Thanks Dutchie. I spent much of last night reading about the Hibernation Diet and i have bought the book. I have insomnia where i wake up in the middle of the night around 4am and can’t get back to sleep. Ironically, i first bought Robb Wolfs book on Paleo because he asked: “Do you wake up in the middle of the night?” but Paelo didn’t help and then i found Matt and his Paleo myths which asked: “Do you wake up in the middle of the night?” but Diet Recovery has not helped my sleep. I am seeing a sleep doctor and working on sleep restriction therapy but i still wake up every night and have for the last decade. So i was a total sucker for an idea that i should fuel my liver/brain to sleep better since that is a very specific problem that i have. I found this website that has a good Q&A from the author of the book (you have to click on the comments for each question) http://www.hibernationdiet.blogspot.com
The basic premise is that during sleep, the brain is burning a large percentage of your energy requirements and it needs a steady stream of glucose which it gets from the liver – and you need fructose to nurish the liver. Honey, being roughly half glucose/fructose is perfect as it provides a little initial insulin spike to get sleep moving forward and then the melotnin secreted during sleep keeps the insulin in check and the fructose through a variety of reasons provides fuel for the liver to supply the brain with glucose. If the brain is happy, it will keep the stress hormones to a minimum which provides deeper rest, if the brain is not getting anough glucose from the liver, its going to secret stress hormones to get it from other tissues or produce ketones. Matt has recommended sugar and salt under the tongue in the middle of the night if you wake up but 1) why not use it before bed to sleep all night and 2) the author of the Hibernation Diet does not like sucrose and prefers the sugar in fruit and honey. While sucrose is also 50/50 glucose/fructose, the author believes (for reasons that i hope are explained in the book) that refined sugar has a much different effect than fruit or honey. We’ll see. Anything that can improve my sleep (I fall asleep fast but awake every night at ~4am) is worth investigating. Worst case scenario i eat some honey. Not a bad trade-off. As a side note, there was a very interesting series of posts on the Crossfit blog years ago where all those paelo and zone dieters found that eating ice cream at night made them leaner and none of them could figure it out. Sounds like it might coincide with the advice in Hibernation Diet as well as opposing the conventional wisdom mantra of not eating late a night. As Matt says in Food Ninja: The key to vitality is play hard, eat hard and sleep hard.