This is a very interesting documentary (“Lights Out”) on the effect of electric light at night on the natural production of melatonin.

After watching it, I bought a pair of the type of glasses recommended (cheaper safety glasses off of amazon) and used them religiously for 1 month. For the next month I stopped using them and found reduced quality of sleep after 2 weeks. Before watching the documentary I had had very poor broken sleeps from doing the nighttime parenting of our 2yr old and 1 yr old.

I will be trying the honey now as well, and watching for changes in sleep quality, dreaming and strength changes.

Seth: Funny coincidence. A few days ago I wrote a post about the use of the glasses you are using. I agree with what you say. The post will appear very soon.

Of course our artificial unbroken sleep might be better but if your argument is that in rural areas people just don’t get enough sleep (for some mysterious reason), why would that not also apply to early humans?

“I’ve heard this many times: “It’s supposed to be this way.” I am less sure. How do the people who say this know what paleolithic sleep was like? Maybe rural people always get up at night because they don’t get enough sunlight in the morning, or enough exercise or enough X – there are dozens of possible X’s.”

Not sure what you mean by that. The logical conclusion is that it’s the standard and that artificial light and lifestyles change sleeping behavior.

Also worth noting is that there is no point in having 100% identical behavior and preference among members of a tribe. Someone has to not like berries, in case they are poisoned, someone has to not sleep at a certain time, in case there is an attack etc.

The results from rural areas were only relevant because they fit with what scientists observed in unrelated tribal cultures

I started taking honey before bed two days ago, after reading this article. Both days I noticed that I had increased dream activity, or at least more awareness of my dreams. They also seemed much more vivid, but this may just be the difference between not really remembering/being aware of my dreams and now at least remembering that I did have dreams.

Anyway manhunt.net android, the first day I tried this I didn’t think it helped, and in fact I felt I may have even woken up more and slept less. The second day (last night) I also felt like I had woken up more during the course of the night, and again felt like I had more frequent and more vivid dreams. However, after being up for a short period of time I started to realize how good I felt overall. Perhaps my body simply needs to adjust from my many years of restless sleep to the more restful sleep that I may now be experiencing. The results are interesting enough that I will continue the experiment and see how it goes.

This idea and conversation reminds me of something someone told me years ago. They mentioned they drank something they referred to as “silver tea” before bed, which helped them sleep. Silver tea was simply warm milk with a small amount of sugar dissolved in it. I tried it once or twice when younger, and it did actually seem to help me sleep.

Really interesting, I will try it. Also, I would like to add something a friend recomended me about honey. I don’t know how extended it is, but he recomended, to prevent muscle stiffness (I am not sure it’s the proper name, in spanish is “agujetas”) , to eat one teaspoon of honey before exercising. As I workout very randomly, I usually had muscle stiffness the first days I worked out, but with the honey I never had it again. I guess having the proper amount of sugars available to the muscle during the whole workout keeps it from anaerobic activity.