I guess this is Health & Fitness…started this two days ago …
…no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat, no fish… just fruit and vegetables…and these pills. It may be good for you but it doesn’t feel like it
…no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat, no fish… just fruit and vegetables…and these pills. It may be good for you but it doesn’t feel like it
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I’ve always been wary of “cleanses,” mostly because of a bat*%&# crazy ex of mine who would do really, really strange ones periodically for no good reason other than something to do with planetary cycles. So is this like one of the variations on the juice cleanse thing? And out of curiosity, does the package say what’s in the tablets? We’re playing around with a few different supplements at the moment.
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My wife’s friend recommended it and she is not into " planetary cycles"…albeit she does believe in crystal power and the use of green lasers to purify your food…so…eh…its a toss up.
This is what is says on the box.
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…this…this is a thing…? Please tell me you’re joking…
If you need any food tips, let me know - we’ve been mostly vegetarian since probably June, and it’s been going surprisingly easily. Also, does this happen to coincide with intermittent fasting? A friend of mine in Virginia Beach (who also is now super big into crystals) is doing a cleanse with fasting.
Alas, I am not. That said, it may have, maybe a small bit of rational to it. She claims that the laser either destroys or releases (I can’t remember which) the free radicals in the substance. Laser do emit energy and perhaps the green wave length is resonant with free radical molecules?
Other than that…I got nothing.
I’ll through this on the pile. One of my brothers convinced me to drop coffee about 6 weeks ago. Both of us suffer from essential tremor, which mostly means that we shake a little more than the average person. I first noticed it in my mid 50s when soldering circuit boards on small drones. It’s a heredity thing. I remember that my dad had the shakes too, but it didn’t prevent him from flying a Phantom into Laos between mountains at night hunting trucks on the Ho Chi Minh trail. 
But it got worse as he got older and he never seemed to know why or care. My brother and I have been trying to mitigate the symptoms naturally, and as you might imagine, they are exacerbated by caffeine, alcohol, and lack of sleep.
Back to coffee. It’s not that the popular drink is inherently bad, but once I started with a Keurig sized cup of Starbucks in the morning, it lead to a vicious cycle of caffeine abuse. I’d usually have a second before lunch, then a large Diet Coke with lunch, and because I’d be out of insulin from all of the caffeine, another cup late afternoon. Then I’d have a massive energy crash around dinner time. I’d wonder why my ass was so kicked. Because I was so wired from the caffeine, I’d have an adult beverage or two to wind down, which helped go to sleep. But that wouldn’t be sound sleep and so I’d repeat the same cycle the next day. This went on for about 15 years or more. I didn’t really notice it when I was younger. The behavior and effects were fairly insidious.
So, those three things - too much caffeine, too much alcohol, and too little sleep caused me to start shaking noticeably in my late 50s. Not in a Parkinson’s kind of way, but like I couldn’t use a mouse very effectively and my handwriting and pistol shooting went all to hell.
Brother Bill described a similar cycle (we also both had kids late in life) and we decided to give up coffee for a while to see if that would have long ranging effects. It most certainly did.
I still have a cup of tea now most mornings. I think that the Brits really have this figured out. It has about half the caffeine of coffee and goes fine with a minimal doctoring, in my case about half a t/sp of agave. I don’t crave tea like I did coffee. I’ve also dropped diet sodas at lunch and have way more energy at the end of the day. I sleep better and now don’t shake nearly as much. So much so that I wonder if I would have even developed symptoms until later, had I not begun drinking coffee when I was around 19 or 20.
I used to run with an EAL B757 captain in his early 60s, who held the night coach coming back from Salt Lake. He’d fly all night and then run like a gazelle the mornings afterward. I asked him one time how many cups of coffee did he drink to stay awake all night and then run 6 miles when he got home. “Oh, I gave up coffee years ago. It helped early on, but I just needed more the closer we got to Atlanta. My decision making was really poor as the night went on. You don’t really need coffee, you just need to sleep more.”
Anyway, food for thought for you young bucks.
Man I need a cuppa after typing that. 
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This is something that needs to be repeated, more loudly and more often. We’ve both been reading this book, and it’s been HUGE in re-evaluating a lot of our every day habits, and I think has definitely been having a huge impact on overall health:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BVF1Z6Z/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Good interview with the author here too:
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I made some experiments in the past without really having health issues.
During my final year in university I stopped drinking alcohol for over a year and I was amazed by the increase in mental performance. I was far from an alcoholic but leading an ordinary student’s life. The hardest thing was to withstand peer pressure. It’s strange that in our society you have to explain when you are not doing legal drugs… Today I try to be very responsible but I do enjoy an occasional beer or long drink.
Two years ago I banished caffeine from my life as another experiment for a year. I heard a lot good in regards to better mood and less trouble in the morning getting up but I did not really experience much improvement. Today I restrict my self to two cups a day, though.
I can confirm that concentrating on getting enough sleep (good sleep without TV) does make a big difference.
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B…bb…but…how are we going to continue making millions on our Mudspike coffee mug sales???
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Oh Lord…my circadian clock with my job must look like a Rorschach test… Oddly enough, I’ve adapted to snatching two or three hours of sleep here and there. Long term health-wise…I sure do wonder. I’m doing OK so far though. My only problem is that whacky schedule makes me crave bad food at odd hours. I had bruschetta at 9AM today, and will probably have an omelette in Philly or Boston at 11PM tonight… 
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I’ve never had caffeine issues. When I was a young Ensign with V F-32 on KENNEDY, I’d go through something like 12 cups of coffee a day. No issues. Slept like a baby…albeit only something like 4 hours a night. Over the years that reduced itself to something like 4 cups (mugs) a day while I was working - 1 or 2 when I wasn’t. Since retirement that has settled out to only 1 cup a day. I love Coke but don’t have it so much anymore because of all the sugar. Maybe a glass or two of ice tea–probably a couple more when I am sailing.
Alcohol? Well we like to say that my yacht club is a club for drinkers with a sailing problem…but that’s more an occasional thing.
That said, I did have a rather nasty hemorrhagic stroke when I was 48. One of the side effects has been some rather strange sleeping issues. Sometimes have trouble falling asleep; sometimes sleep for more than 12 hours.
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Did just under three years of rotating shiftwork between Prototype and the shipyard, then the crazy schedule of being attached to a seagoing ship - I know it definitely aged me a good bit (see also: supplemental root causes into the mishaps with the McCain and Fitzgerald). Dr. Panda specifically talks about shiftworkers, night workers, emergency responders, and military in his book in terms of folks who suffer the most from schedules being all kinds of out of wack - another reason I decided not to stay in the nuclear industry.
There’s more than one study that’s also begun to show links between interrupted and changing sleep cycles and sleep issues, weight issues, and even some mental health issues later in life. Even now, I can fall asleep insanely quickly, but have a hard time consistently sleeping for more than six hours at a time without putting a LOT of effort into falling back asleep after I wake up.
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Oh I don’t know…I’ve stood various rotating watch schedules for much of my career and have suffered not mental health issues…
[my inner voice who I call Daryl] Yes you have!
[my other inner voice who goes by Sharon] No you have not. Don’t listen to Daryl!
Nope…none at all.
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My wife is sort of the same way. If she gets woken up, even just lightly woken up, she struggles to get back to sleep. Me…I can wake up, go downstairs, go find a cat outside or do something I forgot to do at 3AM, go back upstairs, and be back to sleep in minutes. Probably adapted by 20+ years now of this weird schedule.
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It used to be that if I woke up for any reason relatively early in the night, I’d basically have to pick up a book and read for a while, as I couldn’t fall back asleep and would just get frustrated.
Might sound a bit wishy-washy, but I turned to meditation about a year ago to try and combat work stress and in particular stop my brain churning before bed.
It took a while to learn and I still sometimes struggle to do it, but through it I have acquired an ability to get back to sleep if I get woken up at an odd time. It’s quite neat and has saved me a lot of bad nights, in particular with the baby waking up at odd hours etc.
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Didn’t know this thread existed until today.
This year I finally got financially stable enough to afford a gym. I’ve been lanky and underweight all my life thanks to Ulcerative Colitis, and I’ve been trying to put on muscle for almost ten years now. I’ve mostly lost motivation to continue at some point. The past couple of weeks I’ve been going 3 or more times per week and put together an actual routine, so fingers crossed I’ll get results this time. Main problem is just balancing workouts with fatigue from work, chores, and my desire to fly DCS for hours at a time.
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I have the same problem with going to sleep as some of y’all described above. Wake me up and I will be awake (and grumpy) for at least an hour, most likely more.
(And yep that’s not a nice trait if you have small children)
Generally I am rather bad at sleeping.
That’s why I developed the habit of staying awake pretty long so I am really tired. Not really healthy as I often sleep less than seven hours.
Then I am very tired and drink too much coffee.(although my hands shake even when I dont drink any coffee. Not severe though, I can still do everything with my hands including painting small plastic miniatures)
What did help me:
Don’t play some sorts of PC games before going to bed anymore.
When I play KSP (planning, building, failing, planning, building, failing and so on. Just one more launch) or Total War (just one more turn) or action RPGs like Path of Exile (one more level) then I often get pretty nervous toward the end as I realize that I have to go to bed. Being nervous makes me rush it and produce bad results ingame. So I usually have a bad ending of that session. I go to bed and now I know that I have to sleep, quickly! I am nervous about it, which prevents sleep. I am also angry about flailing so my mind is going through what happened ingame in order to make a plan for the next day. That can also keep me awake.
At some point I noticed that this is bad.
Now I usually turn off the PC an hour or so before I go to bed, and spend the time watching TV with my wife or reading. That works a lot better for me.
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I used to have many of the same sleep issues that you all do and finally it came to a head when I had a blood vessel burst in my eye one day and I didn’t understand why. Went to my eye Dr. and they said it could be brought on by increased blood pressure which lo and behold when it was checked I found out it was higher than it had been in the past.
Fast forward to bringing that information to my doctor and he’s asking me if anything in particular might be causing that increase to occur. (Change in habits and what not.) I was telling him that I was having trouble sleeping at night and specifically staying asleep through the course of an evening. That lead to a sleep study which then determined that I had developed sleep apnea which was causing me to stop breathing during sleep. This in turn caused my body to stay “hyper” as it felt like it was deprived of oxygen and subsequently my BP went up as well. I wasn’t on the severe side of stopping breathing, but it definitely was affecting me.
Now I’m on a CPAP machine at night and while not the most comfortable thing on the planet to wear I do feel like I’m getting much better quality of sleep to where even if I wake up in the middle of the night I generally roll back over and can fall asleep again instead of my mind beginning to race. I also found through this process that I respond well to Melatonin and have begun taking it about an hour before I intend to go to bed as it makes me sleepy enough that I generally will tear myself away from the PC to go to bed unlike before.
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You have to see this!!
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I did see that and thought it was pretty hilarious.