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Carrion Luggage #1105085 added January 4, 2026 at 9:23am
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Re: Tired
I may not be a fan of the outdoors, but I'm a huge fan of sleep. From Outside:
New research links this good habit to slower aging, stronger brain health, and a longer lifespan. Doctors share what makes the biggest difference.
Okay, but, bear with me here: what's the point of living longer if you're spending all that extra time asleep?
The old saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is deeply flawed.
I'm not sure why that sentence elicits what is, for me, a strong anger reaction. Maybe if I were in therapy, I could figure it out, but I'm too depressed to expend the effort required to look for a shrink, so that's not going to happen.
I suspect it's the Puritanical thrust of the saying: that sleep is some sort of optional thing, something that gets in the way of Holy Productivity. The smug "I'm strong and you are weak" implication.
In any case, it pisses me off when I hear it. Or see it.
It’s not just your diet and exercise habits that are linked with your lifespan. You should also be prioritizing getting enough high-quality sleep on a nightly basis.
Of those three things, guess which one I don't fail at. Go ahead. Take a wild guess.
Getting too little sleep is linked with chronic and sometimes life-threatening health concerns, including high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and kidney disease, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
I'd like to hear from a source that's not heavily biased toward hearts, lungs, and blood.
And it’s not just about quantity: Disturbances in your sleep quality, such as waking up a lot during the night, are tied to a number of signs of genetic aging, according to a 2022 study...
Okay, okay, being serious for a moment, once more for the delinquents in the back row: correlation isn't causation. I didn't look at the study, but it seems to me that aging is a cause of sleep disturbances, not the other way around.
All that said, it’s easier said than done to actually find the time to get more sleep.
Not for me! I'm retired. And what's another definition of "retire?" To go to sleep. (In case it's not obvious, I'm done being serious for now.)
1. Put Down the Phone
Or tablet or laptop. And turn off the TV. The light from these screens suppresses your body’s natural production of the hormone melatonin, which would otherwise help you fall asleep, says Dr. Scott Rosenberg...
Great Scott!
Presumably, the paperwhite Kindles are just fine.
In a perfect world, you’d power down electronics at least an hour and preferably two before bed, says Dr. Aatif Mairaj Husain...
Yeah, we don't live in a perfect world, do we?
2. Create a Bedtime Routine
a) brush teeth
b) take pants off
c) turn off light
d) move cats to edge of bed
That's a routine, right?
3. Prep Your Bedroom
Cool, that's covered under (d) above, right?
Your bedroom should be conducive to your best night’s sleep. Sleep experts often recommend your room be cool, dark, and quiet.
Gosh. I never would have thought of those things. Being in the dark and silence helps you sleep? Huh. You learn something new every day.
“The ideal temperature for sleep should be in the mid-sixties,” Dr. Rosenberg says.
Aw, hell to the power of no.
Anecdote: One time, the power went out and my generator chose that moment to get borked, so I was without power for several hours in the dead of winter. My furnace is gas, but the fans and starters run on electricity, so no heat. I put on extra clothes, extra blankets, and tried to sleep, but it was just to frackin' cold. I lay there, shivering in the darkness, trying to will my body to produce enough heat to be trapped by said clothing and blankets. The night stretched on, one of those absolutely frigid January nights with a weakened polar vortex. I lay awake, certain that the inside temperature was creeping inexorably to the outside temperature, because I still remember some thermodynamics from college.
About, oh, 2am or some such (which is usually before my bedtime, but not when I can't use computers or have enough light to read by), the light in my room came on. I crawled out of my freezing covers to check the thermostat, which helpfully also reports the interior and exterior temperatures. Exterior: I don't remember exactly, but it was like 20F, which isn't too out of the ordinary for my area at night in January.
Inside temperature? 62F.
Yeah, don't talk to me about sleeping in the mid-sixties Freedom units. I have my thermostat set to keep the house at 74F, and I still sometimes need extra blankets.
In summary, not everyone has the same temperature requirements (newsflash!)
4. Watch What You Eat and Drink
Oh, I do. I watch it go straight down my gullet.
Avoid big meals within a few hours of bed.
Get out of here with that. Big meals give me better dreams, and better dreams means a more creative Waltz.
Be mindful of water intake.
Coke Zero count?
Cap caffeine in the early afternoon.
Guess not.
Limit alcohol in the evenings.
Oh, I already do that. Well, most of the time. Okay, sometimes. My serious drinking is done before sunset.
(I don't believe in the term "day drinking." There is only "drinking.")
5. Move More During the Day
Ah... I see this publication has succumbed to the propaganda of Big Exercise.
Wait, it's called Outside. That's probably part of their mission statement.
6. Talk to a Doctor
Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHA! Now you're the one being not-serious. I live in the US, dummy. You should have known that when you started quoting temperatures in F. Or is Liberia your target audience? Point is... "Talk to a doctor." And here I thought *I* was the comedian.
Think about it this way: If you’re waking up to an alarm rather than waking up on your own, you’re probably depriving yourself of at least some sleep, and “ultimately, it’s going to catch up to you,” he says.
The irony of Outside magazine giving tips and pointers for staying Inside is not lost on me.
Okay, fine, another moment of semi-seriousness: I missed out on a lot of sleep back when I was working. Not out of that Puritanical work ethic, hell no, but just because I was trying to fit in work, leisure, and sleep, and of those three, sleep is the one that lost out.
Ended up having a heart attack. That was 12 years ago, and I haven't had a heart attack since. Nor have I worked. See? I, too, can ignore the correlation vs. causation thing. |
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