Potato starch doesn't help my sleep
I've been experimenting with the relationship between sleep and resistant starch, taking a few tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill potato starch, which some people think improves sleep by feeding the helpful Bifidobacterium that may play a role in producing up to 80% of the body's serotonin.
There’s no question the potato starch raised my Bifido levels:
But it seems not to have changed my sleep, either in overall hours:
or in a more precise measure, like REM:
You can see from these charts that I did notice some fantastic nights of sleep after starting potato starch, but there were plenty of other nights when my sleep was back to normal and sometimes worse. If I hadn’t measured so carefully, I’d be tempted to overplay the good and underplay the not-so-good. If there’s a psychosomatic effect, then yeah it may have made me feel better, but in terms of actual sleep time, resistant starch doesn’t seem to have helped.
There’s no question the potato starch raised my Bifido levels:
But it seems not to have changed my sleep, either in overall hours:
or in a more precise measure, like REM:
You can see from these charts that I did notice some fantastic nights of sleep after starting potato starch, but there were plenty of other nights when my sleep was back to normal and sometimes worse. If I hadn’t measured so carefully, I’d be tempted to overplay the good and underplay the not-so-good. If there’s a psychosomatic effect, then yeah it may have made me feel better, but in terms of actual sleep time, resistant starch doesn’t seem to have helped.