I’m currently experimenting with the increasing my apigenin intake from both food sources (parsley, chamomile) and supplements. I’m not sure what the ideal dosage is (probably somewhere between 300mg and a gram), but the potential benefits are intriguing.
Tag: insomnia
Recently a family member asked me for some tips for improving short-term memory. I ended up doing a deeper-than-usual dive into the topic. Some of my findings confirmed what I already knew or suspected, but others caught me by surprise. You know those giant canisters of powder with a picture of a bulging venous bicep on the label? Well, more on that later …
I’ve been sleeping better–much better–and it feels like a good time to do a complete roundup of all the methods that appear to have helped me, and also mention a few sacred cows of sleep tips that didn’t seem to help at all. For those of you new to this blog, my sleep went to hell in mid-January after the deaths of two family members within a single week. It’s been a slow climb back to a more-or-less normal sleep pattern ever since. Here’s what worked:
I saw two dead bodies in the same week, and I stopped sleeping.
The first body was my father-in-law, at his viewing. He looked natural, as if peacefully asleep. But his total stillness betrayed this illusion.
My uncle died a week later, at an assisted living facility in Concord. He’d been estranged from our family for more than twenty years, but he’d reached out recently, and we were all getting to know each other again. He’d been ill for a long time, with COPD, but that week he had a stroke, and died a few days later. The morning he died, my mom and I drove to Concord, and waited in his room for the mortician. My uncle was emaciated, and pale, and obviously dead, but still warm. I helped move his body from his bed to the gurney. He weighed almost nothing.
The real sleep experts.
Hello readers! Sorry for the lengthy absence — I went on vacation for awhile, and have been nose-to-the-grindstone on various projects since I returned.
The vacation was a blast — five families went in on a mansion rental in Truckee and we all played around in the snow. Five families under one roof leads to some interesting conversations — both frivolous and serious. One topic that came up a few times was sleep. Not everyone was getting some. Why is it that so many adults sleep poorly? In our case maybe it was the copious amounts of booze being consumed, but even teetotalers sometimes sleep poorly.
Chronic sleep deprivation is one of the worst states of consciousness. Insomniacs are wide awake at night, groggy and irritable during the day, and miserable most of the time.
Insomnia can be triggered by any of the following: