W.Minh Tuan

Vitamin B6, B12, zinc, rich omega-3 salmon fish, morning exercise, sun exposure, running, muscle training-resistant exercise, consistent exercise, smile are panacea, miracle medicine for insomnia.

In the world, insomnia is increasing, because of increasingly modern society, living more and more indiscriminately, not in moderation, eating unnaturally, eating a lot of processed, canned and bottled foods, fried food, boiled, stewed, less green vegetables, sit down too much, sedentary, rarely out in the sun, addicted to the internet, addicted to iphone, addicted to watching Netflix movies, and tabaco, coffee, beer, alcohol,,,.

It can be said that modern society has too many unnatural things that make people suffer from all kinds of diseases, including insomnia, which is the most frightening.

You can suffer from all kinds of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart attack, obesity, liver disease, kidney disease, stomach disease,,,. But if you can still good sleep, you find it possible to withstand those kinds of illnesses for a long time, many years.

But if you have insomnia, you can’t stay sleepless for more than a week. If you don’t sleep for more than a week, you will die.

And sleep loss makes your mental state decline dramatically, and it affects every function, every other part of the body.

It can be said that insomnia is the worst nightmare of all nightmares, of all diseases.

I have had insomnia since 2014, 8 years ago. After having a fever with influenza in 2014, I suddenly couldn’t sleep. Since then, I have to go to the doctor and take sleeping pills every day, 1 pill a day.

As I get older, my health deteriorates, insomnia worsens, and the number of sleeping pills also increases. There was a time when I had to take 3 sleeping pills a night to sleep.

But in Japan, medical law only allows each clinic to prescribe only 1 sleeping pill a day, no more than 30 pills a month. This is a very wrong regulation in Japan, which will kill the patient if the patient needs more than 1 tablet/day.

So I have to be cunning every month to go to 3 different clinics, each clinic takes 30 pills for 1 month, 3 clinics get 90 pills for 1 month, to have enough 3 sleeping pills for 1 day for 1 month.

This state of affairs lasted for several years, exhausting, stressful. Sleeping on sleeping pills, not by myself, so it’s just fake sleep, not real, so the body is tired, losing weight, the spirit is always in a state of anxiety and stress.

Seeing someone who can sleep is horrible, wanting to be as sleepy as other people, like I was before, but I can’t, never feel sleepy again.

Before 2014, I also felt good sleepy, I had to sleep for about 10 minutes at noon. Just sit in the chair at work room, after a few minutes, I can felt asleep.

Getting on the train, just sitting for a bit, I also can felt sleepy quick, and I can doze off, swung body from left to right, touch to the bodies of next people, said excuse me, then slept again.

At night, when I slept, I slept very soundly, “sleep like a log”, as the world says, or as the Vietnamese say: “sleep like the dead”.

But after that influenza illness, all feelings of sleepiness disappeared completely.

This is terrible.

I bought about 20 books on Amazon about how to cure insomnia, but I threw most of them in the trash because the more I read them, the worse my insomnia got.

When I had to take 3 sleeping pills a day, because of reading those books, my blood pressure skyrocketed, mental stress, panic.

The reason is because those insomnia cure books are all about cognitive therapy, that is, about how in the morning, when we wake up, we have to keep a daily diary of how we slept last night.

Or you have to make a Time-Day Log, or a Sleep Log, you have to record how you slept last night. The book “NO MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS” by Dr. Peter Hauri, and Shirley Linde, of USA, advise the above wrong log solutions.

Since I just want to forget how badly I’ve lost sleep every last night, the stupid solutions above force me to remember how badly I didn’t sleep last night.

As a result, when I read the stupid books of those stupid doctors, my blood pressure skyrocketed. Normally my blood pressure is very stable, only about 120/70. But when I read those books, and tried to write down those stupid logs, my blood pressure spiked to about 160/90.

Cognitive therapy, Sleep logs, Day logs solutions are indeed the stupidest, most toxic, most false therapies.

But the good thing about this book “NO MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS”, is that it says that insomnia has a psychological element, and we shouldn’t be afraid of insomnia.

I am an optimist, so I think if I always keep my optimism, it will definitely help improve my sleep.

After reading this book of doctor Dr. Peter Hauri, I suddenly felt no longer afraid of insomnia, felt peaceful.

But I absolutely do not do SLEEP LOG, DAY LOG as this book recommends.

Another book, which received rave reviews, is “How not to die“, Pan Boook Publishing, USA, written by doctor-professor Michael Greger, said to be “International Bestseller”- Best seller in the world.

This book introduces how to eat only vegetables and fruits, not meat, fish, eggs, protein, fat, to treat diseases such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, liver, kidney, depression, suicide, heart disease.

But this book says nothing about how to cure insomnia. And nothing to say about tumor cure.

Sometimes this doctor talked about the importance of sleep, must sleep a lot to stay healthy, but did not say how to get sleep well.

Sometimes the doctor Greger said he ate a lot of salads, lettuce, and qiwi berries to get good sleep.

I did as he did, eating qiwi fruit, and got more insomnia, because qiwi fruit is very sour, it makes my stomach jittery, tossing all night, causing more insomnia.

Moreover, the sour, citric acid in qiwi fruit erodes my enamel of my teeth, causing me to have a toothache for a while.

It’s also really bad advice.

The Vietnamese have a saying “incite children to eat chicken poop”, which is true to the advices of those ignorant doctors.

It is like the World Health Organization WHO advises people to wear masks, vaccinate, social distance, social blockade to prevent corona, completely ineffective, and destroy all business activities, socioeconomic status, destroying human mental and physical health.

So back to the insomnia, the ignorant doctors who advised the wrong solution of Cognitive Therapy, only made the insomnia worse.

More than 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BC) said: “If doctors do not have a certain disease, it cannot be effectively treated.”

Indeed, if the doctors who treat insomnia themselves do not suffer from insomnia themselves, they cannot understand the disease of insomnia, and cannot cure insomnia.

Buts doctor Greger has a good advice on eating more lettuce, it helps us to get more positive mood, and good for sleep. But advices to eat more tomato is wrong, because tomato is nightshade food, it has some harmfull elements to the health, should be avoided.

And in fact, until now, there is no medicine that can cure insomnia. Today’s sleeping pills only give people fake temporary sleep, not help people fall asleep on their own.

And all other medicines have the same mechanism, it doesn’t work to cure the root of disease, it is not holistic therapy, it is only works to help people overcome that disease temporarily, but not helping people heal themselves without having to use drugs anymore.

So after suffering from insomnia for several years, I was always trying to figure out how to sleep without drugs. But there was no other way, because there is no one, no any doctors to guide me how to cure insomnia without drugs.

When I went to the doctors in Tokyo, they only prescribed sleeping pills.

And buying  guide books on Amazon to treating insomnia, as mentioned above, some books only make insomnia worse.

But in the end, I bought 6 great books, not about curing insomnia, but about treating neurological diseases, diseases of the elderly and Alzhaimer, and about curing diseases in general without drugs, only using diet.

The first book is “FOOD IS YOUR BEST MEDICINE” by American doctor Henry G.Bieler, published in 1965.

The second book is “NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL DEGENERATION-A comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects”, by American doctor Weston Price, published in 1938, now reprinted by Benedicion Classics, Oxford.

The third book, “GENIUS FOODS-Become smatter, Happier, and more Productive while protecting your brain”, is written by young journalist Max Lugavere.

He is a journalist, of the New York Times, like me, I had been also a journalist in Vietnam, Max is not a doctor, not a professor, not an expert in treating neurological diseases, or insomnia. But his mother became ill with Alzheimer’s disease when she was just over 50 years old. She can’t remember what day it is, what date it is.

Max Lugavere took his mother to hospitals in the US and Europe to treat her illness, but to no avail, because everywhere again prescribed her a bunch of toxic psychoactive drugs, only to make her more sick, just like me, to get only the same sleep pills at any clinic I came in Tokyo. The Max’s mother’s Alzheimer disease worsened.

In the end, he did his own research, and helped his mother heal, just by CHANGING DIET, not taking drugs. And he wrote the book above, actually the NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER book.

But it is too late, his mother died recently.

Alzheimer’s disease is named after the German physician Alois Alzheimer (pronounced alsaimer/ Á: ltshaimerz) (1864-1915), who discovered the disease.

The fourth book, “NUTRITION AND MENTAL ILLINESS-An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry”, by physician and professor Carl C. Pfeiffer, published in 1987, also talks about dietary changes to treat the mental illness, such as anger, irritability, crime, depression, sadness, suicide, loss of temper, panic,,,.

Because I think sleep is related to the health of the whole body, and especially has a lot to do with the brain, with the nerves, then if I learn about how to improve the health of them, and of the brain in particular, and the cure for neurological diseases, is probably good for my sleep.

The fifth book, “THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON FOOD”, of UMA NAIDOO, MD, American female expert on food to heal the diseases.

And the sixth book is “TOXIC SUPERFOOD”, of Sally Norton, MPH, an American expert on toxic food, an harmful oxalate in food, mostly in vegetables.

These are 6 great books, but not 100% perfect, every book has its flaws.

When I was a journalist in Vietnam, I had a habit of doing a cross-checking the information, to know which information is true and which is false, because being a journalist requires accurate information.

I cross-checked these 5 books, and added other books, and other sources of information in the press, and on the internet, and found some deficiencies in the above books.

For example, the journalist Max’s book advises people to eat a lot of broccoli, because broccoli is very good for the brain. The book “How not to die” also advises the same about good broccoli, and praises broccoli, cauliflower as the queen of vegetables, has the best value for health, improves sleep, and recommends cauliflower, broccoli for daily intake.

But cross-checking other scientific sources, I found that while broccoli, cauliflower are very healthy, it has a very toxic side effect, which is that it prevents the digestion of iodine, which is an important minerals for the body. If we are deficient in iodine, we will have thyroiditis, and goiter, as many Vietnamese in mountainous areas, ethnic minorities often suffer.

So I cut down on cauliflower and broccoli to about once or twice a week, not every day, and only eat one or two pieces of broccoli at a time. Israel’s Ministry of Health also recommends that people should not eat more than 2 servings of broccoli a week.

Distilling the good information in these 5 books, I have discovered that your diet has a huge effect on your general health, and has an important influence on your mood, personality.

Are you mentally balanced, or unbalanced, serene or panicky, calm or restless, warlike or pacifist, gentle or irritable, it is an important reason from your diet, not just from your education, or social, or family background.

I think a healthy, balanced, peaceful brain will help you get a good night’s sleep.

Dr. Bieler in his book “Food is your best medicine” gave me a great belief that there is no need for medication, and that the medicine actually has no effect at all, or only a very, very temporary effect. And every drug has harmful side effects that often outweigh the good effects of the drug.

Dr. Bieler saisd that:-Just the right diet, and only the right diet, will help us cure all diseases.

Dr. Price in his book “Nutrition,,,Primitive,,,” showed me that the people of the tribes who live in a natural way are healthier, less sick than those who live in an industrial way.

Dr. Price gives a typical example of the islanders of Haris, Scotland.

In a family with 2 brothers, around 20 years old, they eat at the same table every day. But the younger brother likes to eat white bread with jam, coffee with sugar, sweet chocolates. He has bad teeth, several decayed teeth, always has toothache, 2 front teeth have fallen out, and sleep is always restless, he sleeps 10 hours a day, but the quality of sleep is not good, always tossing and turning. And when he woke up, it is very difficult to wake up, because he got tired.

The older brother is the opposite, he just likes to eat natural food, sugar-free oatcake, seafood like shrimp, fish, crab caught in the sea, and a little milk, cheese, butter, very little. He is very healthy, has excellent shining teeth, white, even, has no cavities, has not lost any teeth, and has a very good sleep, sleeps only 5 hours a night, wakes up very early, but the quality of his sleep is very good.

This island region has almost no fruit, and vegetables only very few, milk, cheese, and butter are also very few. People mainly live on whole grain oatmeal, flour, and shrimp and fish in the sea.

But they are very healthy, have no tooth decay, no vitamin deficiency, and have great sleep, excellent health.

B6, B12, zinc for good sleep

But perhaps the most amazing, the most effective for improving sleep, is the book “Nutrition and Mental Illiness” by Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer published in 1987, and “Toxic Super Foo” of Sally Norton, and “This is your brain on Food” of Uma Naidoo.

Doctor Pfeiffer offers some invaluable tips on how to sleep better, to improves the nervous system, and unexpectedly, I discovered that also improves sleep.

-That is first, you should eat enough vitamin B6,

-and second, eat enough zinc.

Dr. Pfeiffer says that if you eat enough vitamin B6, you will have good dreams in your sleep, never have nightmares, never have dreams that freak you out, and help you good mood when you wake up in the morning. When you wake up in the morning, you clearly remember that dream, you have a good dream recall.

I deduced that if you have a good dream, that means you have to get good sleep first, then you can have a good dream.

That means B6 helps you have good sleep, and beautiful dreams.

Second, zinc.

Dr. Pfeiffer says that zinc helps reduce stress in the brain, has sedative properties. I deduced that insomnia was caused by anxiety, wandering thoughts. If zinc helps reduce anxiety, calms down, it certainly helps to get to sleep early.

I looked up the internet and found that vitamin B6 is abundant in whole grain brown rice, black bread, and especially in lotus root.

Vietnamese people do not eat lotus root, only lotus seeds, lotus atrium. But the Japanese don’t eat lotus seeds, do not eat lotus atrium, but only eat lotus root, sold in vegetable stores very cheap.

And zinc is abundant in the scallops, in the bean sprouts.

Since then, I ate lotus root and bean sprouts every day, sometimes eating a oyster. In the article that I wrote about curing diarrhea- https://minhtuanbao.com/treatment-of-diseases-without-drugs-lesson-5-treatment-of-diarrhea/, I said that I got diarrhea from eating raw oyster. It was precisely because I wanted to eat enough zinc in the oyster to improve my sleep, but I was not careful, not cooked, so I had diarrhea.

Dr. Pfeiffer advises people to take a whole bunch of multi-supplements, lots of multi-vitamins, but I only take one multi-tablet supplement- vitamin B6, and zinc.

Fortunately in Japan, there is a multivitamin that includes vitamins B6, B12, and zinc that go together in one pack. Perhaps the Japanese manufacturers had predicted that B6, B12, and zinc should go together, so in the nice little synthetic tablets supplement that taste a bit like MSG-monosodium glutamate, 2 small tablets a day, have enough B6, B12, and zinc for body in one day.

Dr. Pfeiffer didn’t talk about vitamin B12, but I read another book, it said vitamin 12 is good for the brain, makes red blood, is abundant in beef meat, and is abundant in nori seaweed that is sold a lot, very cheap in Japan.

That’s why I eat nori seaweed leaves daily along with lotus root, bean sprouts, and zinc-B6-B12 supplement, manufactured by the Japanese company Asahi.

And suddenly found that when I was lying down, I felt asleep very quick, after only about 10 minutes, I fell asleep well.

So after 7 years of insomnia, having to take sleeping pills every day, now I suddenly can sleep, have beautiful dreams, and always remember those beautiful dreams the next day.

That’s very wonderful.

It is a miracle drug: B6, B12, zinc, bean sprouts, brown rice, lotus root, nori seaweed leaf.

In fact, if you get enough vitamins B6, B12, and zinc in natural foods, there’s no need for B6-B12-Zinc multivitamins supplement.

The best source of zinc is oysters, but it’s also abundant in red meat and poultry. Other good sources are beans, nuts, crab, lobster, whole grains, breakfast cereals, and dairy products like milk, cheese.

But our lives are hectic, and in our daily lives, we don’t always eat enough of the aforementioned foods.

So sometimes we need synthetic tablets, supplements.

But we should don’t take too much advantage of supplemets, don’t use much supplements because I think there is no better synthetic pill than natural food.

Dr. Pfeiffer also advises us to eat a bunch of other multi-vitamins, but I don’t heed that advice.

The only synthetic pill that I accept, and take every day, is the aforementioned B6-B12-Zinc.

Doctor Sally in “Toxic superfood book” said eating too much food with oxalate will harmful to our sleep.

Doctor Uma Naidoo in “This is your brain on food” book adivices that should eat more salmon fish to get more omega-3, so we can fall asleep easilly.

Lactic acid and fermented foods such as pickles, sour meat, lettuce.

From 2021, the Japanese company Yakult Honsha produces a yogurt drink called Yakult 1000, which contains lactic bacterial acid, which is said to help people reduce stress during COVID19, and therefore help people sleep well.

Checking the internet, I found that lactic acid is present in fermented milk, forming yogurt, has a good effect on muscle training, has a good effect on the brain and nervous system. Maybe that’s why lactic acid is good for sleep.

I have known this Yakult yogurt long time before, sometimes bought it, but this Yakult 1000 won’t be known until 2021.

Since 2021, I sometimes bought 1 bag contains 7 small bottles, 900 yen, about 9 USD, enough to drink for 3 days, 2 small bottles per day. There’s no obvious effect, but since it’s yogurt, I think it’s good for overall health.

But the side effect of this Yakult is it is too sweet, and it came from milk, that will make my nose-nasal passages be cogested, can not breathe when I slept, so I woke up many time.

So I gave up this drink milk of Yakult.

But lactic acid is not only found in yogurt, but also in foods such as pickles like kimchi and sauerkraut.

So if you eat the above foods, it is also very good for sleep.

Regarding pickles, fermented foods, the above doctors recommend people to eat, because it is very good for the intestines, and for digestion.

Journalist Max, doctor Michael Gleger recommends eating kimchi, pickles, lettuce, cucumber daily for good digestion, and good mood.

Since then for several years now, I eat pickles, lettuce every day, sometimes kimchi. I made my own pickles, not very good, but okay. In Japan, there is a plum pickle dish, which is very delicious, Japanese people eat it every day, because they think it’s good for health.

Now I also eat that pickled plum every day.

Muscle exercise good for sleep.

I have been a person who has been exercising in the morning for more than 30 years, every morning when I wake up, I exercise for about 15 minutes, and run once a week 5km on Saturday morning.

About 15 years ago, when I first started running, I ran every day, woke up at 6 am, exercised, then ran for 30 minutes about 3 km. Felt very well, but then suddenly had pain in the muscles of the feet, and felt an arrhythmia, my heart beats unusual rhythm.

I immediately reduced the intensity of running to once a week and saw all these phenomena disappeared quick,  and since then I have been very healthy. Before running, I often had rhinitis, inflammation sinus, always runny nose, sore throat, cough, flu, headache.

But since I started running, these phenomena have completely disappeared, what a miracle drug.

When I quit running and switched to swimming for a few months, the runny nose, flu, cough, sore throat started to return.

That means swimming is not as effective as running.

But running, and exercising in the morning did not help me improve my sleep much. It helps, but not much, I still have to take sleeping pills, until I eat enough vitamin B6 found in lotus root, B12 found in beef, seaweed leaves, zinc in fenugreek, cheese, and bean sprouts, and lactic acid found in yogurt, pickles, and the above-mentioned synthetic tablets

For these methods, I have just started to sleep without sleep pills, but sleep was still not very good.

Still have to wake up several times a night to urinate, and sometimes wake up suddenly for no reason.

Then when I bought the book “Genius Foods” by New York Times young journalist Max Lugavere, I emailed him to ask about his mother’s health. Because in this book, Mr. Max has his website address, including a contact section.

After that, Mr. Max sent me several emails, mostly automated emails, one of which was about Muscle Training for Sleep.

In this email, Mr. Max introduces several muscle training experts, and the results of their research on the effects of muscle training on sleep.

The researchers divided the experimental participants into three groups of about 100 people each.

1 normal group, no exercise at all.

1 group practice sports, but not muscle training, such as playing badminton, table tennis, dancing, running, skating,,,. There is another group of muscle exercises, known in English as Resistant exercise, or muscle training, like body building.

As a result, the muscle-training group had the best sleep, better than the other groups. The group that did not exercise at all had the worst sleep.

This is great information for me.

In the past, I also occasionally shot weights, lift dumbbell, but not regularly, and only practiced according to habit, not according to understanding.

Now that I train muscles with understanding, I should have a plan to exercise muscles regularly, and methodically and systematically.

I still keep exercising in the morning, and run once a week.

And now, every evening, at around 9 p.m., sometimes 10 o’clock, I do muscle training for about 10 minutes, very fast, very short, including:

1- Hands push-ups 10 times

2-Push 10 weights in each hand, my dumbbell weighs 5 kg.

3-Stand up and sit down 10 times.

4-Lie on your back, bend your legs to your face 10 times, to exercise your abs and back.

5-Lie on your back, lift the upper half of the body about 10 times, also exercise the abs and back.

6-Stand up and down on tiptoes 10 times.

7-Hold a 5 kg dumbbell by both hands, rotate body 10 times on each side, right and left, exercise the muscles of the back.

8-Lie on your back, grind your neck 10 times, exercise your neck muscles.

All it takes is about 10 minutes.

As a result, I find my sleep is much improved, sleep deeply, quickly, wake up less often than before, and a stronger, healthier body.

Sunbathe for 1 hour a day for good health, good sleep

All of the above doctors recommend that people spend about 1 hour in the sun every day, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon.

Nature has a very wonderful law, which is the sun rises in the morning, when all things and trees wake up. And the sun goes down in the evening, when everyone goes to sleep.

Therefore, when you sleep, you should keep your bedroom dark, quiet, and should sleep on time, as the law of nature. People should go to bed around 11pm, or 12pm, neither too early nor too late.

And in the morning, when the sun rises, we should wake up, at about 5 am, or 6 am, at the latest around 7 am, not later.

That is the human biological clock, according to the circulation of the solar system.

But we humans have disrupted that biological clock. For example, in Japan, konbini shops are open 24 hours a day, so the night shift employees don’t sleep at night, but sleep during the day the next day. They will develop disorder sleep later in their life.

My mother is a doctor, she had to go to the hospital 1 day a week for night shift, that night she did not sleep. As a result, in old age, she had difficulty sleeping, almost insomnia, the reason was that my mother’s biological clock was broken during more than 40 years of working in the hospital with night shift.

Japanese police officers also have a way of working on night duty, once a week do not sleep at night, because they have to be on duty. As a result, many police officers suffer from sleep disturbances.

When we wake up during the day, when there is sunlight, and go to bed when the sun is out, it is to follow the biological clock, it will give us a natural sleep, like a living wild animal, no sleeping pills needed for wild animal.

In addition to the circadian clock of night-sleep and wake-up day time, sunlight also helps people make vitamin D, and vitamin D helps people have good bones, have beautiful skin, and help people have good sleep.

Of course, too much sun exposure will burn your skin, age quickly, and possibly skin cancer.

But lack of sunlight is also very dangerous, making us more susceptible to skin cancer because of vitamin D deficiency, and making it difficult for us to sleep.

Vitamin D helps in the digestion of vitamin C. Without enough vitamin D, the body cannot properly digest it fruit vitamin C, and other vitamins.

White people living in Europe, the Arctic, and lack of sunlight areas have a 20 times higher rate of skin cancer than people in sunny regions, like Africa, Asia, and Vietnam, and  white people have more insomnia than areas with a lot of sunshine.

In summing up:

1-Eat fish with rich omega-3, like salmon.

2-Eat foods rich in nutritions and in zinc, B6, B12, manganese, like egg, pork, beef, chicken, green bean-bean sprout, green vegetables, cucumber, lettuce (iceburg, butter head,,,), but no spinach-because it consits too much oxalate, less bean, less nuts, less almond, because they also have too much harmful oxalate.

3-Exercise, walking, running, rowing.

4-Sunlight expose 30 minutes in morning, 30 minutes in the afternoon.

5-More smile, more enjoy our life, keep positive feeling.

Wish you have a good sleep, and love life, be optimistic, happy, like me.///