Sleep

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Overview Sleep

101 items in sleep category

A few items in SLEEP category

• Sleep greatly improved by 50,000 IU of vitamin D once every two weeks – RCT Sept 2018
• Sleep disorders nicely treated by Vitamin D (50,000 IU twice a month) – RCT May 2017
• Sleep, Dr. Gominak and Vitamin D - several studies
• Restless Legs Syndrome dramatically reduced by vitamin D, etc
• On the job sleepiness 2.2X more likely if low vitamin D – Feb 2020
• Poor sleep 1.5 X more likely if less than 20 ng of Vitamin D – Feb 2019
• The Better Sleep Vitamin (Vitamin D) – nice 3 dollar book Feb 2015
• The worse the sleep apnea, the lower the vitamin D levels – meta-analysis 2017, 2020
• Vitamin D for better sleep video - Dec 2021
• 5X increase in sleep problems in a decade in US Veterans
• Sleep Apnea and Vitamin D - many studies
• Melatonin and Vitamin D - many studies does much more than improve sleep

VitaminDWiki 101 SLEEP category items

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VitaminDWiki - Sleep and Omega-3

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VitaminDWiki - Sleep Meta-analyses

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316 medical studies had both Sleep and Vitamin D in their title as of Sept 2024

Google Scholar

• Vitamin D deficiency: A forgotten aspect in sleep disorders? A critical update - Sept 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2024.06.023
• Vitamin D Deficiency Exacerbates Poor Sleep Outcomes with Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exposure: A Large American Population Study April 2024, FREE PDF
• The association between vitamin D status and sleep duration in school-aged children; the CASPIAN-V study - Nov 2022 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40200-022-01146-5 PDF behind Paywall 1.3 X higer risk of short sleep duration if low vitamin D

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See also Sleep related to Vitamin D on the web

5X increase in sleep problems in a decade in the US Veterans

• http://dx.doi.org/10.5665/sleep.5972
• ( The interfaces between vitamin D,sleep and pain - 2017 PDF
• Association of Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations With Sleep Phenotypes in a German Community Sample July 2019 free PDF
• Exploring sleep problems in children with developmental disabilities BMC March 2018, free PDF
  "...autism spectrum disorder ... had higher scores on the night waking, parasomnias (abnormal behavior during sleep), and daytime sleepiness subscales of the questionnaire."
  Children with autism spectrum disorder predominantly experience difficulties with night waking and falling asleep
• Fatty Liver and Sleep Apnea are Related NYT Feb 2015
• Sleep-disordered breathing advances cognitive decline in the elderly Neurology J., April 2015
  COPD treatment delays cognitive decline in people with COPD by 10 years
  Wonder if COPD machines/treatment increase vitamin D levels
• Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams Mercola Feb 2018
  Includes a video interview
  20 large-scale studies agree - the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life
  ...sleeplessness contributes to dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
  "Sleep-Deprived Drivers More Dangerous Than Those Under the Influence"
  In the spring when we lose one hour of sleep ==> 24 % increase in heart attacks.
     In the fall, when we gain one hour of sleep, we see a 21 % decrease in heart attacks
  after a single short sleep night (4 hour) natural cancer killer cells — drop by 75 %
• Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It Mercola March 2018
  No mention of Vitamin D nor Vitamin Bs
• Lack of sleep increases risk of catching a cold by 4X Mercola Sept 2015
  Circadian Rhythms, Melatonin, Vitamin D, or what?
• The influence of vitamin D supplementation on melatonin status in patients with multiple sclerosis Aug 2014
  Modest (6%) decrease in Melatonin if take an average of 4,400 IU of vitamin D
  PDF is behind a paywall. Suspect that they took the vitamin D at or after the evening meal
  Far easier to sleep if take the Vitamin D in the morning and Magnesium in the evening
• Vitamin D and Actigraphic Sleep Outcomes in Older Community-Dwelling Men: The MrOS Sleep Study Feb 2015 free text online
• Vitamin D Associations and Sleep Physiology—Promising Rays of Information Feb 2015, free text online
• Vitamin D as an Underlying Factor in Sleep-Related Issues Dec 2012
• A Quiet Drug Problem Among the Elderly NY Times March 2018, nothing about Vitamin D
  Insomnia and anti-anxiety drugs such as benzodiazepines = “benzos,” t: Valium (diazepam), Klonopin (clonazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Ativan (lorazepam). can be addicting (need increasing dose sizes)
  "By 2015, benzo deaths in that age group (>65) had jumped to 431, with more than two-thirds involving an opioid. (Benzo-related deaths in all age groups totaled 8,791.)"
  " “z-drugs” — Ambien, Sonata and Lunesta — present similar risks."     Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki
• Ten tips for better sleep Examine.com Sept 2018
  Discusses Magnesium, but not Vitamin D nor Omega-3

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Practical Tips for Optimizing Sleep - Dr. Patrick podcast March 2024

behind a paywall
00:00:00 - Why all animals evolved to sleep
00:02:04 - How exercise timing affects deep sleep
00:07:53 - Do saunas and hot baths increase sleep-enhancing hormones?
00:12:23 - Can learning and meditation boost deep sleep?
00:14:00 - Do scented oils, like lavender, impact sleep?
00:14:37 - Carbs before bed and the insulin-tryptophan-melatonin connection
00:18:58 - Why carb-heavy meals make us sleepy
00:20:38 - Can calming music, akin to lullabies, curb pre-sleep ruminations?
00:23:04 - Do cooking fumes and stale air impair sleep?
00:24:12 - Does low-level noise fragment sleep?
00:24:40 - Can time in nature transform your sleep quality?
00:25:19 - How melatonin supplementation alters deep sleep
00:26:17 - How my sauna and hot tub routine preps me for sleep
00:27:50 - Is there evidence white noise helps sleep?
00:29:24 - Morning vs. evening light – impact on deep sleep
00:32:07 - Can adjusting our body's thermal cues unlock deeper sleep?
00:36:00 - Science-backed heat therapy protocols
00:39:13 - The four pillars of sleep
00:42:01 - How much sleep is enough? (from newborns to older adults)
00:46:00 - Can sleep, exercise, and omega-3s synergize to maintain glymphatic clearance in aging brains?
00:49:22 - Are modern lifestyles and "social jetlag" turning us into shift workers?
00:52:49 - Building resilience against circadian disruptions
00:56:48 - Five immediate steps to enhance sleep quality tonight
01:00:27 - How long caffeine stays in the system?
01:02:31 - Do sedatives like alcohol or marijuana impair REM sleep?

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Why we sleep (book) - Oct 2017

The following is clipped from: The FDA's War Against Sleep substack
Matthew Walker is one of the world’s most vocal sleep researchers. In his book Why We Sleep, he argues that sleep serves several vital functions, including:

• Maintaining circulatory health and preventing heart attacks.
• Ensuring proper metabolic health (e.g., preventing hunger, diabetes, and weight gain).
• Supporting immune function (e.g., reducing susceptibility to the flu).
• Preventing cancer.
• Avoiding fatigue, brain fog, and serious accidents.
• Keeping you awake and alert.
• Healing and restoring the brain (e.g., reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s).
• Regulating hormonal function and maintaining fertility (e.g., sleep deprivation lowers testosterone levels).
• Processing emotional trauma (e.g., sleep is typically disrupted in PTSD, and PTSD often significantly improves once a drug is given which prevents PTSD from disrupting sleep).
• Interpreting emotional signals.
• Allowing rational control over impulses.
• Maintaining one’s sense of reality (e.g., prolonged sleep deprivation can trigger psychosis, and sleep is known to be disturbed in schizophrenic patients).
• Facilitating creativity (e.g., many paradigm-shifting discoveries came from dreams, Thomas Edison was well-known for using dreams to concoct his inventions, and when people are woken up from REM sleep, they often demonstrate a radically improved abstract problem solving capacity).
• Reducing one’s sensitivity to pain (whereas sleep deprivation increases it).
• Facilitating the long-term retention of memories.

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• "The problem lies in the nature of most sleeping pills: they are sedatives, not sleep aids. They sedate the brain, impairing its ability to initiate restorative sleep, leaving users tired and at risk for health issues. Studies have shown that sleeping pill users are significantly more likely to die early and develop cancer. For example, one study found a twofold increase in mortality for sleeping pill users, with another study reporting a 3.6-5.4 times higher death rate for users over 2.5 years, and an increased cancer risk of 7-99%. This in turn, led the authors to conclude that in 2010, prescription sleeping pills “may have been associated with 320,000-507,000 excess deaths within the USA alone.”"

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What the founder of VitaminDWiki does to encourage his sleep

Zero nightlights - not even an illuminated clock
Wear a sleeping mask while my wife reads her Kindle in bed
We both use Kindles with a very dim white-on-black mode
Magnesium-based sleeping pill 1/2 hour before sleep time (Nighrest, have used for decades)
If I feel fully awake in the middle of the night I leave bedroom and work on laptop for 1/2 hour to 3 hours
Several times a month use Ashwagandha or CBD to relax just before going to bed
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Note: Already have high level of Vitamin D, Zinc, Magnesium, Omega-3, etc.

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See also - getting to sleep quickly

What happened when I tried the U.S. Army’s tactic to fall asleep in two minutes Oct 2018
Simple visualization and relaxation techniques -Takes 2-6 weeks of practice

1. "Sit on the edge of your bed. Make sure only your bedside light is on, your phone is silenced, and your alarm is set for the morning.
2. "Now relax your facial muscles. First tighten them up in a wincing motion, and then slowly let your muscles naturally loosen. And let your tongue fall any which way in your mouth."
3. "Once your face feels like deflated putty, let gravity pull your shoulders naturally toward the ground. Let your arms dangle too, one side at a time.
4. "While doing this, breathe in and out, listening to the sound of your breath. With each breath, let your chest relax further and then let gravity relax your thighs and lower legs."
5. "Once your body feels like nothing more than a loosely formed lump of clay, try to clear your mind for 10 seconds. If thoughts come naturally, let them pass–just keep your body loose and limp. After a few more seconds you mind should feel clearer."
6. "Now picture one of the following two scenarios: you lying in a canoe in a calm lake with clear blue skies above you; or you in a velvet hammock, gently swaying in a pitch-black room. If you happen to be a person who isn’t great at visualization, you can instead chant the mantra, “Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” for 10 seconds instead."

Eversleep sleeptracker $200, 2019
Might be a nice way to determin if a treatment is reducing sleep problems

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We’re too damn exhausted to do anything about lack of sleep, survey finds - nothing about Vitamin D

Fastcompany March 2019

• "...44% of global adults say their sleep worsened in the last five years, with 8 in 10 claiming they want to improve the situation. However, 60% never sought any medical or professional help for it,"
• "...76% of adults experience at least one listed condition that impacts their sleep, with insomnia (37%) and snoring (29%) topping the list."
• "...U.S. sleep aid market is expected to grow to over $100 billion by 2023"
• "The survey comprised interviews with more than 11,006 respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States."

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Sleep is far more important to health than diet or exercise - Mercola April 2019

• Mercola
  "In the video above, Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., a biomedical scientist, interviews professor Matthew Walker, Ph.D., founder and director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science and author of "Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams."

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Sleep factoids from The Body, by Bill Bryson, 2019

• Bears don’t hibernate, because their body temperature stays near normal and they are easily roused. = torpor.
• Elephants and horses get by on just two or three hours of sleep a night.
• That may seem far-fetched, but it is a curious fact, when you think about it, that no matter how profoundly unconscious we get, or how restless, we almost never fall out of bed, even unfamiliar beds in hotels and the like. We may be dead to the world, but some sentry within us keeps track of where the bed’s edge is and won’t let us roll over it
• fifty-six of the one hundred bestselling drugs in use today target parts of the body that are time sensitive.
• average amount of sleep people get on a night before work has fallen from eight and a half hours fifty years ago to under seven now.

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Alcohol helps you get to sleep, but may cause fitful sleep 4 hours later - Jan 2022

Why Does Alcohol Mess With My Sleep? New York Times

• "“It’s probably OK to have a glass of wine with dinner four hours before bed,” Dr. Abbott said. Or maybe limit your drinking to happy hour or the appetizer course."

 Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

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Charts of restful sleep (nothing about Vitamin D) - April 2024

From Flowing Data

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Associations with other categories: Pain - chronic 7, Omega-3 7, Infant-Child 6, Intervention 6, Depression 5, Vitamin B12 5, etc.

Intervention - non daily 4, Breathing 4, Skin - Dark 4, Autism 4, Books, videos, 4 Vitamin D Receptor, 4 Meta-analysis ,4 Optimum 3, Obesity 3, Pregnancy 3, Diabetes 2, Headache 2, Middle East 2, Immunity 2, Women 2,, Virus 2, Iron 2, Autoimmune 2    April 2024

Short URL = https://is.gd/SleepD