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Higher potassium intake at dinner linked to fewer sleep disturbances – study

36 pointsby hiluxyesterday at 7:17 PM5 commentsview on HN

Comments

desktopninjatoday at 1:25 AM

Learnt from my grandmother to eat plenty bananas before bedtime. It helped with my asthma and swear too that it did wonders for my sleep.

Usually had it with a hot curry at dinner time or dessert (sliced bananas, cubed apples and evaparoted milk.)

numpad0today at 1:27 AM

IIUC, Na is used like signaling medium in body and alkaline metals that isn't Na tends to reduce blood pressure, slow heartbeat and neural activity. With that in mind, it sounds reasonable that those tendency could lead to slightly deeper sleep. Or is there something else to it?

show 1 reply
Etherytetoday at 12:13 AM

I wouldn't read too much into the title, the closing parts of the article give a much more balanced take on the whole issue. This study disagrees with some previous work and it's unclear which result makes sense and why. As usual, more research is needed, and while a catchy title is nice, this isn't anything to change your dietary habits by,

mgraczyktoday at 1:06 AM

Strangely the original study misstates the direction of the main finding, contradicting itself directly.

Is this a typo, or something more nefarious?

From the abstract:

    Multiple regression analyses revealed that individuals with higher AIS scores had higher daily potassium intake

From the body of the paper (supported by the results):

    Multiple regression analysis indicated that individuals with a higher potassium intake had lower AIS scores.
OutOfHeretoday at 12:48 AM

choices = [

  1/4 tsp of potassium bicarbonate powder in 8 oz of water,

  200 mg L-theanine,

  30 minutes of a podcast,
]

while choices and not sleep:

  choice = choices.pop(0)

  take_choice(choice)

  wait(25 * 60)