Are you getting enough?

Sleep that is.   I woke this morning feeling a little better and got to thinking about the importance of sleep on a happy brain.  Turns out it's kinda fundamental.  Scientists are now recommending 7-8hrs a night for an adult is optimal.  How much do you get?  I know I live on about 6hrs.  I'm going to try getting some more zzzzz's.


40 FACTS ABOUT SLEEP YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T KNOW... (OR WERE TOO TIRED TO THINK ABOUT)

1. The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon.  The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.
2. It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision.  People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.
3. Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived.  The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.
4. A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year.
5. One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.
6. The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.
7. REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.
8. Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases.  It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.
9. REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.
10. Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film
11. No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.
12. Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.
13. Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering.  Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.
14. Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.
15. REM sleep may help developing brains mature.  Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs.  Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.
16. Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.
17. British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs.  Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up.  The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.
18. Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.
19. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.
20. The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.
21. Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake.  Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.
22. The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin.  Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.
23. Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.
24. In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.
25. Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake.  The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.
26. To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked.  That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep.  The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees.  But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.
27. A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.
28. After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.
29. Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.
30. Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.
31. Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
32. Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep
33. Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours).  For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal
34. Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.
35. Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time.  Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.
36. Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.
37. Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.
38. As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.
39. Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.
40. The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

The Three Keys to Happiness

Pleasure, Challenge & Meaning

Each on their own is insufficient to create enduring happiness but together, or even better, combined, they do have capacity to aid in our happiness.

Pleasure - is about creating immediate, positive sensations.  Sensory things like a nice bath, a massage, a glass of wine do this.  Emotional triggers can also produce pleasure - like laughing at a joke.  These pleasures are often short lived but highly enjoyable at the time.

Challenge - these are the things that stretch us, that expand our capability.  Interestingly enough, the things that challenge us may often not give us sensory pleasure at the time but will produce a sense of accomplishment after the event.  The sorts of things that challenge us may include:

• doing something we are skilled at or that uses our strengths
• learning new skills
• solving something difficult or challenging
• persisting when the outcome is in doubt

Meaning - this is generally the notion that our actions (be they work or play) contribute to something that we consider worthwhile.  Meaning is derived from a sense of greater purpose.  For example, a cleaner at NASA was asked what he did,

"Helping to put man on Mars" was his reply.

Now.  While each of these things are good in their own right the magic really happens when these things are combined.  The diagram shows the overlapping areas, if you can combine two or even three things the theory suggests you're going to get great satisfaction from it.

So.  How does knowing that help me?  Unfortunately, it doesn't much right now.  I'm in a bit of a funk as I lost another chunk of work the other day that I could scarcely afford to lose.  I s'pose it helps to make sense why I get pleasure from doing things that when doing them, I'm wondering why in the heck I'm actually doing it (challenge).  It also raises the question "what the hell do I take meaning from?" and as for pleasure, I'm finding it hard to feel like I deserve to do things that are 'pleasurable' so that's off the radar for now.  :-(

I guess what I've got to do is slap myself, sit down and think about what my life is meant to be about.  I think the meaning aspect is the bit that's really missing for me.  I used to think my work was meaningful but the seed of doubt has been well and truly sown when clients keep cancelling.  Although its not really their fault, GFC's floods and cyclones ARE a little unpredictable, but still if my services are so quickly dropped, then it's hard to convince myself they see it as valuable. 

On a positive note.  I literally dragged myself to Crossfit tonight, still feeling a little sick (flu) and managed to punch out a really good session.  Funny that, the times you really don't want to go or think you can't often turn out to be the best workouts.  Is that a fact or is it more about low expectations?  You tell me.

Till next time.

Be Happy.

Do not open, please call the police.

I heard a bang.  We both noticed it.

I thought it was a fellow moving furniture that I had seen earlier and thought nothing of it.  We did nothing.

Turns out my next door neighbour had locked himself in his garage and taken his own life.  He left a sign on the garage door saying

Caution, do not open.  

Please call the police.  

George (not his real name) was always considerate of others and regularly worried to me about the noise he made tinkering on his carvings in his garage.  I never heard a thing, not a peep.   He never complained when we had parties and stayed up late, or when my dog barked at stuff.  He never just took his own bin out, he did everyones in the unit block.  He bought me a rock he'd found on a river walk.  Thought I might like rocks.  Turns out I did.

We had a beer together one Christmas time too.  That's when I found out he liked to carve ancient coins out of wood.

George was dying of cancer.   When he told me several months ago and I said how shit that was he replied with "What's the worst that can happen?"  I nearly fell over, knowing that what WAS going to happen was that he would die.  And probably suffer along the way too.  According to his wife he was always making jokes about his situation.

I'm not sure what the turning point was for George but he obviously felt that what was left of his life was not worth living.  I'm sure he didn't take that decision lightly.  We'd noticed a rapid deterioration in his health and mobility over the past few weeks and had been expecting the inevitable.  But not this way.

It's made me think about my own situation.  Sometimes I wish 'it would all end' thinking that it would be easier if I didn't have to worry about all the shit that consumes one's (my) existence on the planet.  It's not something I'd ever actually contemplate, despite sometimes feeling this way.   Now being faced with the reality of it (suicide and our mortality) I feel like a selfish, spoiled child for thinking this.

I don't judge George for his choice of actions.  I suspect he calculated the burden this would place on his wife and weighed it against the burden of her watching and nursing his slow and painful decline and chose for this option (I'm sure she would've chosen different).  It would be nice if he had the opportunity to euthanise himself in a planned and controlled manner.  Surrounded by his loved ones in a place he felt comfortable, where the final choice could be exercised in a manner more human than a gun, and where his partner had immediate access to the support she now so dearly needs.

I'm welling up writing this, not even sure why I am writing it suffice to say that in his passing George has given me the strength to move forward with conviction, to savour what I have, and to live life fully.  You never know which day will be your last.

Tell someone special what they mean to you today.  I never got to say goodbye to George....

:-(