(no subject)
Sep. 2nd, 2019 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Got laundry done, hung up most of my clothes to dry, so only needed one dryer. (I have an in the room clothes hanger that doesn't take up much space, is easy to use, and can dry up to eight pieces of clothing.) Had a chat with one of my neighbors who was doing his laundry - drying while I was washing. He had one of the apartments with the gas leaks. He said they opened up his wall, replaced the pipe and resealed it. And, that the plumber now just needed to fix the pipes in the basement -- which was going to take a bit longer. So with any luck they'll be done by October, just in time for the Holiday Season. Also before it gets too cold.
Also got grocery shopping done in between downpours. Or, I actually went after the downpours, when it was slowly clearing off yet still drizzling, I wasn't willing to wait until it stopped completely -- which it's done now (around 6 PM). We have blue skies now. I have to make lunch for tomorrow and dinner soon. I don't mind making dinner every day, but it gets tiring making lunch at the same time. Worst thing about being gluten intolerant is lunch, well, lunch and breakfast. Have found work-arounds. Breakfast? Pre-boiled egg, and Red Mill Organic Gluten Free Instant Oat Meal/Chia/Hemp Seed Cereal with Almond/Cocounut Milk (I have it at work and Red Mill makes the best.) Lunch -- spinach/chard/super-green salad greens, watercress (sometimes), radishes, green onion or red onion, cucumber, and either chicken, shrimp, or seared tuna with lemon juice. This is in a bento box, with fruit often in the top box for desert. Fruit is mango, strawberry, raspberry and blackberry or blue berry. Sometimes an apple. (I got burned out on apples, also apples aren't as good for my digestive system as the berries and higher in sugar apparently.)
So not bad. The tough bit is not giving in to the extras. But Jamaica really doesn't have much, so it's easier than most places.
And I got some writing done. On page 630 now. So I've written thirty pages in the last two weeks. I've managed to get my characters moving forward in plot, and local.
The internet distracts me. That and I steal time to write at work. Been trying to walk more and spend less time on the net.
Bought a few things. A new bag -- that I've mixed feelings about. Over-the-ear headphones, which I hope work -- they were expensive. New clothes (I needed some new shirts and tops going into fall). And some boots -- which hopefully fit.
It wasn't a lot but it was something. I also watched television, read, and played on the internet.
2. Sorry, Keto Fans, You're Probably Not in Ketosis.
I enjoyed this article in a purely Schenfreudian sort of way...I have an obnoxious co-worker who lives by the keto diet. (No, she doesn't have epilespy.)
Keto is hard. If it’s not hard, you’re probably not doing it right.
The diet gets billed as a miraculously enjoyable diet—eat all the fat you want, just cut out the carbs. But the ketogenic diet (also called keto) was never supposed to be fun. It was supposed to treat severe epilepsy. And as a medical treatment, it was only intended to be administered under the supervision of trained nutritionists and physicians. The professionals would be able to monitor patients for potential problems and ensure that their diet was actually keeping them in ketosis—a metabolic state where your body switches from using glucose as energy to using ketone bodies, which come from body fat. They needed those checkpoints because staying in true ketosis is exceptionally challenging for adults.
“It’s not so easy to get an adult body into ketosis,” says Teresa Fung, a professor of nutrition at Simmons College. “That’s why the keto diet is used as a treatment of epilepsy in children or infants—because it’s easier.” Kids are growing rapidly, she explains, so their use of food as fuel is different from the way adults use it. Researchers aren’t exactly sure what those differences are, but Fung says it’s so hard to get adults into deep ketosis (which is likely deeper than a dieter’s target) that often nutritionists don’t even attempt it as a therapy. It’s primarily kids who undergo the treatment today.
This is in part because patients need to be in deep ketosis to see an impact on epilepsy, likely deeper than the average dieter, but without a nutritionist guiding you it’s still hard to get down into ketosis. It’s not exactly clear why ketosis seems to improve epilepsy, but it seems to have something to do with the brain’s use of ketone bodies in place of glucose, which only happens when you’re nearly in starvation mode. (It’s important to note here that “starvation mode” is not in reference to how hungry you feel.)
“Keto is not easy to maintain, it’s not a palatable diet,” says Andrea Giancoli, a dietician and nutrition consultant in California. Getting 80-90 percent of your calories from fat—which is what’s generally required for keto—is actually difficult. It involves eating a lot of rich, heavy foods with little variety—think fatty meats and gravy on cauliflower. You’re only allowed 10 to 15 grams of carbohydrates per day, and though many dieters stretch that to more like 20 or 30 grams that’s still only about one banana. A single apple could also get you past that limit depending on its size (though the fiber in an apple means that many dieters don’t count those carbs towards their daily limit) and a couple slices of bread likely fulfill the requirement as well.
But the real problem isn’t going over your carb limit—it’s the protein. A therapeutic keto diet limits your protein intake. “If you’re eating a lot of protein, you’re breaking that down into carbs,” Giancoli explains. Your body is in desperation mode on keto, she says, and without a reasonable supply of carbohydrates coming from grains and fruits, you’ll start breaking down the amino acids in proteins to make glucose. Glucose, though it sounds like a scary sugar, is your body’s primary source of fuel. Too much isn’t good for you, but you need some just to allow your cells to function normally.
The point of keto is to force your body to deplete its glucose (and the stored form, glycogen) so it will have to use body fat as a fuel source. It’s capable of making ketone bodies from your fat, which can replace glucose as an energy-storing molecule if necessary. To do that, you have to break apart fat molecules thus ‘burning’ the fat off. But here’s the thing: your body really really doesn’t want to run out of glucose. No glucose means starvation as far as it’s concerned—even if you’re not feeling hungry, your body is still missing one of its key macronutrients. And when you’re (nutritionally) starving, your body will start to break down protein just to get those sweet, sweet carbs. Of course, you have a source of protein in your body already: your own muscles. “When in starvation mode, your body breaks down muscle in your body,” says Giancoli. “Ketosis is a way of trying to preserve that protein. It’s not ideal, but it’s your body’s way of saving you.”
If you give your body any more than the absolute minimum amount of protein that it needs, it will immediately break it down into carbs. This is why keto sites often give a guideline for not eating too much protein. The problem is that there’s no one guideline that works for everyone, and without specifically tailoring keto to your body it’d be easy to accidentally ingest too much protein.
On the other hand, you can’t eat no protein. You need it to keep your muscles functioning and to build hair and nails and to manufacture hormones.
This is why epilepsy patients have to get prescribed diets from profession nutritionists. Without getting into true ketosis, dieters risk ingesting an enormous amount of fat—and potentially a lot of saturated fat, if you’re eating animal meat—without any of the fat-burning effects of ketosis. “The fat is the thing that’s problematic for a lot of people on keto,” Fung says. “They basically give a pass for any types of fat and a lot of the recipes encourage saturated fats like butter.” Dieters who are careful to focus on healthy, unsaturated fats like those in avocados may not have issues, but again Fung notes that you end up with a fairly monotonous diet that way, and thus a lot of people end up eating more saturated fats. “To me as a nutritionist, that’s pretty scary.”
Of course, ketosis itself comes with its own risks. Circulating ketone bodies make your blood too acidic, and your body will draw calcium from your bones as a buffer. This also happens in ketoacidosis, which is when you have so many ketone bodies that it becomes dangerous and will draw far more calcium out of your bones. Giancoli notes that dieters usually aren't in such an extreme starvation mode that they develop ketoacidosis. There are few to no studies on healthy adults undertaking a non-therapeutic ketogenic diet, but studies of epileptic children on the diet show increased bone demineralization and high calcium levels in the blood.
Moral? Don't do severe diets without consulting a physician first and be wary. I'm going by what works for my body. The only diet that did was the Paeolo -- which is no grains, reduced sugars, no dairy (especially low amount of cheese or none at all), no processed foods, high in vegetables and proteins. I'm veering from it in three ways: 1) I have oatmeal, 2) I'm not eating as much nuts -- they don't agree with me. 3) I'm not eating as much red-meat, doesn't agree with me either.
3. The Unions are to Blame -- song about Labor Day
I have the day off even though I work for a 365, 24/7 work place -- for a couple of reasons, I'm non-existential personnel. And we have 70 unions and I'm in one of them. The unions date back to the 1800s. Well some of them do. So, if you work on labor day, you get the next day off. Same with the other holidays. If you don't get a day off -- that counts as overtime. Everyone is guaranteed at least 8 paid holidays their first year -- you don't get Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving and another two -- not sure which as paid, until your second year. For a while we got President's Day and Lincoln's Birthday, but not the day after Thanksgiving. Our union got annoyed and with the next contract, negotiated the day after Thanksgiving.
If you are in a union -- you are under contract and NOT an at-will employee. If you are not in a union, or represented by one, you most likely are not under contract and at-will. Some people have contracts and aren't in unions. Actors? Are always under contract via their union. Teachers are always under contract via their union, with few exceptions. Nurses are under contract via their unions.
Contracts protect you in various ways -
* The employer can not fire you without cause. Nor can they lay you off without removing the position and showing cause. And if they do, they have to provide you with the opportunity to get another position within the organization. So job security.
* The employer must provide health care benefits, paid vacation, paid holidays (the agreed upon amount) and paid personal days.
* If you work beyond your agreed upon hours, you are guaranteed overtime.
* Sick time should be provided.
And there are other perks. In return for these perks, people pay union dues that are taken out of their ways bi-weekly (every two weeks for people who have no clue what that means).
I'm not fond of unions. They have their issues. For one thing not being able to fire people can be problematic. But. After being laid-off from about five different companies...and having to deal with evil employers -- I find being in a union a bit of a relief.
4. How to Take the Perfect Nap
(Mainly because I sort of would like to take one at the moment, instead of making dinner and lunch.)
Not all naps are created equal, though. “As a rule of thumb, you can count on naps earlier in the day to be richer in REM, while late-afternoon naps tend to be higher in SWS,” Mednick writes. If you’re interested in dreams or are working on a creative project, you might prefer a REM-soaked late-morning nap for the creativity boost it can bring; if you’re physically exhausted all the time, opt for a long afternoon nap rich in rejuvenating slow-wave sleep.
If you wake up groggy, you may be sleeping too long
That disoriented feeling I used to suffer from is known as sleep inertia, and it happens when you wake up during slow-wave sleep, the phase that comes after the energy-boosting Stage 2 sleep. If this happens to you, try waking up a few minutes earlier and see if you feel more refreshed.
The perfect nap lasts around 20 minutes (unless it doesn’t)
Though Mednick calls the 90-minute nap “a clear blue-ribbon winner,” the National Sleep Foundation recommends a snooze lasting 20 to 30 minutes. That’s long enough to grab a dose of that energizing Stage 2 sleep, without the risk of being plunged into the slow-wave sleep that can make you groggy. There seems to be a general consensus that a nap of precisely 26 minutes is best: That’s based on a famous 1994 NASA study that found that long-haul pilots who napped for 25.8 minutes were 50% more alert than their nonnapping counterparts and performed 34% better on certain tasks. I usually set my alarm for around 30 minutes, to give myself a few extra minutes to drift off.
Don’t nap too late in the day
Improperly timed naps can interfere with your nighttime sleep, experts say. Don’t sleep too long or too late in the day, especially if you have trouble falling asleep at night. [Apparently not a good idea to take one now, good to know.]
Try a caffeine nap
In my pre-nap days, I would fight off the afternoon slump with a Starbucks instead of a nap. But you can have it both ways. Since caffeine takes about 20 minutes to kick in — almost exactly the recommended nap length — down your latte just before lying down. The caffeine will act as a natural alarm, waking you up refreshed and ready to focus on the next activity. A 2003 Japanese study found that caffeine naps were more effective at combating daytime sleepiness than noncaffeine naps.
Clear your mind
For many of us, the main barrier to falling asleep at nap time is an overactive mind. Especially if you’re not in the habit, “Nap Bishop” Tricia Hersey recommends journaling before you lie down, to process whatever is nagging you. Or try a guided meditation like yoga nidra, also known as yogic sleep, to relieve stress and give your brain a break.
Carry a nap kit
During my pre-nap days, I could find a million excuses for not taking a siesta: The room was too bright or the traffic outside was too loud. Then some co-workers gave me an airplane nap kit, complete with sleep mask, neck pillow, and earplugs, enabling me to create the right conditions for sleep almost anywhere. Now I don’t go anywhere without it.
Practice makes perfect
You can train yourself to become better at napping. Regular nappers like Hersey report that it gets easier and more fun the more you do it — like riding a bike, but horizontal. Once your brain and body get in the habit, you’ll learn to drift off quickly and even wake up at the perfect time without an alarm. “Take your time and don’t guilt or pressure yourself” if you can’t fall asleep right away, Hersey says. “Just slowing down alone is a big pushback against grind culture and burnout culture.” Even if you can’t fall asleep, just lying down can have a positive effect: Science has found “nonsleep dozing” to be effective at reducing sleepiness among drowsy drivers.
Invest in stuff you love
For Hersey and for me, working the nap beat unleashed an obsession for all things sleep-related. I’ve spent hours researching linen duvets, memory-foam pillows, and silk pajamas that I hope one day to be able to afford, and Hersey rejoiced when she found the perfect fleece blankets for her Nap Ministry. Whatever gets you excited about crawling into bed will make nap time that much more appealing. “But even if you don’t have that stuff, wherever you are, you can embody rest,” Hersey says. “If you’re sitting on a couch, on a park bench, on an airplane, it’s about your mentality around it and getting into a routine. Wherever your body is, it’s the site of liberation.”
Also got grocery shopping done in between downpours. Or, I actually went after the downpours, when it was slowly clearing off yet still drizzling, I wasn't willing to wait until it stopped completely -- which it's done now (around 6 PM). We have blue skies now. I have to make lunch for tomorrow and dinner soon. I don't mind making dinner every day, but it gets tiring making lunch at the same time. Worst thing about being gluten intolerant is lunch, well, lunch and breakfast. Have found work-arounds. Breakfast? Pre-boiled egg, and Red Mill Organic Gluten Free Instant Oat Meal/Chia/Hemp Seed Cereal with Almond/Cocounut Milk (I have it at work and Red Mill makes the best.) Lunch -- spinach/chard/super-green salad greens, watercress (sometimes), radishes, green onion or red onion, cucumber, and either chicken, shrimp, or seared tuna with lemon juice. This is in a bento box, with fruit often in the top box for desert. Fruit is mango, strawberry, raspberry and blackberry or blue berry. Sometimes an apple. (I got burned out on apples, also apples aren't as good for my digestive system as the berries and higher in sugar apparently.)
So not bad. The tough bit is not giving in to the extras. But Jamaica really doesn't have much, so it's easier than most places.
And I got some writing done. On page 630 now. So I've written thirty pages in the last two weeks. I've managed to get my characters moving forward in plot, and local.
The internet distracts me. That and I steal time to write at work. Been trying to walk more and spend less time on the net.
Bought a few things. A new bag -- that I've mixed feelings about. Over-the-ear headphones, which I hope work -- they were expensive. New clothes (I needed some new shirts and tops going into fall). And some boots -- which hopefully fit.
It wasn't a lot but it was something. I also watched television, read, and played on the internet.
2. Sorry, Keto Fans, You're Probably Not in Ketosis.
I enjoyed this article in a purely Schenfreudian sort of way...I have an obnoxious co-worker who lives by the keto diet. (No, she doesn't have epilespy.)
Keto is hard. If it’s not hard, you’re probably not doing it right.
The diet gets billed as a miraculously enjoyable diet—eat all the fat you want, just cut out the carbs. But the ketogenic diet (also called keto) was never supposed to be fun. It was supposed to treat severe epilepsy. And as a medical treatment, it was only intended to be administered under the supervision of trained nutritionists and physicians. The professionals would be able to monitor patients for potential problems and ensure that their diet was actually keeping them in ketosis—a metabolic state where your body switches from using glucose as energy to using ketone bodies, which come from body fat. They needed those checkpoints because staying in true ketosis is exceptionally challenging for adults.
“It’s not so easy to get an adult body into ketosis,” says Teresa Fung, a professor of nutrition at Simmons College. “That’s why the keto diet is used as a treatment of epilepsy in children or infants—because it’s easier.” Kids are growing rapidly, she explains, so their use of food as fuel is different from the way adults use it. Researchers aren’t exactly sure what those differences are, but Fung says it’s so hard to get adults into deep ketosis (which is likely deeper than a dieter’s target) that often nutritionists don’t even attempt it as a therapy. It’s primarily kids who undergo the treatment today.
This is in part because patients need to be in deep ketosis to see an impact on epilepsy, likely deeper than the average dieter, but without a nutritionist guiding you it’s still hard to get down into ketosis. It’s not exactly clear why ketosis seems to improve epilepsy, but it seems to have something to do with the brain’s use of ketone bodies in place of glucose, which only happens when you’re nearly in starvation mode. (It’s important to note here that “starvation mode” is not in reference to how hungry you feel.)
“Keto is not easy to maintain, it’s not a palatable diet,” says Andrea Giancoli, a dietician and nutrition consultant in California. Getting 80-90 percent of your calories from fat—which is what’s generally required for keto—is actually difficult. It involves eating a lot of rich, heavy foods with little variety—think fatty meats and gravy on cauliflower. You’re only allowed 10 to 15 grams of carbohydrates per day, and though many dieters stretch that to more like 20 or 30 grams that’s still only about one banana. A single apple could also get you past that limit depending on its size (though the fiber in an apple means that many dieters don’t count those carbs towards their daily limit) and a couple slices of bread likely fulfill the requirement as well.
But the real problem isn’t going over your carb limit—it’s the protein. A therapeutic keto diet limits your protein intake. “If you’re eating a lot of protein, you’re breaking that down into carbs,” Giancoli explains. Your body is in desperation mode on keto, she says, and without a reasonable supply of carbohydrates coming from grains and fruits, you’ll start breaking down the amino acids in proteins to make glucose. Glucose, though it sounds like a scary sugar, is your body’s primary source of fuel. Too much isn’t good for you, but you need some just to allow your cells to function normally.
The point of keto is to force your body to deplete its glucose (and the stored form, glycogen) so it will have to use body fat as a fuel source. It’s capable of making ketone bodies from your fat, which can replace glucose as an energy-storing molecule if necessary. To do that, you have to break apart fat molecules thus ‘burning’ the fat off. But here’s the thing: your body really really doesn’t want to run out of glucose. No glucose means starvation as far as it’s concerned—even if you’re not feeling hungry, your body is still missing one of its key macronutrients. And when you’re (nutritionally) starving, your body will start to break down protein just to get those sweet, sweet carbs. Of course, you have a source of protein in your body already: your own muscles. “When in starvation mode, your body breaks down muscle in your body,” says Giancoli. “Ketosis is a way of trying to preserve that protein. It’s not ideal, but it’s your body’s way of saving you.”
If you give your body any more than the absolute minimum amount of protein that it needs, it will immediately break it down into carbs. This is why keto sites often give a guideline for not eating too much protein. The problem is that there’s no one guideline that works for everyone, and without specifically tailoring keto to your body it’d be easy to accidentally ingest too much protein.
On the other hand, you can’t eat no protein. You need it to keep your muscles functioning and to build hair and nails and to manufacture hormones.
This is why epilepsy patients have to get prescribed diets from profession nutritionists. Without getting into true ketosis, dieters risk ingesting an enormous amount of fat—and potentially a lot of saturated fat, if you’re eating animal meat—without any of the fat-burning effects of ketosis. “The fat is the thing that’s problematic for a lot of people on keto,” Fung says. “They basically give a pass for any types of fat and a lot of the recipes encourage saturated fats like butter.” Dieters who are careful to focus on healthy, unsaturated fats like those in avocados may not have issues, but again Fung notes that you end up with a fairly monotonous diet that way, and thus a lot of people end up eating more saturated fats. “To me as a nutritionist, that’s pretty scary.”
Of course, ketosis itself comes with its own risks. Circulating ketone bodies make your blood too acidic, and your body will draw calcium from your bones as a buffer. This also happens in ketoacidosis, which is when you have so many ketone bodies that it becomes dangerous and will draw far more calcium out of your bones. Giancoli notes that dieters usually aren't in such an extreme starvation mode that they develop ketoacidosis. There are few to no studies on healthy adults undertaking a non-therapeutic ketogenic diet, but studies of epileptic children on the diet show increased bone demineralization and high calcium levels in the blood.
Moral? Don't do severe diets without consulting a physician first and be wary. I'm going by what works for my body. The only diet that did was the Paeolo -- which is no grains, reduced sugars, no dairy (especially low amount of cheese or none at all), no processed foods, high in vegetables and proteins. I'm veering from it in three ways: 1) I have oatmeal, 2) I'm not eating as much nuts -- they don't agree with me. 3) I'm not eating as much red-meat, doesn't agree with me either.
3. The Unions are to Blame -- song about Labor Day
I have the day off even though I work for a 365, 24/7 work place -- for a couple of reasons, I'm non-existential personnel. And we have 70 unions and I'm in one of them. The unions date back to the 1800s. Well some of them do. So, if you work on labor day, you get the next day off. Same with the other holidays. If you don't get a day off -- that counts as overtime. Everyone is guaranteed at least 8 paid holidays their first year -- you don't get Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving and another two -- not sure which as paid, until your second year. For a while we got President's Day and Lincoln's Birthday, but not the day after Thanksgiving. Our union got annoyed and with the next contract, negotiated the day after Thanksgiving.
If you are in a union -- you are under contract and NOT an at-will employee. If you are not in a union, or represented by one, you most likely are not under contract and at-will. Some people have contracts and aren't in unions. Actors? Are always under contract via their union. Teachers are always under contract via their union, with few exceptions. Nurses are under contract via their unions.
Contracts protect you in various ways -
* The employer can not fire you without cause. Nor can they lay you off without removing the position and showing cause. And if they do, they have to provide you with the opportunity to get another position within the organization. So job security.
* The employer must provide health care benefits, paid vacation, paid holidays (the agreed upon amount) and paid personal days.
* If you work beyond your agreed upon hours, you are guaranteed overtime.
* Sick time should be provided.
And there are other perks. In return for these perks, people pay union dues that are taken out of their ways bi-weekly (every two weeks for people who have no clue what that means).
I'm not fond of unions. They have their issues. For one thing not being able to fire people can be problematic. But. After being laid-off from about five different companies...and having to deal with evil employers -- I find being in a union a bit of a relief.
4. How to Take the Perfect Nap
(Mainly because I sort of would like to take one at the moment, instead of making dinner and lunch.)
Not all naps are created equal, though. “As a rule of thumb, you can count on naps earlier in the day to be richer in REM, while late-afternoon naps tend to be higher in SWS,” Mednick writes. If you’re interested in dreams or are working on a creative project, you might prefer a REM-soaked late-morning nap for the creativity boost it can bring; if you’re physically exhausted all the time, opt for a long afternoon nap rich in rejuvenating slow-wave sleep.
If you wake up groggy, you may be sleeping too long
That disoriented feeling I used to suffer from is known as sleep inertia, and it happens when you wake up during slow-wave sleep, the phase that comes after the energy-boosting Stage 2 sleep. If this happens to you, try waking up a few minutes earlier and see if you feel more refreshed.
The perfect nap lasts around 20 minutes (unless it doesn’t)
Though Mednick calls the 90-minute nap “a clear blue-ribbon winner,” the National Sleep Foundation recommends a snooze lasting 20 to 30 minutes. That’s long enough to grab a dose of that energizing Stage 2 sleep, without the risk of being plunged into the slow-wave sleep that can make you groggy. There seems to be a general consensus that a nap of precisely 26 minutes is best: That’s based on a famous 1994 NASA study that found that long-haul pilots who napped for 25.8 minutes were 50% more alert than their nonnapping counterparts and performed 34% better on certain tasks. I usually set my alarm for around 30 minutes, to give myself a few extra minutes to drift off.
Don’t nap too late in the day
Improperly timed naps can interfere with your nighttime sleep, experts say. Don’t sleep too long or too late in the day, especially if you have trouble falling asleep at night. [Apparently not a good idea to take one now, good to know.]
Try a caffeine nap
In my pre-nap days, I would fight off the afternoon slump with a Starbucks instead of a nap. But you can have it both ways. Since caffeine takes about 20 minutes to kick in — almost exactly the recommended nap length — down your latte just before lying down. The caffeine will act as a natural alarm, waking you up refreshed and ready to focus on the next activity. A 2003 Japanese study found that caffeine naps were more effective at combating daytime sleepiness than noncaffeine naps.
Clear your mind
For many of us, the main barrier to falling asleep at nap time is an overactive mind. Especially if you’re not in the habit, “Nap Bishop” Tricia Hersey recommends journaling before you lie down, to process whatever is nagging you. Or try a guided meditation like yoga nidra, also known as yogic sleep, to relieve stress and give your brain a break.
Carry a nap kit
During my pre-nap days, I could find a million excuses for not taking a siesta: The room was too bright or the traffic outside was too loud. Then some co-workers gave me an airplane nap kit, complete with sleep mask, neck pillow, and earplugs, enabling me to create the right conditions for sleep almost anywhere. Now I don’t go anywhere without it.
Practice makes perfect
You can train yourself to become better at napping. Regular nappers like Hersey report that it gets easier and more fun the more you do it — like riding a bike, but horizontal. Once your brain and body get in the habit, you’ll learn to drift off quickly and even wake up at the perfect time without an alarm. “Take your time and don’t guilt or pressure yourself” if you can’t fall asleep right away, Hersey says. “Just slowing down alone is a big pushback against grind culture and burnout culture.” Even if you can’t fall asleep, just lying down can have a positive effect: Science has found “nonsleep dozing” to be effective at reducing sleepiness among drowsy drivers.
Invest in stuff you love
For Hersey and for me, working the nap beat unleashed an obsession for all things sleep-related. I’ve spent hours researching linen duvets, memory-foam pillows, and silk pajamas that I hope one day to be able to afford, and Hersey rejoiced when she found the perfect fleece blankets for her Nap Ministry. Whatever gets you excited about crawling into bed will make nap time that much more appealing. “But even if you don’t have that stuff, wherever you are, you can embody rest,” Hersey says. “If you’re sitting on a couch, on a park bench, on an airplane, it’s about your mentality around it and getting into a routine. Wherever your body is, it’s the site of liberation.”
no subject
Date: 2019-09-04 08:21 am (UTC)