Strange diet-related sleep problems

Hi all,

I've had sleep issues since I was a teenager (I'm 25 now). I used to have a ton of trouble falling asleep, but in the last couple years I've managed to mostly solve that. The problem is that I would still wake up with a headache, fatigue, inability to concentrate, even after seeming to get a good uninterrupted 8 hours. I always thought it was just a fact of life, but about two months ago I tried experimenting with my diet and discovered something.

I decided to go vegetarian for a month and see what happened. I made a big batch of thai curry with tofu and that was most of what I ate for four or five days. Within 4 days, I suddenly felt amazing. My headaches were gone, and I was jumping out of bed fully awake and engaged at work all day. After the healthiest-feeling 10 days of my life, things went back to their usual bad state. I played around with cutting out this or that from my diet for a while, and finally just decided to go back eating only things I remember eating that first week--bananas, clementines, black coffee, whiskey (once a week) and that thai curry. Pretty quickly, I felt great again, and I've pretty consistently slept well and felt energetic throughout the day since then. This seems to work regardless of whether I seem to sleep well or not--there are nights when I wake up several times to use the bathroom but still feel great in the morning, and there was even a day when I should've been utterly hungover but instead woke up alert and energetic after 7 hours of sleep.

I'd rather not only eat thai curry for the rest of my life--does anyone have experience with weird diet/sleep sensitivities? I'm assuming I cut out something that was irritating me, but I've tried going without gluten, red meat, added sugar at various points to no avail. Or maybe it's the presence of something--is coconut milk magic? I'm at my wits' end here--I had never realized how bad my normal days were until the last few months and I'm desperate to figure out how to avoid going back.

My bloodwork is all extremely normal, and I have no other major underlying conditions. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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