I agree. I got relatives living in Florida. They spend most of their time in air conditioned environments. Their idea of "going out" is taking a walk in a mall or mega-store (Wal-Mart, Sam's Club). I once gave an uncle some Vitamin D3 with some magnesium citrate. He got better sleep. Wasn't even interested in how that worked.
> I once gave an uncle some Vitamin D3 with some magnesium citrate. He got better sleep.
Assuming anything meaningful happened there, that was almost certainly the magnesium. Magnesium is linked with sleep improvements (actually, literally today a Google Alerts told me about such an experiment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/ ).
(Vitamin D, on the other hand, probably not so much since it sounds like you gave it to him in the evening, where, at least for me, vitamin D screws up my sleep http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#vitamin-d-at-night-hurts .)
When I first started taking vitamin D (I was deficient), I noticed sleeping better immediately, and I'm not normally the type to notice this kind of thing. After googling it, I've seen a lot of people reporting the same. That's interesting about magnesium though, I'll have to look into that.
Take magnesium citrate instead of the cheapo magnesium oxide. The magnesium oxide is useless. The magnesium citrate works. It's suppose to de-calcify the pineal gland and allow proper melatonin production. You can google all of this since I'm just a stranger on the Net.
It's always been a steroid hormone, has it not? I didn't realize there was any controversy about that. Personally, I don't care if it's a "black cat or white cat, as long as it catches rats".