Links, evidence?

A bunch of QS people have observed that the timing of vitamin D supplements matters a great deal. Seth Robert wrote a lot about it (http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/11/01/vitamin-d3-in-morning-improves-sleep-after-all-story-26/ for example).

As far as people you might trust, Gwern replicated the finding: http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#vitamin-d . Taking the supplement at night damaged his sleep.

I don't want to claim that blood level of vitamin doesn't matter at all, but I do claim that it's very unfortunate that there aren't more studies tracking the timing of vitamin D ingestion. I'm also thinking that getting the timing wrong is a good explantion for the studies that are out there that don't show improvement given vitamin D supplemention. Those studies are also the reason why the RDA of vitamin D is at 600 UI while QS folk generally recommend 2000 UI+ (again I think Gwern takes something like 5000 UI).

There a long term study called the VITAL study by Harvard Medical School in progress that tests the effects of 2000 UI vitamin D supplements on mortality rates. Unfortunately it doesn't track the intake of the timing so the resulting data might be worthless.

From the studies that showed effects for vitamin D you could deduce that the supplements can bring 2 additional years of lifespan. If the studies that say vitamin D does nothing come to that conclusion because of bad timing, that's a serious issue. As far as references go I remember the number of 3 years of lifespan for curing cancer.

I don't claim that I know with 100% certainity that it's in the timing and not in the average blood level. I do claim that the medical establishment is stupid for assuming that it's in the blood level. That's not even a real outsider opinion. That more or less the opinion I was thought by my bioinformatics professors. People in medicine make a lot of stupid assumptions that aren't based on evidence.

Now when I do QS I do make a bunch of assumptions that wouldn't pass in the academic context of bioinformatics. On of the great things about QS is that you aren't blind. You know reasonably well when you take your supplements while the doctors who administer clinical trials don't have any information in their data by default about when their subjects take the supplements.

As a result it's good practice to stay near empiricial data and not make assumption unless they will help you.

Model the problem as seeking of being tired as seeking an efficient stimuluant is a choice. When I instead propose that he should focus on getting better at relaxing than I'm pushing a different model for the situation.

It's not that my model is inherently based on the truth. It is in some sense "science inspired" when I use the mental model of the body downregulating itself via a cybernetic process. Thinking in terms of cybernetics (the word doesn't get used much these days) is one of the model I learned at university. That doesn't make it right but it's an available model to explore for the problem.

Now I have different kind of evidence that over a handful of different trance states that I learned about in different contexts help people to sleep better afterwards. Hypnotherapists do have a body of theory that predicts that's a usual effect side effect of hypnosis. One of my hypnosis teachers for example told a story about how a person who didn't even spoke his language and who was escorting a patient got into trance while watching the session and afterwards resolved her problem of not being able to sleep well. It's an effect that can happen as "correlateral damage".

I don't know the exact kind of relaxation protocol that best for btrettel. I didn't even try to push my favorite relaxation protocol that gave me QS validated benefits for another medical issue because he wouldn't find a practioner for it in Texas anyway.

Comparing different relaxation protocols against each other isn't something that well done by the academic establishment because it not really in the model of how to go about treating a patient. No patents that pay for expansive clinical trials. Exactly the area where it's good to do your your empirics.