If you wake at 3am with your heart racing, take a tablespoon of raw honey with a pinch of unrefined sea salt before bed (or during the nighttime waking) to stabilize blood sugar and cut the cortisol spike — paired with morning-and-evening gratitude, which is said to lower cortisol by 23%.

noli's read

The honey-and-sleep mechanism has some real basis: the liver draws on glycogen reserves overnight, and a dip in blood sugar can trigger cortisol and adrenaline release to bring it back up — recent reviews (citing among others a 2012 Journal of Medicinal Food study) confirm honey before bed can support that glycogen reserve, but call the evidence itself "preliminary," with small trials and rarely any direct measurement of nighttime cortisol. The most problematic claim is the specific figure that "gratitude lowers cortisol by 23%": the most comprehensive meta-analysis of positive-psychology interventions (25 randomized trials, over 1,600 participants, International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 2025) found a significant effect on inflammatory markers but no significant effect on cortisol itself — and nowhere reports a 23% figure, which appears invented or lifted out of context. The rest of the protocol (no food 3-4 hours before bed, dim lighting, magnesium) is reasonable sleep-hygiene common sense with no cortisol-specific link shown here, wrapped in aggressive marketing (a "free" $997 book, coffee enemas, sponsored products). Verdict: exaggerated — a plausible but thinly supported honey mechanism, surrounded by a fabricated gratitude figure and heavy product selling.

the sources

1. 1Frattaroli J. 2006
2. 2Choi H, et al. 2025