Taking nutritional yeast (B complex) before sleep has helped my brain activity a lot. Better sleep, more lucid dreams, waking in a better mood. 1-2 hours before bed, 1 spoon, still experimenting.
They can also be downright harmful. Cyanocobalamin molecules must be first broken down and turned into biologically available forms of cobalamin. In the process, a cyanide molecule is released into your liver. It’s not enough to kill you, but it does tax your liver. People report feeling slightly lightheaded and a loss of focus taking cyanocobalamin versus other, more readily available forms.
The worst part is when you habitually come to rely on this effect for being productive. Then you're hooked and life without it is like traversing the trough of a surface before reaching a greater local maxima.
The theory laid out is that early childhood trauma gets stored in the body, and that there has to be a bottom-up approach to dealing with the afteraffects of this. A top-down approach that is purely cognitive won't suffice. I'm not yet at the treatment portion of the book, but it seems to exactly line up with this study and might be interesting for you.
Before reading it, I discovered that a regular sauna practice (alternating cold hot cycles) had major benefits on my trauma symptoms, both developmental and acute PTSD from a near death experience. Then I read the book and was gratified to find this approach studied/explained/validated. These days I recommend it to anyone with mental health concerns, which is basically everyone these days as far as I can tell.
This book on developmental trauma looks good as well, thanks for sharing.
My best response was to correct, time released dosing of melatonin at the same time every day. It’s important to do all of the life changes needed - lights off or dim, warm light, very dim phone, reminders for the melatonin at the same time every day, etc.
I don't know about the melatonin (I don't like taking anything other than a multivitamin nutritional safety net), but, as bedtime approaches, I like a dim orange light, and to use color temperature changing software/settings on screens. http://jonls.dk/redshift/
The funny thing is you do still take vitamins in your diet through “functional foods.”
Another trick that might help someone for those nights where your brain races too much to sleep: get out of bed and write down all the thoughts you’re having with a pen/pencil and paper. Avoid a computer screen since the light really will keep you up and energized.
I mostly solved my sleeping issue after many years of trial and error by having a speaker by the bed and then on low volume play a podcast that's interesting enough to listen to but not interesting enough to keep me engaged. This helps me by keeping my mind focused on something unimportant instead of racing around, when I inevitably try to focus on something else it's drowned out by the podcast.
> then on low volume play a podcast that's interesting enough to listen to but not interesting enough to keep me engaged
I tell anyone who will listen about the podcast "Sleep with Me." Scooter is a master of being just-interesting-enough but in a very soothing voice. For all I know he's hypnotizing me every night because I'm always able to fall asleep long before the episode is over.
Music or a podcast like this has always worked really well to solve insomnia issues for me. Unfortunately it led me to discover a new issue - when I fall asleep listening to anything, even on low volume, there's a really good chance I'll sleep through my alarm(s) in the morning.
