There are a handful of strategies that can augment or improve sleep quality while remaining consistent with the Wheat Belly lifestyle. Many people who banish all wheat and grains from their diet experience improvement in sleep duration and quality, further enhanced by our efforts to cultivate bowel flora. (Bowel flora metabolites have a major influence on sleep and dreams.) But, given life stress, transitional changes as you get further into this lifestyle, bad habits, and other factors sometimes make additional efforts necessary. But getting sufficient quality sleep can take you further down the path of health.
Lactobacillus reuteri yogurt
While anecdotal, I am receiving feedback from users of the L. reuteri yogurt that deep, child-like sleep is experienced by some.
Unlike accelerated skin healing, reduced skin wrinkle depth, increased strength and muscle mass, and anorexigenic effects that are experienced by most on the yogurt, deeper sleep seems to be enjoyed by less than half of people following this idea. I don’t have an explanation for the variability of this effect. But I can tell you that I have personally experienced it.
Stress, bad habits (reading or working late), decades of sleep deprivation through medical training and practice all contributed to many years of bad sleep for me, often necessitating high-dose melatonin and/or tryptophan. But, with consumption of the L. reuteri yogurt, my sleep is scary wonderful: Deep, dream-filled sleep, minimally interrupted by awakenings (very unusual for me), the kind of profound sleep I last remembered having when I was a kid. And this is with no melatonin or tryptophan.
So I cannot predict whether you will enjoy this benefit like I and some others have but, even without it, you can still enjoy all the other benefits of cultivating L. reuteri in your gastrointestinal tract.
Within a few days of starting 5-HTP, I was manic but without additional energy (being manic had never an issue for me before, and I wasn’t on any pharmaceutical), a little delusional, having trouble sleeping, and a few days later I began having suicidal thoughts about 2-3 AM. Scared me quite a lot.
I’ve always wondered about the mechanism that would cause this. But then it is typical for me to have weird and unusual side effects to meds. And I’ve recently learned that, as I suspected, I have a homogenous MTHFR mutation. And I also suspect that the MTHFR is responsible for not being able to utilize and clear much more than folate. We just haven’t discovered it yet.
I have concerns taking melatonin after reading that your body reduces production if you supplement. I am 54 only sleep 4 hours, thrive on 8 which is a distant memory.
Should I be concerned?
Tried all the formentioned supplements (except melatonin) & yogurt with no effect.
Pauline wrote: «I have concerns taking melatonin after reading that your body reduces production if you supplement.»
If true, that wouldn’t surprise me. Endogenous melatonin production seems fairly fragile. Bright or blue light at night can shut it down as well. This, of course, wasn’t a real problem prior to artificial light.
Personally, I’ve never tried melatonin or 5-HTP. I’d consider them way down on the list of things to try when things higher on the list either don’t work, or can’t be implemented (due to travel, etc.)
________
Blog Associate (click my user name for details)
Get the sun at dawn on naked grounded body, UV exposure builds your melatonin in your eyes. Start slow 5-10 minute exposures with NO make up or sun glasses, built up your sun callous. Be a Mitochondriact.