I said five factors increase innovation: 1. Freedom. 2. Benefit. 3. Resources. 4. Pain. 5. Stability. The effect of government isn’t simple. It might freedom — to the extent the coercion outweighs the protection — and of course corrupt governments make it harder to benefit from your innovation. On the other hand, governments often provide resources, pain and stability. Several of the factors are contradictory — pain and stability, for example — which makes it hard to produce optimal conditions, at least without paying attention to what actually happens.

A article I read soon after that (“Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets”) had two relevant examples. One of my points was that increasing inequality reduces innovation bad because it means the people at the top get more and more comfortable, which reduces their desire to innovate. The more inequality, the more of the population falls into two categories: 1. Too poor to innovate (not enough resources). 2. Too comfortable to innovate (not enough pain).

Greenwald saw the value of pain:

After graduation, he accepted a job in the litigation department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz . . . “I could not thrive or even function in a controlling institution like that. There’s a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation, which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire to question or challenge or do anything significant.

Snowden had all five factors in large amounts. He had freedom because his bosses paid him little attention and, because of his IT talent, it was easy to get a job. He also had a lot of money. Obviously he had great resources, including IT talent, knowledge and access. He had pain because he was disgusted by NSA overreach and Obama’s failure to improve things. He had stability because he had a steady job. The money helped here, too. Because the revelations are so large, he benefits a lot, even if there is also a very big cost.

After I posted that tofu made me stupid — made me slower on a reaction-time test — a reader named Ann, who lives in Florida, said she had discovered that her migraine headaches were caused by soy. How she discovered this:

I was 49 years old and in that hot flashes stage of life, had read that soy could help alleviate them and tried a soy capsule not at a meal, immediately noticed sinus pressure and itchiness.

So I started reading all labels and eliminated soy from my diet and my migraines and sinus headaches went away! The hot flashes eventually went away on their own. I was losing whole days every month to the migraines. Every now and then the soy sneaks in at a restaurant but not as bad as before. Whenever anyone says they have migraines I always suggest looking at soy. Regretfully my daughter has the same issue, but she has way fewer headaches after eliminating soy.

I used to blame a lot of my headaches on allergies, never thinking it could be something I was eating. At age 60 now, my cholesterol numbers are excellent and I weigh 122 pounds when so many of my friends are overweight.

I asked how long it had taken to discover this.

I had been having migraines for years, 10-20, but in the mid 90s they got worse (could have coincided with more soy in food). Saw a doctor but he just prescribed imitrex which helped but did not prevent them. He never suggested looking for a food cause. It was dumb luck or divine intervention that I tried that soy capsule in 2001 or 2002. I am often amazed at how much better I feel health wise since then. Since soy is in so much processed food my diet is very basic “real” food. Raw fruits and veggies, plain nuts, fresh meat, real cheese, eggs, yogurt, any desserts I make from scratch with real butter. I’m always excited when I find a cracker that doesn’t have soy since that’s usually my bread substitute.

Let me repeat part of that: A doctor she saw because of migrains did not suggest trying to find an environmental cause. The same thing happened to a woman I wrote about for Boing Boing. Her doctor just prescribed one drug after another. Her migraines turned out to be caused by cleaning products. Not knowing that migraines often have environmental causes is like not knowing the germ theory of disease.

Few soy eaters realize the dangers of soy, as far as I can tell. I wrote to one of them, Virginia Messina, a nutritionist who has said “there is no reason to believe that eating soyfoods is harmful to brain aging.” She has not replied.

A long list of possible migraine triggers (from the UC Berkeley health service) does not list soy, although it does mention soy sauce. It says soy milk should be safe. In a 2006 interview, one headache doctor recommended avoiding all soy. In the comments to this, a woman says:

SOY is the biggest trigger for my migraines. For years I suffered daily from migraines but after watching EVERYTHING I eat and reading all labels and avoiding SOY as best I can I am doing better. The biggest problem is that SOY is in everything!!!! I think one day they will find out how bad it is for us.

Imagine that. Putting something that damages the brain in everything.

• Interview with sufferer from mercury amalgam fillings. Stephen Barrett, founder of Quackwatch, says mercury amalgam fillings are perfectly safe. For many people, this might be true. It is not always true.
• “She was given a three to five year sentence.” One of the greatest wrist-slaps of all time. She deserves at least one year in jail per falsification, which would be several thousand years in jail.
• Ron Unz, the minimum wage and social innovation
• Dairy consumption and heart disease risk. “The majority of observational studies have failed to find an association between the intake of dairy products and increased risk of CVD, coronary heart disease, and stroke, regardless of milk fat levels.”
• Tourism and mental illness. “A Canadian woman was denied entry to the United States last month because she had been hospitalized for depression in 2012. Ellen Richardson could not visit, she was told, unless she obtained “medical clearance” from one of three Toronto doctors approved by the Department of Homeland Security.” Horrifying.
• Snorting baby shampoo to cure sinusitis. A good example of personal science. His understanding of biofilms led him to try baby shampoo. It is also interesting that he doesn’t try to strengthen his immune system to solve the problem or maybe he doesn’t know how to. A professional sinusitis researcher would never discover what he did, yet another example of how our healthcare system ignores cheap treatments.

Thanks to Allen Jackson and Phil Alexander.