Does Bedtime Honey Improve Sleep? Reasons to Think So

http://blog.sethroberts.net/2013/11/05/honey-at-bedtime-improves-sleep/

by fjk • 13 years ago

54 34 13 years ago

blog.sethroberts.net

cpncrunch3• 13 years ago

Really?! Ever heard of the placebo effect?

gress2• 13 years ago

Ever heard of the kneejerk effect?

stone2020• 13 years ago

Ever heard of the slashdot effect?

geetee• 13 years ago

Does the placebo effect make it any less useful?

cpncrunch3• 13 years ago

Yes. Basically he has wasted his own time and mine reading it.

jere• 13 years ago

I can assure you Seth Roberts has heard of the placebo effect.

http://blog.sethroberts.net/?s=placebo

cpncrunch3• 13 years ago

Unfortunately he doesn't seem to understand it.

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

But he is not controlling for it.

woodchuck64• 13 years ago

Yeah, where's the double-blind study?

taopao• 13 years ago

I'll use this excuse when I gorge on halva just before going to bed.

jacalata• 13 years ago

Seems to make a lot of big claims ("this might explain Dutch height!") based on an overall evidence of 'it worked for me and two other people I found on the internet, and for one friend, but not for the other' being called 'lightning doesn't strike twice' (which of course is a ridiculous claim itself).

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

Strictly, they said "lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place for different reasons", which is quite a bit more reasonable claim than the idiomatic and factually false "lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place", though whether it's actually an appropriate guideline is still a good question...

a8da6b0c91d• 13 years ago

A little hit of insulin suppresses stress hormones, which probably helps get you to sleep faster. Also, by 3 or 4 AM you can burn down glycogen stores. Your body will ramp up fat metabolism, which entails an increase of stress hormones, which can wake you up. So topping up glycogen before bed can help you sleep more soundly through the night.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The previous comments already identify this as a poorly reasoned post. I read it anyway, and I have to agree. Why don't we upvote submissions that have more evidence behind them, as the The Hacker News welcome message[1] implicitly suggests? "A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting."

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

pella• 13 years ago

Seth Roberts:"The Growth of Personal Science: Implications for Statistics"

"Personal science is science done for personal reasons (to help yourself) rather thanprofessional ones (as a job). The most common personal science is health self-measurement, which has recently become much more popular. This article describes 14examples of personal science involving health. The topics include blood sugar, sleep,mood, body weight, resistance to infection, and brain function. Most of the examples areabout new ways to improve these measures. For example, the results suggest that: 1.Skipping breakfast reduces early awakening. 2. Looking at faces in the morningimproves mood. 3. Flaxseed oil improves balance. 4. Butter improves arithmetic speed.Overall, the results suggest that personal science plus expert advice can produce betterhealth than expert advice alone. Personal science may influence statistics in two ways: 1.A new audience. Personal scientists want to learn statistics. 2. Better understanding.Learning about personal science may help statisticians understand science in general"

http://media.sethroberts.net/blog/pdf/2012-09-24-The-Growth-...

--- ---

Seth Roberts:"The unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation"

"Over 12years, my self-experimentation found new and useful ways to improve sleep, mood, health, and weight. Why did it work so well? First, my position was unusual. I had the subject-matter knowledge of an insider, the freedom of an outsider, and the motivation of a person with the problem. I did not need to publish regularly. I did not want to display status via my research. Second, I used a powerful tool. Self-experimentation about the brain can test ideas much more easily (by a factor of about 500,000) than conventional research about other parts of the body. When you gather data, you sample from a power-law-like distribution of progress. Most data helps a little; a tiny fraction of data helps a lot. My subject-matter knowledge and methodological skills (e.g., in data analysis) improved the distribution from which I sampled (i.e., increased the average amount of progress per sample). Self-experimentation allowed me to sample from it much more often than conventional research. Another reason my self-experimentation was unusually effective is that, unlike professional science, it resembled the exploration of our ancestors, including foragers, hobbyists, and artisans."

Medical Hypotheses

Volume 75, Issue 6 , Pages 482-489, December 2010

http://media.sethroberts.net/articles/2010%20The%20unreasona...

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

The "journal" Medical Hypotheses in that period was a complete piece of crap, with no effective peer review.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-there-a-rol...

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100318/full/news.2010.132.ht...

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/medical-hy...

Does Bedtime Honey Improve Sleep? Reasons to Think So

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