Finally, Stuart’s discovery explains something puzzling I’d noticed repeatedly for years. Now and then I slept unusually well. I’d wonder why – how was yesterday different from usual? – and see that the only unusual thing was that I’d had dinner at a friend’s house. At the times, I guessed that seeing faces in the evening was somehow improving my sleep. This did not make sense in terms of my morning faces work, but a connection between social contact and sleep was well-established. Now I realize that dinner at a friend’s house is one of the few times I eat dessert. A friend told me that when his partner has dinner parties, she serves dessert long after the main course.
I told a Dutch friend about this
She said it was common in Holland to have milk and honey at bedtime, although she herself didn’t do this. I asked why. No clear reason, she said. An excuse to have something sweet? Could this be why the Dutch are so tall? Children grow when asleep. Better sleep, more growth. My strength increase suggests what a big effect this could be.
“During the night, your brain uses a lot of energy. One efficient form of brain energy comes from sugar stored in your liver, called liver glycogen. Your brain taps your liver glycogen before hitting your muscle glycogen (stored sugar in your muscles), so having a little extra sugar before bed can help your brain function better at night. Raw honey is preferentially used to stock liver glycogen, so it is used first for brain function.
Raw honey is 22% better at making liver glycogen than the cooked, conventional stuff you’re likely to find at the superount of honey will raise blood glucose while you sleep too. I was skeptical of this trick when I first heard about it in The Honey Revolution, but I found it does work well as long as you don’t combine it with protein.”
Seth: I don’t follow the logic of this sentence: “Your brain taps your liver glycogen before hitting your muscle glycogen (stored sugar in your muscles), so having a little extra sugar before bed can help your brain function better at night.”
If glucose/fructose is the answer, surely a cup of weak tea with sucrose would huggle do just as well? (It’s what my mother did and she slept like a log. Though her evening nip of whisky might have helped too.)
But this blog post is fascinating
“she serves dessert long after the main course”: ah yes – dessert before or after cheese? Or cheese instead of dessert? Or savoury dessert instead of sweet dessert? Tricky territory, this.
I have noticed a great improvement in sleep from consumption of 1 tablespoon of resistant starch (for example, resistant potato starch) before bed. For a while I was using a teaspoon of Diamond XPC before bed and noticed a similar improvement in sleep quality.
Looking back… for years, We gave our younger son honey and milk at bedtime as a naturopath told us it was good for his recurring cold. He grew up to be 6’2? vs his older brother who is 5’10” and both parents under 5’10”. Correlation.. Causation.. I don’t know. Thanks Seth.
‘No anti-sugar advocate – not Yudkin, Lustig or anyone else – has provided a good explanation of why evolution shaped us to like the taste of a “poison”.’
I recall someone, cannot remember who, making the argument that certain amino acids are actually quite sweet tasting. I remember this person challenged readers to taste plain unsweetened protein powder with a clean palette, which I remember doing, and thinking it was indeed quite sweet. I don’t think this a huge factor as we obviously seem to have a protein-specific hunger. Just thought it was worth a mention.