Cheesy Sleep

[Johhny Tazzle]

Ate some cheese last night maybe like 5-6 bites off of a goat cheese block with some oj right before bed cause i was hungry, had bad sleep could this be related to cheese being a laborous process to digest thus my body is digesting rather than focusing on quality sleep? It seems whatever i eat right before bed causes sleep issues other than maybe fruit juice.

 

[SelfHelpster]

Ate some cheese last night maybe like 5-6 bites off of a goat cheese block with some oj right before bed cause i was hungry, had bad sleep could this be related to cheese being a laborous process to digest thus my body is digesting rather than focusing on quality sleep? It seems whatever i eat right before bed causes sleep issues other than maybe fruit juice.

Hello Johhny I hope your still monitoring for answers after all this time. I just wanted to drop in and say cheese and butter gave me sleep apnea no matter what time of day I took it. I'm still trying to find the mechanism for what happened, as I noticed even without dairy I can still have issues but not as severe. It could be your body can't handle it right now like other people can and the metabolism of it making issues. I don't know if it has to do with serotonin production or nutrient or hormone deficiencies. Just wanted to share.

 

[Aymen]

eat 2 hours before bed

 

[Aymen]

Hello Johhny I hope your still monitoring for answers after all this time. I just wanted to drop in and say cheese and butter gave me sleep apnea no matter what time of day I took it. I'm still trying to find the mechanism for what happened, as I noticed even without dairy I can still have issues but not as severe. It could be your body can't handle it right now like other people can and the metabolism of it making issues. I don't know if it has to do with serotonin production or nutrient or hormone deficiencies. Just wanted to share.

i think increasing DHT levels will cure sleep apnea ( my experience )

 

[Johhny Tazzle]

Hey thanks for doing what you do the best self helpster, are you a hipster? Are you a gobstopper? Jkjk, so I'm wondering how was your health at the time that you said butter and cheese gave you apnea?

 

[Johhny Tazzle]

I agree aymen, I sleep best when I have at least 2 hours between last meal and sleep thanxx

 

[Johhny Tazzle]

I do well on butter and cheese I'm basically asking because if I limited those two foods my diet would be really restricted as I also love those two foods, also I noticed that I do much better with butter as opposed to coconut oil and products

 

[SelfHelpster]

Hey thanks for doing what you do the best self helpster, are you a hipster? Are you a gobstopper? Jkjk, so I'm wondering how was your health at the time that you said butter and cheese gave you apnea?

Lol no I just slapped a name down and rolled with it.
My health because of the apnea? Wretched. Had a cpap but that sucked, worse digestive issues from the stress, brain fog, slurred speech or loss of words by end of day without alchohol. My body shaked anxiuosly when trying to sleep sometimes and adding onto whats physically happening, the psychological anxiety of knowing you can't relieve such a basic need is pretty bad. And everyone thought I was over thinking things and that I'm fine. Truly in a better place now. And that was mild to moderate apnea according to my tests.

 

[Cirion]

Just an FYI - Cheese is one of the worst offenders for the Fernstrom ratio - Which is defined by Tryptophan divided by LNAA - Large Neutral Amino Acids (Leucine, Isoleucine, Phenylalanine, Valine, and Tyrosine). In essence, this results in a higher than normal serotonin production in the body compared to most other foods. Its fernstrom ratio is roughly 0.08. Contrast this to, say, beef which is only 0.026. Admittedly I don't know all the mechanisms behind serotonin production, so I don't know if you can say that cheese produces 3 times as much serotonin in the body - I am not sure it quite works that way, but too high of an overall F ratio in your body is probably not great, especially if you're trying to heal.

What I found interesting is looking up Milk, on the other hand, only had 0.04 F ratio. Not sure what makes cheese have twice as much, given that its made from milk.

SelfHelpster - expanding upon what I've said here, maybe your issues could have been exasperated by an overall high F ratio for the day. I myself have been experimenting with trying to bring this number down.

 

[SelfHelpster]

Just an FYI - Cheese is one of the worst offenders for the Fernstrom ratio - Which is defined by Tryptophan divided by LNAA - Large Neutral Amino Acids (Leucine, Isoleucine, Phenylalanine, Valine, and Tyrosine). In essence, this results in a higher than normal serotonin production in the body compared to most other foods. Its fernstrom ratio is roughly 0.08. Contrast this to, say, beef which is only 0.026. Admittedly I don't know all the mechanisms behind serotonin production, so I don't know if you can say that cheese produces 3 times as much serotonin in the body - I am not sure it quite works that way, but too high of an overall F ratio in your body is probably not great, especially if you're trying to heal.

That was my first clue as I know I'm not lactose intolerant or have a sensitivity. I'm digging around here and people talked about thiamine, DHT and vitamin D so fare helping things out. I've read around here that in regards to tolerance of dairy or liquid calories for example, it can all be about context on how your body can work with the food currently. I think I'll be able to tolerate cheese and butter again one day.

 

[Johhny Tazzle]

Thanks cirion, never heard of that line of thinking before

 

[Cirion]

I believe its why it is generally suggested to combine Glycine/Gelatin with most or all of your protein meals. This can reduce the damage (ie, the Fernstrom ratio) of the whole meal. Gelatin is the only protein food with 0.000 Fernstrom ratio because it contains zero Tryptophan. Of course this doesn't make your whole meal zero, but it reduces it, because it contains LNAA's but no Tryptophan.

Your whole meal effective Fernstrom ratio then becomes: Tryptophan (from non-gelatin sources) divided by (LNAA of non-gelatin + LNAA in the gelatin/glycine supplementation)

For what its worth, Haidut had a concoction that was something like 20g whey, 30g gelatin, 20g casein and claimed good success on that but that F ratio of that is like 0.054, still pretty high. Personally if I wanted a quick "protein on the go" I'd probably opt for just gelatin and casein, that would drop it to 0.03.

This then suggests that while Gelatin may have some benefit eaten by itself, its most benefit will likely be realized only when it is combined with other proteins.

I have no idea what the optimal Fernstrom ratio is for optimal health, this is something I'm still experimenting on, but the general answer is definitely - lower the better. I will almost definitely say though, that 0.08 is way too high and 0.04 is "probably" the max recommended - at least in my own experience ... with 0.02-0.03 being optimal, although difficult to realize.

It's way easier to achieve a low Fernstrom ratio on an overall somewhat low protein, which is may be one reason why Ray Peat himself eats a low-ish protein diet. I say this because, tell someone to eat 4g tablespoons a day of gelatin and that's pretty doable. Now tell them they need to eat 12 tablespoons of gelatin a day, and that's more ridiculous lol.

As another note, BCAA's contain 3 out of the 5 LNAA's - Leucine, Isoleucine, and Valine. Thus, by adding BCAA's to your protein meals, you can further enhance the Tryptophan antagonist effects. Haidut loves to preach the benefits of BCAA's, and I'm now realizing why. I think Haidut had a large amount of BCAA along his concoction I mentioned earlier, and this may have brought down his Trypt/LNAA ratio down to a more reasonable amount.

I probably wouldn't recommend more than 50% of your protein from gelatin, especially if your overall protein intake is low-ish, so some tryptophan is inevitable. You still need some of all of the amino acids, and you'd be deficient if you only ate gelatin.

Similar reason why I think many people (including Ray Peat) may suggest a somewhat low fat diet for some people - as this can reduce your PUFA intake.

What I'm finding though, is that ratios "may" be more important than overall intakes, for both PUFA and Tryptophan.

if you have a high SFA/PUFA ratio, this mitigates the bad of PUFA. Similarly, if you have a high LNAA/tryptophan ratio. Its certainly a lot easier to have a high SFA/PUFA ratio if PUFA is close to zero, and you can sometimes fight a losing battle if you increase SFA too much in the attempt to get SFA/PUFA ratio high, because then you'll be fighting the negative effects of the Randle cycle.

As another note, to confuse you further (lol, why does it have to be so darn complex)... I read a research paper the other day that says that eating carbs by themselves can increase body serotonin levels significantly, and some marginal amount of protein intake is needed to prevent this. This is hard for me to accept because I have little to no protein or fat appetite in the morning usually.

 

[SelfHelpster]

You know whats kinda weird, is that I'm only posting about this stuff again because I just had another night of some apnea issues without any dairy products at all. I'm now taking BCAA's plus l-lysine and phenylalinine in hefty doses to deplete serotonin. My staple carb right now though are bananas as they are the one of the few carbs that don't leave me bloated or with other issues. It seems though bananas don't actually bring brain serotonin up that much at all and I always take carbs and protein together to avoid issues on that route. But the massive protein supplementation yesterday should have drowned out possible serotonin I think, and I managed to sleep worse just by coincidence.

And so you know what goes on with my apnea, my upper airway just stops being as active and I cannot fully relax. An endoscopy confirmed my airway is fine otherwise.