Hey guys, I have appreciated your help in the past and this is the most troubling health issue I currently face. I have overcome my hypogonadism / ED and I have a ton of energy throughout the day which I think will get even better from fixing my sleep. Very grateful for all of you guys, this community, and this eating ideology in general. Sorry if this not concise, I'm writing this very late, actually after I woke up. Let me give a little background. Before I did any work on myself at all, I was basically completely ****88 up, last december was when I started improving myself for the first time in my life. Terrible ADHD, terrible anxiety, sometimes depression, insane porn addiction, no fulfillment. But never insomnia. I noticed that lots of other very low energy people never suffer from insomnia, maybe they have to spend a lot of time recovering from just routine living. I noticed that when I started eating more saturated fats, removing all estrogenics, and eating in an overall very androgenic + non gut disruptive way I started feeling fantastic throughout the day, especially when I went from post-keto to finding Ray Peat. Like I said, even though I would spend time on my phone doing stimulating things I would fall asleep very easily, but that's probably because of generally low energy during the day. My problem now is that I'm simply not that tired when it's time to sleep, and when I do get to sleep, I ALWAYS wake up. I have not slept through the night once in the last 3 months at least. I lift 6 days a week high intensity, probably 15-20 sets per session although I'm getting that up in response to this issue, I think it will help to be more worn out. I was wondering though, I know a lot of you think that's a bad approach and will raise cortisol, but I'm 17 so it might be different.
Here's what I'm doing:
last big meal 4+ hours before bed
6:00(2 hours before): lemonade(lemons, honey) + bone broth + 150mg magtein - I think this may be a problem, I think it might have too much sugar from the honey. I never measure, I just pour, and I think it probably has a ***t ton of sugar. I noticed that when I woke up tonight I was incredibly alert and was basically dancing in bed, this often happens.
Warm shower before bed - I think it would be beneficial to make this a little bit more lukewarm in order to avoid histamine responses, I remember I always used to get histamine responses from hot showers.
My room is very blacked out, but recently I have experimented with sacrificing the blackout state to make my room colder since my parents refuse to turn on the air conditioner. Maybe air conditioners are not pro metabolic but I'm not sure how I can make my room cold enough without sacrificing the melatonin boost from the darkness. I noticed tonight specifically that I did not feel tired and it was cold enough to where I shut the windows and made it dark again and I was able to fall asleep after a bit of time, probably too much just from not being tired in general. Then, I woke up 3 hours later, as I said, probably due to heat.
I tape my mouth with surgical tape, not the see through stuff but the adhesive is still probably not beneficial lol
I never wake up to pee, I schedule my water earlier in the day so I don't have to do this but I still wake up. It's worth noting that when I was lower carb I used to wake up to pee and when I didn't drink before bed I would sleep through the night. Not keto, but lower carb. This was also not long after I had started trying out different diets and I was probably still deficient in a couple nutrients.
I convinced my parents to turn off the wifi after they go to bed. I just realized that the wifi is not off, lmfao
It's also worth noting that me and my friend flew to Florida last week to attend a business event and even though I was blasted all day by shitty fake lights, light smoke, staring at blue light screens, and sitting all day, I slept AMAZING. This is when I realized that temperature was a huge factor, since me and my friend made it cold as ****. I was also lower carb here and way lower calorie, since we could basically only eat one meal a day and just dipped carrots in butter while we were at the event.
This had me thinking that calories might have something to do with it because I remember in junior year my plant based biology teacher told the class that sometimes you will start tapping your feet or fidgeting or something because your body wants to burn off extra calories, but I'm not sure if that's true.
I don't use my phone or any stimulating media / apps / tv before 6, 2 hours before I go to bed. I don't use social media, it's too stimulating, even my laptop is on grayscale. If you are not doing this, this is the greatest piece of advice I can possibly give you. I think dopamine response is very color-mediated, and high saturation especially on apple devices makes the world seem dimmer and darker, less stimulating, less dopaminergic. Try it for a week, then turn it off, you will see what they're doing.
I stopped using fluoride toothpaste I think 3-4 months ago but I do drink fluoride water. My town has 0.174 ppm of fluoride but I don't drink a lot of water simply because I'm not very thirsty after hitting all my electrolytes.
I get sunshine in the morning and I ground for about an hour around 6-7, and sunset viewing.
My neighborhood is next to the highway, so there's chemicals dumped into air that float into our town, but we have tons of vegetation which I'm incredibly grateful for, I think it helps to clear the air. I have an air filter in my room but it's always blue meaning no bad stuff detected. However, there is a ***t ton of dust in my room, my nose is frequently clogged. This is probably an extremely important factor. There is also mold growing under my shower curtain, I notice I always sneeze during and after my morning showers. My parents told me it's not black mold and I haven't seen it anywhere else in my house.
Here are my meals:
I take bromelain before breakfast and dinner, I feel like it helps me deal with high calorie meals better, it's anticoagulant, and I heard it degrades spike protein since I'm 3x covaxxed
I was thinking aspirin may help, but synthetic acetylsalicylic acid is made from phenol and has contaminants. I also have a serotonin reaction when I eat a lot of coconut oil without anything else, I think because of the salicylates. Also, all the aspirin I could find has lots of contaminants, colors, TALC, at best gmo cornstarch. Tomorrow, I will add some coconut oil to my post-dinner meal.
Breakfast: 15/20oz grass fed 80/20 from costco, 3 eggs, some butter, some cheese, 4oz of heart right now but usually 0.5oz of liver, then a sizeable amount of eggshells to block iron and phosphorus. I actually just got some sweetbreads from my local butcher, they're amazing. I'll usually have an apple or something with the meal.
This is a low carb, high fat meal in order not to get ****88 by randle cycle, especially because it's first meal of day. I'll take 150mg magtein(block VGCC) and 1g NAC(block oxidation) in order not to get ****88 by EMF at school. I've noticed it works amazingly well in preventing headaches, fatigue, and anxiety at school.
Lunch: I used to eat chicken and potatoes but I dropped that cause it was too close to my workout and I didn't want to be digesting. I switched this out to just drinking probably 2 tbsp of honey, then I leave school right away and head to the gym. I only have 5/8 periods due to school being useless.
Dinner: This is directly post workout, so I don't care about randle cycle and since I go to my local park and walk around afterwards, I feel like it digests very well. 20oz of gf 80/20 with a bit of butter since my taste for fat has gone down recently, on keto I remember I was eating an entire stick of butter+45oz of 80/20 a day lol. I eat a cooked banana and pour a ton of maple syrup on it, I don't worry about vitamin C because the heat destroys it. I still eat eggshells for the phosphorus. Then I take 5g of creatine, it makes sense to me it would be metabolized better because of high insulin sens after workout.
Post-dinner: Like I said, "lemonade(lemons, honey) + bone broth + 150mg magtein - I think this may be a problem, I think it might have too much sugar from the honey. I never measure, I just pour, and I think it probably has a ***t ton of sugar. I noticed that when I woke up tonight I was incredibly alert and was basically dancing in bed, this often happens. "
Right before bed, I take now foods 5mg boron + nattokinase to degrade spike protein, thanks to @Peatress. This user is also the reason I take NAC and bromelain, and was overall very helpful to me.
There are a number of moving parts here, and it will inevitably get much better once I graduate in december. I did drink coffee today, and it felt great, just like 80-100mg caffeine around 11:30. I almost never drink coffee before school, it just seems useless to me to drink coffee before sitting, and I get out of 5th period too late to drink it. I function just fine without it as I'm 17, but once I get out of school, I will definitely start drinking it for the androgenic effect.
Right now my mom is making me some warm milk, very grateful for that.
I'm hopeful about the situation. It's well known that hummingbirds are the most pro-metabolic bird, probably because they eat so much sugar, and I just looked this up, they sleep 12h, which excites me. I think that bad sleep or insomnia is not inherent to high metabolism / high energy state, so long as you exercise accordingly and wear yourself out. Especially in my situation. I can't add in much more exercise than just lifting because of school and other things that I enjoy doing. I think that choosing between temperature / brightness and the dust also play a role.
What's the play here? Do I reduce sugar(before bed) or calories? Should I increase calories? Should I experiment with aspirin? As always, I look forward to your responses and I greatly appreciate any help.
Here's what I'm doing:
last big meal 4+ hours before bed
6:00(2 hours before): lemonade(lemons, honey) + bone broth + 150mg magtein - I think this may be a problem, I think it might have too much sugar from the honey. I never measure, I just pour, and I think it probably has a ***t ton of sugar. I noticed that when I woke up tonight I was incredibly alert and was basically dancing in bed, this often happens.
Warm shower before bed - I think it would be beneficial to make this a little bit more lukewarm in order to avoid histamine responses, I remember I always used to get histamine responses from hot showers.
My room is very blacked out, but recently I have experimented with sacrificing the blackout state to make my room colder since my parents refuse to turn on the air conditioner. Maybe air conditioners are not pro metabolic but I'm not sure how I can make my room cold enough without sacrificing the melatonin boost from the darkness. I noticed tonight specifically that I did not feel tired and it was cold enough to where I shut the windows and made it dark again and I was able to fall asleep after a bit of time, probably too much just from not being tired in general. Then, I woke up 3 hours later, as I said, probably due to heat.
I tape my mouth with surgical tape, not the see through stuff but the adhesive is still probably not beneficial lol
I never wake up to pee, I schedule my water earlier in the day so I don't have to do this but I still wake up. It's worth noting that when I was lower carb I used to wake up to pee and when I didn't drink before bed I would sleep through the night. Not keto, but lower carb. This was also not long after I had started trying out different diets and I was probably still deficient in a couple nutrients.
I convinced my parents to turn off the wifi after they go to bed. I just realized that the wifi is not off, lmfao
It's also worth noting that me and my friend flew to Florida last week to attend a business event and even though I was blasted all day by shitty fake lights, light smoke, staring at blue light screens, and sitting all day, I slept AMAZING. This is when I realized that temperature was a huge factor, since me and my friend made it cold as ****. I was also lower carb here and way lower calorie, since we could basically only eat one meal a day and just dipped carrots in butter while we were at the event.
This had me thinking that calories might have something to do with it because I remember in junior year my plant based biology teacher told the class that sometimes you will start tapping your feet or fidgeting or something because your body wants to burn off extra calories, but I'm not sure if that's true.
I don't use my phone or any stimulating media / apps / tv before 6, 2 hours before I go to bed. I don't use social media, it's too stimulating, even my laptop is on grayscale. If you are not doing this, this is the greatest piece of advice I can possibly give you. I think dopamine response is very color-mediated, and high saturation especially on apple devices makes the world seem dimmer and darker, less stimulating, less dopaminergic. Try it for a week, then turn it off, you will see what they're doing.
I stopped using fluoride toothpaste I think 3-4 months ago but I do drink fluoride water. My town has 0.174 ppm of fluoride but I don't drink a lot of water simply because I'm not very thirsty after hitting all my electrolytes.
I get sunshine in the morning and I ground for about an hour around 6-7, and sunset viewing.
My neighborhood is next to the highway, so there's chemicals dumped into air that float into our town, but we have tons of vegetation which I'm incredibly grateful for, I think it helps to clear the air. I have an air filter in my room but it's always blue meaning no bad stuff detected. However, there is a ***t ton of dust in my room, my nose is frequently clogged. This is probably an extremely important factor. There is also mold growing under my shower curtain, I notice I always sneeze during and after my morning showers. My parents told me it's not black mold and I haven't seen it anywhere else in my house.
Here are my meals:
I take bromelain before breakfast and dinner, I feel like it helps me deal with high calorie meals better, it's anticoagulant, and I heard it degrades spike protein since I'm 3x covaxxed
I was thinking aspirin may help, but synthetic acetylsalicylic acid is made from phenol and has contaminants. I also have a serotonin reaction when I eat a lot of coconut oil without anything else, I think because of the salicylates. Also, all the aspirin I could find has lots of contaminants, colors, TALC, at best gmo cornstarch. Tomorrow, I will add some coconut oil to my post-dinner meal.
Breakfast: 15/20oz grass fed 80/20 from costco, 3 eggs, some butter, some cheese, 4oz of heart right now but usually 0.5oz of liver, then a sizeable amount of eggshells to block iron and phosphorus. I actually just got some sweetbreads from my local butcher, they're amazing. I'll usually have an apple or something with the meal.
This is a low carb, high fat meal in order not to get ****88 by randle cycle, especially because it's first meal of day. I'll take 150mg magtein(block VGCC) and 1g NAC(block oxidation) in order not to get ****88 by EMF at school. I've noticed it works amazingly well in preventing headaches, fatigue, and anxiety at school.
Lunch: I used to eat chicken and potatoes but I dropped that cause it was too close to my workout and I didn't want to be digesting. I switched this out to just drinking probably 2 tbsp of honey, then I leave school right away and head to the gym. I only have 5/8 periods due to school being useless.
Dinner: This is directly post workout, so I don't care about randle cycle and since I go to my local park and walk around afterwards, I feel like it digests very well. 20oz of gf 80/20 with a bit of butter since my taste for fat has gone down recently, on keto I remember I was eating an entire stick of butter+45oz of 80/20 a day lol. I eat a cooked banana and pour a ton of maple syrup on it, I don't worry about vitamin C because the heat destroys it. I still eat eggshells for the phosphorus. Then I take 5g of creatine, it makes sense to me it would be metabolized better because of high insulin sens after workout.
Post-dinner: Like I said, "lemonade(lemons, honey) + bone broth + 150mg magtein - I think this may be a problem, I think it might have too much sugar from the honey. I never measure, I just pour, and I think it probably has a ***t ton of sugar. I noticed that when I woke up tonight I was incredibly alert and was basically dancing in bed, this often happens. "
Right before bed, I take now foods 5mg boron + nattokinase to degrade spike protein, thanks to @Peatress. This user is also the reason I take NAC and bromelain, and was overall very helpful to me.
There are a number of moving parts here, and it will inevitably get much better once I graduate in december. I did drink coffee today, and it felt great, just like 80-100mg caffeine around 11:30. I almost never drink coffee before school, it just seems useless to me to drink coffee before sitting, and I get out of 5th period too late to drink it. I function just fine without it as I'm 17, but once I get out of school, I will definitely start drinking it for the androgenic effect.
Right now my mom is making me some warm milk, very grateful for that.
I'm hopeful about the situation. It's well known that hummingbirds are the most pro-metabolic bird, probably because they eat so much sugar, and I just looked this up, they sleep 12h, which excites me. I think that bad sleep or insomnia is not inherent to high metabolism / high energy state, so long as you exercise accordingly and wear yourself out. Especially in my situation. I can't add in much more exercise than just lifting because of school and other things that I enjoy doing. I think that choosing between temperature / brightness and the dust also play a role.
What's the play here? Do I reduce sugar(before bed) or calories? Should I increase calories? Should I experiment with aspirin? As always, I look forward to your responses and I greatly appreciate any help.
