Turning the Puzzle Sideways: Sleep, Diet and the Brain-Gut Connection | Hacker News Reader

Turning the Puzzle Sideways: Sleep, Diet and the Brain-Gut Connection

cowboy.vc

225 pointsdsr12131 comments

I've been on a ketogenic diet for a year now and sleep has been the biggest thing. I was a light, restless sleeper and I noticed very quickly how how much better my sleep got. I'd fall asleep quicker and it feels (and tracks) deeper. I don't wake as much, sweat nearly as much when I sleep and wake up feeling far more rested.

Sleep aside, I don't sweat nearly as much during the day and I've shaken almost most all the IBS related problems I had. Feels a bit like a miracle. Trouble is, I wish (much like the article) I could understand exactly what it was that I cut out that made the biggest difference. Bread? Alliums? Fructose?

I guess the only way would be to reintroduce things slowly and test, or revert back to a carb heavy diet and remove stuff one by one... But when you're (finally) feeling great you don't want to mess it up :-/

I have always had great sleep, so for me it's easy to notice when my sleep is affected since it's so rare.

Top 3:

- weight. The fatter i get, the worse i sleep. And it's a vicious circle.

- rafined sugar. Too much of it will make me restless, including the sweating you mentioned, but also accelerated cardio respiratory rythm.

- things agressive on the intestine such as too much milk (i'm NOT lactose intolerant)

Screens, late intense lights and coffee seldom affect my sleep, although the later is starting to now that i'm getting older.

I think no refined sugar will be my starting point if and when I ever reintroduce carbs. I've always exercised pretty consistently, I didn't have much weight to lose when I started the diet, and I still eat a load of cheese - so I think it's probably my best guess as a starting point.

Coffee is a funny one - I've never been able to make a direct correlation between that and sleep (it doesn't seem to have too much effect), but when I cut coffee down to (for the most part) a single cup in the morning, I now notice that a second cup will give me jittery legs.

I'd argue cutting refined sugar is good for everyone, and probably the easiest place to start when you're trying to lose weight / live more healthily. Replace sugary coke with a sugar free version, or put less sugar in coffee (that's how I started); the cravings, if you have them, will gradually diminish.

I believe cheese fits in a keto diet as well. If you want to adjust that a bit, go for hard / old cheese instead of soft ones. Also go for real cheese, none of that "sandwich slices" stuff in unrefrigerated plastic packaging.

Sounds super interesting. Can you provide a link or a quick list of the things that you eat for your diet. I’m currently having great difficulty sleeping due to IBS.

Sure. Can't give you an exact list, but start with https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq and then take a look at dietdoctor.com who have a 2 week (I think) intro to keto which gives you some decent variation with keto food (and worked really well for a friend of mine). I use MyFitnessPal to track what I eat and keep below 20g of net carbs every day (usually coming in around 10-15).

Good luck with it - IBS is absolutely miserable.

Do you drink? I gave up drinking for a few years for weight reasons, and my IBS fixed itself, and didn't come back when I started drinking again.

Beer certainly exacerbated my symptoms. Alcohol has become a much-less-often thing for me (mostly because you can't really have 'a quick pint'). I've benefitted most mentally here though, I think? You don't realise how often you have that post drinking booze-blues (even in the most minor way) until you don't have it very often.

Coincidentally, cleaner alcohol (vodka) seems to minimise the mental and physical hangovers far more than drinking beer.

I pretty much don't. Although I like to taste a glass of different types of beer when I go to a new region (here in Europe). I have noticed that it does trigger the IBS symptoms roughly 40% of the time. Thanks for the comment. I think I'll give up on the tasting because like the parent mentioned IBS is miserable.

I had the same experience with a fasting/keto regimen. The fasting had a big impact on how deep my sleep was. At times it almost felt like coming out of anesthesia at the hospital.

I've found with me that, after trying keto for ages and loving how I felt but hating the diet itself, I managed to pin point the issue down to grains. Any form of grain, be it rice, wheat, barley, oats etc, all seemed to mess me up big style. I'n now on a diet of mostly fruit, nuts, beans, seeds and tubers and I'm better than I was on keto on almost every measurable factor. I think cutting out the carbs initially improves the lives of most people because it's a group of food that contains the biggest offenders in terms of IBS related trigger, but it's rarely carbohydrate in itself.

In terms of reintroducing foods, don't go back to carbs and cut back! You're just setting yourself up to fail. Just reintroduce carbs slowly up. Start with tubers and root veg, as from what I've read they're often the easiest in terms of digestion. Then move on to fruits, then nuts, then seeds, then finish with grains. It could well be you're gluten intolerant so there are only a few types of grain you're sensitive to.

Maybe it is glycemic load? I completely agree, but I get hit hard by sugars, bread, mashed potatoes and cheap fries (really good fries I justify).

If you still want to enjoy fries, get an air fryer and just spray sliced potatoes with a very small amount of olive oil. Then cook only up to temperature of 250F/120C to prevent acrylamide from forming (it might take 30-60 minutes to be finished).

I used to be hit hard by regular fries (was feeling sick for a day, felt them staying in my stomach for a while etc.) until I switched to the aforementioned method. Taste is almost the same, but digestion is unproblematic now.

Processed carbohydrates will by definition hit you hard. Added oil is also hard. Try intact grains, e.g. rice, quinoa, millet, barley, etc. Even whole wheat bread or pasta will hit harder than boiled wheat grains.

Added oil is just fat, not bad for you. Specifically since op mentioned keto.

But they're not talking about keto if they're eating fries etc. Added oil is not good - in excess fat builds up in the cells and is responsible for insulin resistance. With ketosis this is temporarily staved off, but you will still likely have insulin problems when you go off keto, it doesn't actually fix anything, just offer temporary relief.

I don't think it's that, as I'll go ham on like 2000 calories of potatoes and beans after working out and feel great. My thoughts are that it must be a histamine response to some compound found in grains and some spices.

Thanks! This is great advice. If and when I return to the world of carbs I'll definitely do it like this. Keto as a diet really works for me (wonderfully). So many of my favourite foods!

It's a shame there's so much pseudo-science around food intolerances, as I'd basically dismissed out of hand that I might be intolerant to some foods.

As part of a separate diet, it's become clear to me that bread caused the life-long indigestion I've suffered, and that eggs were causing my skin to be bad, neither of which were links I'd made before.

Also currently on a diet that isn't keto -- I'm eating a lot of vegetables, and the occasional rice dish, and not being careful with sugar in sauces -- but lacks white carbs, and getting many of the benefits people who are on keto diets are claiming. As per the article, my sleep is massively improved, largely because I've stopped getting up in the night 20 times to pee.

I advise all my friends to do a "one food and work up" diet. I had massive problems with sleep, my skin, my bowel movements, general fatigue, long-onset DOMS after working out - the list goes on. These are completely gone now I pin-pointed the issue. I cut back everything, and added things one ingredient at a time. I started with only root veg, then added legumes, then brassicaceae veg (kale, cauliflower, broccoli etc.) That covered all my nutritional needs bar B12, which I supplement. From there, I've slowly added one more food every couple of week.

My only guess is that I have a histamine response to some kind of compound found in grains and certain types of spices. The body is a strange machination. Honestly, doing the reduction diet was the best thing I've ever done. If you could make a medication that brought me from how I felt 3 years ago to where I am now, you'd be worth more than Bezos.

for how long did you eat the one food item for? ( is that all you would eat?)

About 2 weeks with 'low risk' foods, and up to 4-6 weeks with 'high risk' foods - low risk being low FODMAP foods, and those that you rarely hear of allergies with. 'High risk' were things like nuts, which many people react very poorly to. I'd add them to the foods I already knew were safe to eat. So for example, I've recently taken to adding buckwheat (which is weirdly a fruit) to my stews and granola after workout. I'm slightly concerned that I may react badly, so I won't add anything new to my diet for a while until I'm 100% sure that it's not causing any under-lying inflammation. I'll mentally keep track of variables like my gym performance, mental acuity, ability to absorb new information, tiredness levels etc. I very much play it by ear though. If I'm especially stressed, or miss workouts, or suffering from any other thing to could contribute to me feeling tired or down, I'll lay off adding any new foods because it will skew 'results'.

This sounds very similar to Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and it might be worth your time to ask a doctor about it if you haven't already.

Thanks, I'll definitely look into this. I take anti-histamines and aspirin to regulate some of my symptom outbreaks as per a recommendation from my GP, so the fact that it's mentioned as a treatment certainly perks my interest.

My wife had struggles very similar to yours. She had herself tested for a super broad range of allergies and intolerances (this wasn't cheap) and found that her histamine levels were 20x the upper bound of "normal". This was in a time when eating a single chocolate chip cookie could knock her out for days.

She then did an elimination diet much like yours (but without the keto - she just cut out anything that either is high in histamine or encourages histamine production in the body). She's a different person now. Her gut mostly recovered in the sense that the same cookie would now make her feel bad for a few hours and sometimes not even that. It's great.

Just in case it interests someone, she maintains a food blog particular for histamine intolerant people at https://histaminefriendlykitchen.com/

It makes sense that histamine messes with sleep. The drug modafinil (Provigil, Nuvigil) is a pro-histamine and considered a nootropic because it reduces sleepiness and even increases focus.

I wonder, can one use a pro-histamine food as a nootropic?

Have you checked for diabetes?

I have, because I’m super super sensitive to sugar, get thirsty a lot, and pee a lot but ... the tests are always normal. Cutting out sugar has made any symptoms go away.

There are food allergy tests that you can take, too. I've done the ALCAT test, and it was very helpful. It's a blood test, and provides a big list of red/yellow/green foods.

e.g. Red = likely to cause a strong negative reaction.

I found it to be extremely helpful in finding things that were causing issues.

Kale, Cumin, etc. Things that I would not have easily identified on my own.

I did one of those, and later found out the one I did was pretty non scientific :-( I’d urge caution there

What about quinoa? If that's still an issue, what have been your favorite substitutes for grains? I'm fond of riced cauliflower.

Quinoa is great, as are lentils and corn. You can also get lots of different types of cous-cous made using legume flour. Those are my go to's if I want to add something grain like to my meals. I've experimented with some others like Teff and Amaranth, but they still made me feel sluggish and restless.

Whole grains will be packed with protein and fiber, and the refined flours lacking these may lead to blood sugar voodoo when consuming past a certain threshold. Like refined sugar consumption it's though that empty carbs also have a similar effect. I suspect the primary issue with wheat is it's almost never in whole grain form.

I thought it was the lectins in the grains that cause a lot of problems for people.

I don't think that's been substantiated. Legumes, potatoes, tomatoes and some fruit are lectin-rich. Blue-zones diets tend to lean more heavily on legumes. There's the whole gluten thing for wheat and others but it's unclear to me how much of an impact that may have.

Super helpful advice, thank you

The thing with fibre and carbs (like in fruits) is that the fibre will line your intestine so you don't absorb the carbs as much, but allows the carbs to pass to the next intestine where the gut bacteria there loves the stuff.

Maybe you want to consider to switch to a whole food plant based diet. Other than the other „lifestyle“ diets such as low carb, the plant based is actually backed by science. A good source is nutritionfacts.org and the book „how not to die“ by the same author. If you asked me to switch two months ago, I‘d say no way. But the science behind it convinced me to try it and it is so much easier than expected.

Appreciate the comment; I tried veganism as a test for a month a few years ago and didn't get on with it at all. Keto seems to work pretty well for me - I enjoy the food and there's plenty of science to geek out on :-)

The science is actually very shaky. I've looked at the first 30 or so studies Greger cites and they often seem not to give (with statistical significance or at all) what he seems to claim. There are also many duplicated sources to increase the citation page count. He also cherry-picks very strongly.

If the science is a private website and a book by the same person, it's not really "science".

And by mixing and matching different research papers, any diet peddler/author/etc can make it appear as their specific diet is "backed by science" (when it's just a bunch of disparate papers in its favor, without context -- e.g. later responses to those papers, quality and reproducibility, papers that study the exact opposite claims and also work, etc).

The only real science is not in studies (that are a dime a dozen, of widely different quality, and most are shoddily done and discredited by later studies), but in what's accepted by the nutritionist/medical professionals as nutrition 101.

>* The website is not by a single individual with commercial interests. All revenue from the book goes to his foundation, which runs the website*

Not sure for the particulars of this case, but setting up a "foundation", "non profit (which gives one huge salaries as 'expenses')" and so on, are the oldest tricks in the book for con-men, from churches, to donations, activists, etc...

So "all money goes to the foundation" is hardly comforting (the foundation can be setup to cut them a big payslip for their consulting/services/running it, save him tax, etc, in the end make them more than they would make with a "for profit" entity).

What's the best that we can eat? --> What we're evolved to eat What did hominids eat up to 10.000 years ago? --> Everything except carbs as we know them today

There's your connection of science to low-carb

Carbs in the quantities that we have them these days are ridiculously unnatural,

This sounds quite interesting to me, have you tried a FODMAP diet for your IBS symptoms before switching to keto? I've been going back and forth on FODMAPs for the last year and a half to try and pinpoint what it is that triggers my symptoms, however no matter how "cleanly" I eat I often end up getting symptoms from foods that are supposedly safe for me (or no symptoms at all from stuff that a few months ago would've given me days of problems). I'm looking to switch it up a bit since it doesn't seem like FODMAP is a viable long term solution and it's not solving my problems entirely, would you recommend looking into keto?

I never tried a FODMAP diet - I guess at the time it just seemed _too_ restrictive. I suppose keto is just as restrictive, but it's like anything right? You're never going to be able to give up smoking until you're ready to give up smoking. I was just at a point in life where I could embrace something and it worked for me.

Based on how _I_ feel, I'd definitely recommend it. But I'm (definitely) not a doctor, and you're (most probably) not me(!), so I can't tell you whether it would work for you or not. That said, there are some fabulous communities, a lot of advice, data and science about keto though - have a read of some and if you think it fits, give it a go and see how you feel :-)

Maybe pre-diabetes?

https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/diabetes-lack-of-sle...

Nah, I've had that checked multiple times.

I recommend discussing with a medical professional if you sweat. Sweat means inflammation, fever or slight fever. It could be nothing but it could be also symptoms of pre-diabetes type 2, cancer or other chronic disease.

It could also mean your duvet is too thick, or that it's summer...

yes, that's true. But he also states that he sweats more depending on food. That means his body has an inflammation reaction towards certain foods. Could be sugar/refined grains (which untreated could lead to diabetes type ii), other people have inflammation when eating BBQ red meat (which increases risks of cancer)

Interesting! I have the opposite experience. I've gone on a bunch of very low-carb diets, maybe ten at this point (not sure if they were exactly ketogenic or not), and I've enjoyed them. But every time I try low-carb, my sleep gets extremely light (I'll wake up 3 or 4 times a night), I sleep a couple hours less than normal, and I get weirdly vivid dreams. It's always the weird sleep that makes me quit the diet.

I wonder if it's symptomatic of low-fat diets, or insulin resistance from too many carbs. Apparently going very low-carb can cause insomnia for some people as well.

Self-experimenting is important I guess. I'm faring better with my nutritional intake.

Something to consider when talking about anything wheat/gluten related is that SO many people nowadays are starting to show signs of gluten intolerance/allergy and this might be due to glyphosate rather than the gluten itself. I come from Italy and trust me when I tell you that everyone and their uncles eat a diet that is 99% gluten-based, however until a few years ago nobody ever had problems with it. I am starting to truly believe that we are slowly poisoning ourselves without realising it and then blaming the wrong culprits for it.

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. (Wikipedia)

It is also being linked to celiac disease and gluten intolerance more and more https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/

> I am starting to truly believe that we are slowly poisoning ourselves without realising it and then blaming the wrong culprits for it.

I have a background in hospitality, so I used to think about this all the time. I fully agree with you because I have no idea where all these allergies came from. It doesn't help that the problem is exacerbated by restaurants bending over backwards to fill chairs -- many of those allergies are just diets with parlance that cooks easily understand.

The fear for me is that we, as the affected mass, can be cognisant but remain powerless. We still go to the same brick and mortars and that's our only participation in the process. The changes that happen to our food are already delivered by a fully functioning system, at a scale unlikely to make swift changes, before we get any or notice it's bad. Only when we die are changes made, like seatbelts, but tasty.

I watched Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams last night (Crazy Diamond). "What would happen to our local economy if everyone grew their own food?" <-- Chills, man. Won't be long.

> many of those allergies are just diets with parlance that cooks easily understand

Absolutely. My dad has a strong aversion to garlic - it's not an alergy, he just can't stand even the faintest taste of it in food. After years of telling the waiters "absolutely no garlic" and the waiters bringing food with garlic and him complaining and the waiters answering "the cook said it's so little you shouldn't be able to taste it" nowadays he just says "I'm alergic to garlic" and he has problems much more rarely.

On what basis do you make that connection?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/

The reason so many people are showing a gluten allergy/intolerance is a fad propagated by social media.

It has nothing to do with evolution - obviously - since it doesn't work in such a small time frame, and it has nothing to do with glyphosate, since glyphosate is used in most of the other (gluten free) crops as well.

>it has nothing to do with glyphosate, since glyphosate is used in most of the other (gluten free) crops as well.

That would be relevant if people ate those crops at the same quantities (and at the same processing) as they do gluten containing crops...

I used to think like you wrt the social media conditioning, however now that I've experienced IBS on myself I changed my outlook on it. I am sure that there are people who eat specific diets just because it is a fad and they get conditioned into it by their social circles or influencers they follow, however I am also now quite sure that some of these conditions are very real and people suffer quite a lot because of it (and not necessarily in a physical way but through a very high psychological burden also).

I can tell you from my personal experience (YMMV etc.) that I was able to eat anything and everything without a single problem whatsoever until my early twenties. I was the type of person to eat a kebab at 4am and then go straight to bed and sleep like a baby, now even thinking of doing something like that makes me feel sick. Some of it might be due to aging, certainly, and the doctors I've spoken to have also suggested that increased level of stress might've had something to do with it (which ties in nicely with the gut-brain link), but still what I experienced is that from a certain point forward I wasn't able to eat most foods anymore without feeling really sick (and this has been diagnosed as being IBS, which is truly just a catch-all for gastroenterologists when they don't know what the fuck is causing you problems). From my experience going forward I don't think that it's triggered by very specific foods or stress by themselves, and I've come to the conclusion that it must've been something systemic that I did that led to this outcome (i.e., eat small amounts of glyphosate every day multiple times a day for years).

I think we should really take better care of ourselves and at least explore these potential risks very carefully before dismissing everything as a social media fad / zoomer thing

Never underestimate/write-off the placebo effect.

Never write off going to Europe and eating their food for a few weeks and trying to figure out for months why your chronic skin conditions/etc go away, only to be told the exact stuff you're reading in these threads.

In many climates wheat and oats are subject to pre-harvest dessication. Guess what herbicide is commonly used.

What's the advice for avoiding it? Organic food (which I always thought was a fad)?

I don't think there's a way to readily avoid it, unless you can grow and process the crops yourself. Organic food, afaik, more times than not is worse than run-of-the-mill industrial products so tread carefully. Unfortunately I don't have much advice to give here since I cut out gluten almost entirely from my diet.

one tip is avoid GMO foods. the mods make the food resistant to glyphosate, so they can spray it heavily and the crop survives, weeds don't. more gets in your body though.

there are also many google-able tips, such as washing foods better, choosing organic, eating less processed food and more, e.g. https://janeshealthykitchen.com/avoid-these-foods-with-monsa...

So much keto talk here yet no one mentions blood markers or LDL (bad cholesterol). What ever happened to good'ol'data approach?

It's pretty obvious that altering ones diet can have profound effects. But a scientific approach to diet is a far safer approach. Ever tried to lower your bad cholesterol?

So a group of friends who are data obsessed tried keto after another group of friends raved on about it like it was a sign from above. The group that took a scientific approach getting blood work before and after noticed their LDLs shoot through the roof. Before keto: LDL 70. After 4 months on keto LDL 190. That's well above the Sutter health recommended LDL 120. Even 120 is well above what heart surgeons recommend to avoid cholesterol in your arteries: LDL below 70.

The other group that raved on about keto claimed to have done blood work but never shared the numbers. They said they felt great etc.. no st, the brain craves fats. You will feel better. You can triple your fish oil intake and experience some of that natural high for those daring.

Anyways some food for thought.

The theory I heard is that sugar hardens the LDL and makes it dangerous. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-P2McPkgfg

If you want to lower your LDL I'll advice you to eat nothing but white bread with slices of highly processed meat for a week. Will lower your HDL and increase Trigs too, but if LDL is your primary concern: Go for it.

Here is the thing: it's not as easy as LDL = BAD. For older people higher LDL is actually protective, for women there seems to be nearly no effect whatsoever. Don't be fooled by simple answers.

> If you want to lower your LDL I'll advice you to eat nothing but white bread with slices of highly processed meat for a week.

That sounds like dubious advice. On what basis would you recommend that?

There are healthier ways to have low LDL, namely just eating whole plant foods. A variety of fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, nuts and seeds, and spices is my recommendation.

I'm not recommending it at all. It's to show, that LDL is not a good measure of cv health.

> For older people higher LDL is actually protective, for women there seems to be nearly no effect whatsoever. Don't be fooled by simple answers.

Your last statement is in direct contradiction with all of your previous simple answers. Where is there evidence of the protective effect of LDL?

How so? LDL can be a marker of bad health, but is not so by any means in all cases.

Relevant study: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401

That study is problematic: https://www.cebm.net/2016/06/cebm-response-lack-association-...

And just one? Lots of studies showing the opposite.

I'm not here to dig up all studies showing those results. Here is (probably the best) one. The MCE was orignally designed to show the opposite:

https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246

Btw, it's not "just one" study, but a meta study. I guess you understand the difference?

Please link the studies showing the opposite results.

Like pretty much everything, there's a U shaped curve. Low cholesterol can be bad, just as high cholesterol can be bad.

Plus, it could just be a side effect of something else and we don't actually know what the underlying cause is.

> For older people higher LDL is actually protective

Their bodies are decaying, and/or (mostly and) is in a state of sickness, and can't saturate its needs properly because of this, so a higher level of LDL can be indicative of them eating enough to counter their bodies increasing inabilities, or not being as sick, and so forth.

It's a correlation, not a causation.

The MCE was a very controlled study that would disagree with your assesement.

Here is another review of the literature: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1...

Making such outlandish claims requires hard evidence.

Wow, this comment is prime material for https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says !

Why?

The "good'ol'data" approach is useless when the data themselves are useless from the get go.

LDL cholesterol is not a predictor, indicator or otherwise relevant measure with regards to disease, at all. If anything, HDL/trig ratio might be.

[Citation Needed]

And if you are just an armchair cardiologist and you cherry pick one or two publications that suit this conclusion, well...

That goes both ways.

To be honest, you can bear the burden of proof yourself. If you want to show me I'm wrong, I'm more than willing to review the evidence. Unless of course you're just projecting the whole armchair thing onto others.

Lastly, if you think of it, asking others to prove the irrelevance of LDL with regards to CVD is straight non-sense. Do I also have to prove to you that wearing grey socks doesn't cause disease?

I cannot upvote your comment enough.

Keto is all well and good... until you get your lipid panel checked.

We all understand that lab values are not everything, but I don't think _anyone_ who is informed about cardiovascular health would say that over the long term such elevated LDL values are anywhere near healthy...

I say this as someone who felt great on a very low carb diet and preached the keto diet for a while.

> Keto is all well and good... until you get your lipid panel checked.

Yeah, I did. Every value was significantly improved across the board after losing the amount of weight I managed to lose on a Ketogenic diet.

If you can do keto and feel amazing and lose weight, but your numbers "look" bad, who cares?

I doubt you'll die sooner, but even if you did, you don't want to spend your life tired and hungry.

Worth a listen to 2 experts debate LDL, plant based diets etc.. and throw around a ton of data points.

Joe Rogan Experience #1175 - Chris Kresser & Dr. Joel Kahn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtqCBimr6U

I've had my share of sleep problems in the past. Fixed it by reading "Why We Sleep" and "Circadian Code" and borrowing a lot of ideas and suggestions there.

I immediately gave up coffee, at first, a long with a bunch of other things (details at [0]).

Anyway, recently I started experimenting with coffee again and it turns out it didn't have any impact on my sleep, whatsoever. I started drinking coffee again (albeit, little less than what I drank before) and I still sleep 8+ hours daily.

I eat very cleanly, in general, and exercise daily.

I think that trying to fit my last meal 4-5 hours before sleeping has had the biggest impact on my sleep!

It's extremely important for your physical and mental health to eat clean, sleep well (8+ hours minimum) and exercise (strength training preferred). Optionally try to include time restriction on the eating window (say, eat within 8 hours period in each 24 hours). That's all there is to it, really. The rest is probably genetic lottery.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17639429 (old comment of mine)

I loved "Why We Sleep" (was a HN recommendation, I think!). One of my biggest takeaways was learning to not feel guilty about it. I think the constant 'hustle mentality' ends up making a lot of this community (in particular) demonise sleep in an "I'll sleep when I'm dead" and "if I'm not working 22 hours a day I'm being out hustled!" When I 'forgave' myself for sleeping (which sounds mental, but bear with) and started to get a consistent 7.5 hours a day, I found that I was just working _better_. Smarter not harder, I guess? Focussed work is definitely > unfocussed work!

Same here. I have a friend who has limitless energy - he can party until 5pm, sleep for 2 hours, then go skiing the next day. All my youth I've felt guily about not being able to do this.

Recently I've simply accepted that my body needs more sleep, and I feel better if I satisfy this need, so I try to sleep more. I still struggle to go to be (the internet is just so interesting!) but at least I don't feel guilty anymore.

The problem I see with all these Anecdotes is, that when a person starts to take care of their body like you did, they attack multiple health problems at once: improving sleep, reducing coffee, eating more greens, a little bit more workout. So it is more the sum than a single thing.

To be precise, I was never out of shape in my entire life. At some points, I was extremely fit, some moderately fit, but I was never in a bad shape even when I wasn't sleeping right.

So, that in itself didn't help with my sleep, for example.

It might be more psychological than anything else. Wouldn't surprise me!

I developed a pretty bad pollen allergy around the age of 30. Every spring I had to take antihistamines that helped a bit (not completely), but they made me either anxious or sleepy.

Then just for fun I made a bet with a friend of mine -- I tried to do a half-distance amateur tri race (1.9k swim, 90k cycle, 21k running) without any carb intake. So I dramatically decreased my carb intake for 3 months or so from February to May.

My allergy has completely disappeared and didn't come back for 2 years (despite me having switched back to eating carbs). Then it came back, and I cut back on carbs again. It subsided.

Very strange.

The problem is that I can't figure out what is helping. Carbs in general? Gluten? Something else? I don't know because it takes 1-2 weeks at least before the effects kick in, so I can't just simply A/B test.

1/2 weeks seems trivial to A/B test.

Just eat no gluten but still carbs for 2 weeks, see what happens, and then all carbs again.

2 weeks of a full-on allergy is really bad, and it also affected by other stuff (like rain, etc.) It's hard to control.

I'm interested in this subject. I recently read 'Why We Sleep' and I have started a revolution of getting enough quality sleep, and it has been life changing. I recommend this to everyone.

One thing that offended the reading voice in my head was the careless grammar in the article. I'm not a stickler, but starting sentences with 'am' rather than 'I am', for instance, makes the article sound rushed.

Funny like eat well, sleep enough and get exercice is getting rediscovered again and again.

I think that is strange. Why aren’t we told this by our family, by our teachers, by society? Probably the most important thing you do to improve your health.

We are being told about it, but it is considered old-fashioned.

Also, when you are young, the effects of breaking those rules are less severe. But then, gradually and slowly, you are not so young anymore.

It's considered old-fashioned because what we're told about tends to be unsubstantiated pseudo science as often as not, with lots of contradictory advice and weak explanations.

I think everyone knows "quality food, exercise and sleep is good for you", but noone knows what that is for everyone. It varies from person to person, circumstance to circumstance, and the effects (good or bad) are hard to observe and correlate to choices, so it's hard to justify or blame them accurately. Especially when the accepted "facts" keep flip-flopping every 5-10 years (fats are bad! fats are good! sugar is bad! sugar is good! phasic sleep is good! no, you should sleep 8 hours in one go! you should always sleep in the middle of the night! no, it's possible daytime sleep is better for you!) At some point, it feels like if you just make random lifestyle choices, even a broken clock will be right twice a day?

Nutrition and sleep science are both still very loosey-goosey and the surprising thing to me is that we don't invest in significantly more in-depth research to find better metrics and measurements and baseline principles to teach kids.

I think you explained the problem perfectly.

I would pay someone good money if they could just tell me what "quality food, exercise, and sleep is good for you" meant in excruciating detail. If I knew exactly what I could eat and how I could work out to get the most health benefits it would make such a huge difference. Instead I feel like there are a thousand different opinions out there, all backed by a thousand different (and usually flawed) studies. As someone who loves things that are backed by science, it frustrates me that I can't find the "right" answer (at least for the average person).

And maybe the answer is out there but I just don't know where to look. If so, please advise.

I don't know about you, but my family and teachers were at least as fat as I was. The ones that weren't were more likely to owe that fact to cocaine and/or nicotine than a healthy diet. They could all tell you that you needed to "eat right and exercise" -- to the point that it became a cliche, and I hate saying it to other people for that reason -- but none of them knew how to do those things properly.

Society has all the info you need readily available, but you have to go looking for it (which is trivial in the age of Google and YouTube, but not so much even 20 years ago). Pushing "fat free" Twinkies and other nutritionally-bankrupt "food" is a lot more lucrative than selling broccoli.

Doing keto for several years on and off, longest time was two years. While being on keto is absolutely recommended, I haven't seen signifcant impact on sleep quality.

Being on keto reduces your general anxiety. Or being on carbs makes you much more anxious and a doubting person. Maybe there is a small relation: Less anxiety leads to better sleep. In my case, I needed to fix my sleep with other things, keto didn't help there.

OT: I think that from a specific age (mid 30ies+) one cannot just eat carbs and gluten like they did when they were young. At a higher age carbs impact you much more. People get bloated and age way quicker. You see 'high carb' written in their face.

OT2: Not entirely sure if this post's actual goal is promoting the mentioned carb tracker app.

OT3: Maybe a bit extreme but very true is a quote by Talib: 'The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary'

Maybe it is just higher fat content? I mean fat got a lot of bad rep and people may not be consuming enough healthy fats.

If there's anything I'm getting from these comments is that everyone seems to have all sorts of different reactions, and we should all be much more aggressive about randomly experimenting with different diets

Clearly. And surprised at how many different types of food seem to affect so many adversely. I'm soooo lucky in that I've been able to eat anything and drink anything all my life without having sleep or any other problems (48 now, weigh 68kg, sleep like a champ, eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm thirsty).

'Turn the puzzle sideways', what a great phrase. I'm going to try to remember that one. Seems it'll help get past roadblocks sometimes.

How does the analogy in the title have any bearing on the anecdote shared by the author? It's not as if he adopted a different perspective and thereby gained intuition... instead, he stumbled upon something that he attributes credit for fixing his problem, then backed into a justification.

The anecdote of "ketogenic diet really helped my sleep" seems worth sharing. Everything else feels tacked on.

I am having a similar experience these days. As I am delving more into this topic here I logged some things from last month: http://avichalp.me/2019/04/06/debugging-sleep.html

As a vegetarian, I was surprised to see beans and legumes in the "foods to avoid" section of the Keto Diet 101 page: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ketogenic-diet-101

So what are my options?

> So what are my options?

Scroll down a bit further on that page until you hit the "Foods to Eat" section and remove from it anything you refuse to eat.

started to feel changes in sleep patterns at the end of my 30ies as well... from what i know my eating patterns did not change over the past 15-20 years so much. what are scientific papers on the relation between sleep and nutrition? might be interesting to learn more on this for the future.

>started to feel changes in sleep patterns at the end of my 30ies as well... from what i know my eating patterns did not change over the past 15-20 years so much.

No, but your body's abilities and stamina changed a lot...

>Amazingly, when the gut microbes from obese mice are transplanted into thin mice, with no change in diet, thin mice become fat!

I couldn't believe this, and I was so thankful for the link! Now I'll watch the Ted video and keep reading the other article.

Kind of unrelated but why are fad diets promoted so much on this site?

Diet is one of several extremely strong social signalling mechanisms.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/62uroa/clothin...

Subsequent to writing above, I found, related:

"A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades"

Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch University of California, Los Angeles

Abs: An informational cascade occurs when it is optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of those ahead of him, to follow the behavior of the preceding individual without regard to his own information. We argue that localized conformity of behavior and the fragility of mass behaviors can be explained by informational cascades.

Journal of Political Economy, 1992, vol. 100, no. 5

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138632

http://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-readings/bikhchandani9...

>Foods to Avoid >Fruit: All fruit, except small portions of berries like strawberries

>Foods to Eat >Meat: Red meat, steak, ham, sausage, bacon, chicken and turkey

Thank you but no, whoever made this diet doesn't know much about healthy food.

No fruit + plenty of meat => gout. But if you are in for the status, gout = "the king of diseases and the disease of kings" ;-)

You won't find any centenarians that eat vegan. India is one of the countries with the highest diabetes numbers and vegan. Japan, on the other hand, has the most centenarian and they eat basically unprocessed food and low carb.

Absolutely untrue. Adventists of the 7th day eat vegan afaik, and people in Okinawa ate very little meat. Both groups are famous for producing more centenarians than the average (global) population.

https://www.seventhdayadventistdiet.com/

Japanese food has pretty high carb but they are mostly unprocessed.

Correlation != causation. India is mostly vegetarian, not vegan - people eat diary products like paneer, ghee and yoghurt en masse. Meat foods are generally not that great - chicken with tons of bones, very chewy mutton, fish with tons of thin bones. I became +-vegetarian for few months when I backpacked there.

Their diet is generally not that good though - tons of carbs, little physical activity unless in 'blue collar' job. Older folks are almost always overweight. Maybe genes also don't help, not sure there.

Why should I be looking for centenarians that eat vegan? I have no idea how you ended up with this from what I wrote.

Blue zones are the 7 areas of the world that disproportionally produce centenarians.

Studies of their diets indicate that almost all of them are primarily vegetarian and they receive the majority of their calories from carbs. Feel free to look into them. Note that the blue zone in Sardenia is a big outlier even within the group.

I'm sure you know so much more than all of the doctors involved in creating it as a treatment for epilepsy.

And, of course, Dr. Atkins. He surely didn't know much about healthy food!

Why not research first before writing a comment containing "whoever made this diet"?

This diet has existed for longer than you have.

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