The Value of Sleep

One of the things I’ve been struggling with for the past four months is getting enough sleep.  For a variety of reasons, most of them my own fault, I’ve been getting 5 to 6 hours per sleep a night, and that’s just not enough.  I’ve noticed a number of effects from this:

• Tiredness during the day (duh!) leading to nodding off in meetings and social events.
• Poor focus at work
• Occasional irritability
• Poor decision making at times
• Greater tendency for binge eating
• Greater need for artificial stimulants like caffeine and chocolate

Needless to say, this has made my goals a lot harder to accomplish.  So I’m taking a few steps to remedy the situation.

Step 1 - Bed by 10!

I wake up every day at 6:30am.  So if I want to get a good 8 hours of sleep, I need to be in bed by 10pm at the latest.  Sure, some days I won’t be able to do that, but I want those days to be the exception where I’m doing something fun and important and not the rule, where I stay up late surfing the internet.

Step 2 - New Bed

So long old mattress.  Hello new bed!  My current sleeping arrangement is very poorly setup.  It’s too soft in some areas, the pillow setup is bad and the whole mattress is damaged thanks to the lovely Daisy, also known as super puppy!  Time to get something new and this time do a bit more research on it.

Step 3 - No Eating Late

This is an obvious one but I’ve been a bit lax with it lately.  No more really late dinners.

Step 4 - No Drinking Late

I’m cutting out the caffeine anyway, but I’m also going to try to cut down on the water consumption after 8 or 9pm.  This is to avoid the inevitable trip to the bathroom at about 4am.

Step 5 - Bedroom Rearrangement

My bedroom is both my place of sleep and my place of work.  I think this is a bad idea.  It should be one and not the other.  I’m going to rearrange a few things, get rid of my desk and turn the bedroom into a place of relaxation, not stress.

Step 6 - A Sound Experiment

I’m going to experiment with white noise makers as well as music.  I want to see if either one will make a difference in my sleep patterns.

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I’m hoping that all of these things added together will make for a much better night’s sleep.

The Top Five Things You Can Do To Improve Your Health This Year

It’s the new year, a time when people try to change their bad habits and improve their lives.  Personally, I think any day of the year would be a good day to start improving yourself, but hey, I’m not judging! 

We spent the last couple of weeks talking about ways in which you can improve your diet and add more exercise to your life, now we finish up these lists of tips with five other ways in which you can improve your overall fitness and health.  These are just as important as eating better and working out and they’ll help you lead a healthy life in 2009.

Get More Sleep - You know how you sound cool and tough when you tell your friends how you survived this week on just two hours of sleep a night and then pulled 24 hours straight of partying on the weekend?  Guess what, you don’t sound that cool.  Actually, you sound kind of dumb.  Your body needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night.  When you don’t get enough sleep you do stupid things.  You eat too much, you drink too much, you get stressed out and you make poor decisions.

Studies show that a lack of sleep has the same effect on your driving as being drunk.  Thankfully, we’re past the days when driving drunk was considered acceptable and even cool.  Now I wish we were past the days when sleep deprivation was considered tough.  Trust me on this one, there is nothing better you can for your body than getting a good amount of sleep per night.

Worry Less - Having a bad day?  Bad week?  Bad month?  You’re not the only one.  Trust me, I had a REALLY bad couple of months.  That’s unfortunate because stress can take a horrible toll on your body.  When you’re stressed, your body is constantly in panic mode.  Hormone levels are high, blood pressure is high, stomach acids begin churning.  When you’re stressed, your body starts preparing for a fight or flight moment.  It knows something bad is happening and it wants to be prepared.  That’s great if you’re about to be attacked by a saber toothed tiger and need to sprint your way to safety.  It’s not so good if you’re going to spend months and months like this because you just lost your wife or you’re afraid of losing your job.

Take some time to relax.  No, I don’t mean a trip to a beach resort in Aruba, although if that makes you happy and you can afford it, by all means, enjoy.  I mean spend a few minutes alone contemplating all the good things that you still have in your life, go sit somewhere outdoors and enjoy nature, take some time to meditate or just practice your breathing.  I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll find relaxing, it’s different from person to person, but I can tell you that taking some time away from it all to relax and lower your stress level is a must for both your physical and mental health.

If you want some tips about feeling better, try the following blogs:

Steve Pavlina
Zen Habits
Questing Soul
The Happiness Project

Talk To Your Friends and Family - And if we’re talking about stress levels, why not address one of the most common sources of stress by turning it into a strength?  Your immediate circle of friends and family has a tremendous amount of influence on your life.  They determine how you feel, what you eat, where you go out, when you go to sleep and a whole lot of other details in your life.  Don’t believe me?  Just keep a journal for one week and write down all the decisions you made that week that were influenced by friends and family.  I think you’ll be amazed.

Unfortunately, a lot of the pressure that friends and family exert on you can be very negative.  They can take you to unhealthy restaurants, not give you time to work out, harass you into making bad decisions and so on.  Why not reverse all this by having an honest conversation with your friends about what you’re trying to achieve?  Don’t hide things from them, tell them the truth and ask for help.  Trust me, it’s not as hard as it sounds.

Dump The TV - Repeat after me, “there is NOTHING good on”.  Yes, it’s true, there is absolutely nothing worth watching on TV.  You can get better news on the internet and most of the rest is crappy dramas, comedies that aren’t funny and reality shows that make me mourn the death of western civilization.  I stopped watching TV five years ago and I’ve never regretted it.  It’s a time sink that makes you stupid and why anyone would want that is beyond me.

Quit Smoking - Actually, the applies to all drugs, not just cigarettes.  I have no moral objections to drugs and honestly, I’m not even sure why they’re illegal.  If you want to destroy your life with them, be my guest.  However, be aware that this is exactly what you’re doing, you’re destroying your life.  You are paying other people for the privilege of killing yourself.  Does that sound smart?  And for what?  The momentary joy of that first puff of smoke?  That’s worth the shorter life, the inability to play ball with your kids and the fact that you smell like a chimney most of the time?

Guess what, no one thinks you’re cool because you smoke.  No one looks at you and says “oooh, look at that guy light up, he’s awesome and I want to just like him!”  We just wish you wouldn’t stand so close because you’re making it hard for us to breath.

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I think many people miss the fact that being healthy isn’t just about eating better and going to the gym.  It’s also about sleep, stress and a whole bunch of other factors.  You can’t just lead a happy life at the dinner table and at the gym, it’s something you need to do every hour of every day, even when you’re asleep.

A Beginning Is A Very Delicate Thing

It’s 8am here in California and I’m feeling great. I got a good night’s sleep, a healthy breakfast and I then rode a mile on my bike to the train station. In about 20 minutes I’m going to get off the train and ride to the office. What about you? Have you started your day out right?

The start of your day will set the tone for the rest of it. If you wake up tired and cranky you’re more than likely going to be tired and cranky for the rest of the day. If you make unhealthy food choices you’re setting yourself up for a day of bad eating. Whatever decisions you make in the morning are going to echo throughout the rest of your day.

So What Do We Do?

Now if you want to start the day off a bit better, you’re going to focus on three things:

Sleep

Everyone needs sleep. On average, we need 7 to 9 hours of good sleep per night. There are a rare few who can get by with less just as there are some who need more, but 7 to 9 is the overwhelming average. All you folks out there who boast about how little sleep you get and how much work you get done are slowly killing yourselves. Also, you’re not as productive as you think. Lack of sleep makes us into poor decision makers. Several recent studies have shown that just a few nights of poor or little sleep reduce your driving skills to those of a drunk driver. Now think about what this means for your work skills.

• Do yourself a favor and get a regular schedule.
• Focus on getting 8 hours of good sleep per night.
• Make your bedroom into a place for sleep and little else. Yes, that means you may want to move your sex life into the living room if you can If you associate the bedroom with work or play then you’ll have a harder time associating it with sleep and that means more problems falling asleep.
• Make it a dark place so the sunrise won’t wake you up.
• Remove noises and other sleep interruptions.
• Take care of problems like snoring or sleep apnea which might interfere with good sleep. See a sleep specialist if necessary.

Food

A breakfast can be a wonderfully healthy thing, starting up your metabolism with a good shot of energy and nutrients. It can also be a horrible thing smothering your stomach with bacon, eggs, pancakes and potatoes. Never skip breakfast if you can, but be aware of what you’re eating and don’t turn breakfast into a reason to binge. Remember, you’re trying to start your day out right, not wrong.

• Fruits and vegetables are your friends!
• Most breakfast cereals are not healthy, no matter what the TV commercials tell you
• Eggs are not bad in moderation
• Anything fried is not healthy
• Pancakes are not healthy, not even the wholewheat ones
• Anything smothered in syrup is not healthy
• Stop drinking fruit juices, eat a fruit instead
• Meat can be healthy but most breakfast meat choices are not. My apologies to all you bacon lovers out there, but you do realize you’re eating fried fat right? There aren’t too many ways in which fried fat can be healthy.
• Just because most people consider it dinner or lunch doesn’t mean you can’t have it for breakfast. I love a bit of curry in the morning!

Activity

Yes, you should be active in the morning, but this doesn’t have to mean a full workout. Personally, I hate working out in the morning. I feel like I’m forcing myself to do something that my body just isn’t ready for. However, the morning is a great time for light physical activities. They wake you up while jump starting your body. Rather than spending the first few hours of your day trying to wake up, a little light activity in the morning will boost your energy levels for the rest of the day.

• Walk the dog
• Ride your bike to work
• Walk to work
• Walk anywhere! My father, who is in his mid 60’s and is in remarkably good shape, starts out every day with a walk. He does this even when he’s on a business trip and says it’s a great way to get over jetlag.
• Morning stretches. No, not a full workout, just 5 minutes of stretching, perhaps some yoga and a few light exercises. Keep it nice and slow with no weights.
• Sex! Just remember to take it out of the bedroom

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My day is starting out well. I’m wide awake and I feel great! How about you? What are you going to do tonight and tomorrow morning to make sure tomorrow is a healthy day?