Tryptophan does make people sleepy, but the honey improves sleep throughout the night, in a big way

Will check back for more info on RS

I have never heard of tryptophan doing that – for example, improving how rested you feel in the morning. Nor do tryptophan-rich foods improve how rested you feel in the morning, as far as I know.

A human’s first food is breastmilk which is incredibly sweet. All infants need sugars to fuel their impressive growth within the first year until they get transitioned http://www.hookupdate.net/it/local-milf-selfies-review/ to solids. Lactose is in great abundance in breastmilk because it is so easy for the infant gut to break down into two basic sugar molecules which are used for forming other items and energy. The brain is wired to encourage breast feeding. The actions of latching, sucking, swallowing trigger all kinds of brain responses and the reward is more milk in the mother as demands increase. We are hardwired for the taste of sweet. If you remove lactose from an infants formula, the infant will not thrive. No other sugar comes close to lactose in the first year. There really is no substitute. And breastmilk usually puts a baby to sleep. Feeding is a lot of work and the growth of an infant is mind blowing. Fast forward to sugar when a baby is older. A connection between good feelings and having energy has been present since birth and is now in association with the taste of sweet. It is just a suggestion, but if you wish to look deeper into why we might be wired for sweet, I’d start there. (PS: I’m the mother of two!) And RS is fascinating to me. My 5yo daughter with Down syndrome instinctively eats cold starch. She has never been constipated which is typical of kids with DS. We raised her for 4 years on beef bone broth with lots of lactose and veggies. She is in great shape! Thanks!

Sorry, I wrote “info on RS” but it is the honey research I am interested in since my daughter is not a great sleeper. It was the RS that lead me here to your site. Too many browser windows open at the bottom of blog and not enough sleep! ??

I have noticed that if I eat a lot of sugar during the day (soft drinks, desserts and so forth) then I don’t feel refreshed [when I wake up] regardless of the honey. Perhaps there’s something about honey that helps regulate blood sugar. I think it works better on an empty stomach/lightly fasted. So if you had dinner at 7 pm you might not eat anything after and take the honey at 9 or 10. In the past I’ve had a late dinner then maybe some dessert or fruit in the following hours, then added the honey just after and I don’t think it worked as well. When I first tried it I used commercially available heated honey and it worked great. I’ve tried 2 tablespoons, but I don’t think that worked any better than one and sometimes as little as 1 teaspoon is enough.

Apparently adults in rural areas without electricity always get up at night

There are several related puzzles. Why are meals divided into main course and dessert? In other words, why do we eat the sweet part separate and later? If we like sugars because they provide energy, this makes no sense. If sugars are simply carbs, this makes no sense – we eat plenty of carbs during the main course. The separation of dessert and main course, if it reflects brain mechanisms, must mean that sugars are quite different than other carbs. Somehow we benefit from this division. A few people, in particular Elizabeth Capaldi, an experimental psychologist, have figured out that sweet food tastes worse if we are hungry (enough). This is why dessert comes after the rest of the meal. Yet other carbohydrates do not taste worse. Stuart pointed out something else along these lines, which I had not heard before but which is clearly true: We eat dessert much more after dinner than after lunch.

I believe Stuart’s discovery is important for two other reasons that might not impress anyone else. One is similarities with my earlier work. First, I’ve found other “cross-over” interactions with time of day, where something helpful at one time is harmful at another time. Vitamin D in the morning improves sleep, Vitamin D at night harms sleep. Morning faces improve mood, evening faces harm mood. Second, wondering why we like sour, umami and complex flavors was the first thing to suggest to me that we need to eat plenty of fermented food to be healthy. Many facts later, I’m sure this is true. Finally, evolutionary reasoning has helped me find several new experimental effects (morning faces, Shangri-La Diet, flaxseed oil, standing and sleep).

There’s also a book called the Honey Revolution: Restoring the Health of Future Generations. I tried this and it worked, but then my fasting blood sugar numbers got high, so I stopped. Since then I may have fixed the blood sugar issue- when I remember to check my numbers are normal now that I workout, so I may be able to do the honey again.

There’s a book called The Hibernation Diet that is about talking a spoonful of honey before bed. As I recall the diet claimed it would help you to sleep well, lose weight, and build muscle.

I think evolution shaped us to like a ‘poison’ like sugar is the same as for cocaine or porn, both of which humans have a taste for – they’re all supernormal stimuli.

My husband who gave up coffee and was looking for a replacement for mental acuity discovered that a spoonful of honey works just as well without the side effects

There are the usual reasons for why childbirth is risky, but some women (for some births?) have a reasonably easy time of it. Why haven’t the traits which make childbirth risky been bred out, or at least made much more rare?

That’s fascinating. Not just the results – the benefits of the bedtime ice cream – but also the fact that their will power somehow gave out near bedtime. Their willpower went down or the sweets became more attractive or both. I’ve heard many times about willpower going down in the evening – I can’t remember for what. I wonder if it goes down for sweets (less able to avoid them) more than other things, such as cigarettes and liquor. People binge in the evening much more than at other times of day.

I experimented the last three nights with honey-before-bedtime. My recent typical sleep pattern is an initial 3 hours, wake lightly, then 3 sessions of 1.5 hours each. Sometimes I wake up strongly at 4am at which time I’ll either change sleep locations, splash cold water on my arms and face, and/or hold standing meditation for 15 minutes, before attempting sleep again.)