Well hello world.
This week I have mainly been thinking about coffee. At my house we’re as anti instant grains as you can get. Having travelled around South America and sampled some of the most exquisite beans the world has to offer, I find it ludicrous that Nescafe and other such brands can even think about marketing their freeze-dried, processed dirt grains as coffee. I will let nothing other than fair trade, dark roasted Guatemalan beans, ground with green cardamom pass my lips (unless I’m out and then I’m stuck with whatever an independent coffee shop may have to offer).
The point to this rant was the fact that caffeine sits in your system for several hours, even though the effects on the brain only one. Therefore you could drink three cups in a day, only achieve three hours of productivity and have to battle to get to sleep much later. Since being advised against drinking coffee after 4pm, I’ve struggled against my slight addiction and taken to consuming pints of peppermint or green tea instead. As it took me a while to heed this advice, I have spent rather a large number of hours perusing the internet waiting for sleep to arrive. This is how I discover these wonderful things with which to regale you with every week.
So, can I just say a big Hurrah for the BBC! They have everything on their website, including a whole series of articles on the science of sleep. Not only is there information, but also the opportunity to generate your own personal sleep profile. In addition to sensible stuff, there are some light-humoured games like the face memory test, designed to ask whether you're too tired to recognise faces!
I took the personal sleep profile test and scored 60% suggesting that I'm not really optimising the way I sleep. It's a bit of a given really seeing as my current employment situation requires me to be in the West End of London at my desk by 8am. Factoring in shower/make up/coffee/travel time I regularly have to force myself out of bed at 5:40am, which would be fine had I managed to allow myself a full 8 hours of sleep. Sadly this is never the case and I’m always groggy, cranky and completely unaware of my surroundings in the morning.
If you can’t get enough sleep, could it make a difference if you took steps to ensure your body was in its deepest form of sleep throughout that short period? Scientists believe the age-old saying ‘quality over quantity’ can also be applied to sleep. Meaning, if you took steps to ensure your sleep time really was restful, it would maximise the effect and therefore allow you to awake feeling refreshed and alert.
Right, so we’ve ascertained that good sleep is powerful, what can we do to achieve the most out of our stolen 5 or 6 hours?
Relax prior to bed time?
Drink a milky drink?
Reduce light?
Anything other than the usual out there?
How about a spot of hypnotherapy? Um, yes, you read me right. Hypnotise yourself into a deeper sleep.
You must have guessed by now that I like the DIY fixes, so I opened up my Android mark and was amazed at the plethora of smart phone applications claiming to guide you through relaxation tracks and to gently lull you to sleep. Picking at random I ended up with “Sleep Soundly Hypnosis” (free of charge, of course).
I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by the calm and gentle manner in which the female (American) voice asked me to breathe deeply and repeatedly insinuated that I was comfortable. She then began to count down from 10 backwards to, I presume 1, but I don’t remember hearing anything after 5. There was a ‘wow’ moment around number 8 where the voice suggested my scalp may be tingling and I discovered that indeed it was. I got a little bit excited and then realised I shouldn’t really do and had to calm my breathing down again.
The million dollar question is how did I feel in the morning? I’d be lying if I said fit as a fiddle but there was an element of smugness embedded into my psyche that allowed me to waltz onto the train platform with a gentle spring in my step. Not quite enough pizzazz to relish being awake, but not quite as much hate for my fellow commuters as per usual.
Thus, I give this app a thumbs up. There’s nothing not to like about it (unless you despise an American accent) and even if there’s a psychological placebo effect at work it certainly alleviated the stress of knowing that I wasn’t going to get enough sleep. Anything for an easy life...isn’t that the modern moto?
Let me know what you think!
Find the BBC Sleep page here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/
However, it has been a tumultuous month at 'Casa Mir' and amidst much turmoil and a biking accident, my attention was diverted slightly onto another smart phone phenomenon. Yes, I'm fine, there's nothing broken, thank you for asking, just some severe bruising of bones and of course my fragile cyclist ego. But what I am grateful for is the series of events that led to my discovery of certain apps readily available on the android (and itunes) market.
World, I present to you: Binaural Beats (Tones). As with all legitimate scientific discoveries, you can read all about it on the dedicated Wikipedia article. Please note, the previous sentence was heavily laced with sarcasm. As much as I am an advocate for Internet discovery, some sources on Wikipedia cannot be taken as the gospel/torah/quran (delete where appropriate and apologies to those of non-monotheistic faith who I have probably just succeeded in completely alienating).
Anyway, as I should have mentioned, this blog is purely my own thoughts and views and I do not endorse any products any further than being a simple technophile who enjoys the merging of modernity with ancient holistic practice. Products other than the Breathing Relief Dilator I hasten to add.
Back to binaural tones. Read the wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats
In brief, it is my understanding that binaural tones or beats are a mixture of sounds and beats played directly into the listeners' ears by use of headphone. Both ears receive different sounds and mixed together they create a beat that supposedly affects the brain. As you will ascertain from the article it is possible to abuse this technology by creating beats which simulate Class A drugs and I was of course wary of anything able to manipulate your mind in such a way.
My choice download was Brainwave Tuner Lite, available on the android market for free, with a full version costing you £2.44. In the lite application you have 3 categories of beats:
1. Sleep and Healing
2. Meditation and Relaxation
3. Focus and Learning
Sleep and healing has the subcategories/tracks listed as Headache Therapy, Sleep Induction, Edge of Consciousness and the intriguingly titled Earth Peace Night. I'll admit I was a little disappointed that despite the label 'healing' the only track available was for headaches. I was hoping more for a proverbial bath in which to soak my brain cells in the attempt to relieve my smarting limbs. No such luck. I can attest though that despite not being catered for, I was surprised at the effectiveness of the track and very much enjoyed the mellow warmth I was left with after 15 minutes of listening.
Not quite ready to fling my cynicism out the window, I moved on to the meditation tracks. There are 4 available ranging from relaxation, meditation and self-hypnosis. Honestly, I'm terrible at meditating. My brain races at 100 miles an hour on a good day, so trying to focus on nothing the day after being hit by a car when you're replaying the scene over and over again, assuring yourself that it wasn't your fault probably didn't provide the perfect control scenario. I nestled into my duvet and gave it a go. I awoke 3 and a half hours later with the nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. I'm not entirely sure what this means. Does deep meditation lead to sleep? In any case, I shan't complain as when I awoke I felt refreshed and calm, finding it much easier to make peace with my situation.
So this left only the sleep induction track and of course it worked. I must add that I usually have no trouble getting to sleep; it’s the quality of sleep I have issues with. I often suffer from fretful nights involving fisticuffs with my pillows and resulting in waking up halfway down my bed, covers in disarray. The goal was to listen to the track and arise the next morning in the same position I fell asleep in, preferably feeling as if I had finally accomplished the art of a good night’s sleep. I remember waking up and being acutely aware of the fact that the weird shwooshing noises in my ear, very akin to the sound of the waves lapping at a beach had finished and then…it was morning!
To my amazement both the meditation and sleep induction beats allowed me to rest easy. I feel as though the stress was taken away from the concept of sleeping and instead of the perpetual cycle of fear regarding getting enough sleep, I went to work the next morning feeling a little smug. Maybe I had won the battle?
We all know it is never that simple and incorporating a healthy sleeping routine into your daily life is an endless war. I’m not about to put all my faith into one concept and resign myself to a lifetime of bombarding my brain with subliminal messages in order to feel some peace. That said, I’m certainly glad I found this app and I look forward to further adventures I may have on ‘the edge of consciousness’ or on those migraine days.
Interested in learning more about Binaural Tones? Google is your friend! There’s plenty of scientific data available as well as the usual subjective accounts written by other sleep deprived frenzied bloggers awaiting your perusal.
Sweet dreams people, until next week!
If you’re just joining the Breathing Relief movement, my question to you is this: where have you been?!
Perhaps you’ve been involved in a perpetual battle with a snoring partner, unable to steal enough of the duvet to cover your ears. Or maybe it’s a case of keeping yourself awake and having to constantly search for the perfect cup of coffee to get you going in the morning. Whatever your reasons, we’re just glad you’re with us now.
Breathing Relief ™ doesn’t claim to be a lifesaver, but rest assured, this product may just well save your sleeplessness, marriage and/or face at work.
Welcome to the revolution!
As a weekly blogger, I’ll be exploring ideas, technologies, media articles and various concepts all linked to sleep, dreaming and general wellbeing. Many of us underestimate all the factors that affect us getting a decent night’s sleep and the effect sleep deprivation can have on our bodies. As society makes it increasingly more acceptable for us to work and party harder we neglect the intrinsic voice inside, close our ears to what the health experts are screaming and continue with our hectic lifestyle.
I’m not judging, in fact I’m one of the guilty ones. I convince myself that there are just not enough hours in the day. I write better late at night is my favourite excuse, shortly followed by I can just nap on the train into work tomorrow. I tell myself these things so I can go out in the evening or stay up late baking or simply catch up on lame TV soaps. However things have to change, we have to start looking after ourselves and there comes a point where we begin to open our eyes and ears to all the products/devices/research that exists simply to help us.
Breathing Relief nasal dilator is one of those; it takes the stress out of sleeping. This blog could be another. Stay posted and I’ll help you explore the wonderful, fascinating and sometimes downright quirky tidbits of information floating around that could maybe, just possible, change your life.
Next time….Sleep Cycle apps for your phone. What are they supposed to do, how do they do it and is it really ok to have a mobile phone next to your head in bed?
Guleraana
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