Getting a good night’s sleep starts with getting exercise and eating right

As I’ve gotten older, getting a good solid 6-7 hours of sleep has gotten to be more of a challenge, but I refuse to start relying on medication to “fix” it, since medication rarely offers a true fix for anything. Not doin’ it.

However, over the last few years, I have learned a few things about what works for me to get good sleep. The keys for me are exercise, and watching what I eat and drink after 8:00 or so.

Exercise helps a lot, especially endurance exercise like biking, swimming, walking or running. And exercising outside is even better, presumably because of the combination of fresh air and sunshine (which is good for you in countless ways, including psychologically). And when you get outside, you are actually moving your body against gravity and through space, just the way God and nature intended, rather than on some silly machine where even though you push pedals or run with your legs, you get nowhere. Personally, I do not like machines – can you tell?

Walking, done properly, is amazingly efficient and helps you in many ways, including better sleep but also helping your moods and attitude as well. As a former runner (20+ years ago), I never believed walking did much of anything for you, but last winter I tried an experiment to help with the seasonal mild depression I seem to get every winter when the days get so damn short: I committed to going for a fast 30-45 minute walk at least 3 times a week, during the daylight hours to get fresh air and sunlight too.

The impact was instantaneous and noticeable: not only did I feel energized after the walk and for the rest of the day, but I slept great at night, and I found the time during the walk to be very valuable and even productive in an emotional and psychological sense, to work through things that were going on in my life at the time (work, family, long-term goals, etc.). You don’t feel drained when you’re done; quite the opposite, you feel re-vitalized and have more energy rather than less. Plus it is a mild boost to the metabolism, which helps with weight loss. And you get “quiet time” with no distractions – who couldn’t use more of that?

So, walking outside, at a fast clip, is highly recommended not just for good sleep, but for better overall Life Management.

I also like biking in the warmer months, and it seems to work just about as well. But walking is easier to fit into your life, and takes less time. My running days are probably over – seems too much like work any more, in addition to other limiting factors like age and declining flexibility. And I like swimming, but I get tired of the chlorine in my hair and on my skin and I’ve grown a little bit suspicious of the ‘water quality’ at the Y, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

As for food and drink, well, too much of either is not good at any time, and especially at night. You have to figure out what works for you. Here’s what works for me: avoid eating very much within two hours of bedtime, and avoid meats and other protein-rich foods because protein contains amino acids that tend to wake your brain up instead of calming it down for sleep. A small snack is OK (see below). Don’t drink too much alcohol, and I’ve even found that certain types of drinks really disrupt my sleep – I’m looking at you, Martinis and Manhattans. Your mileage may vary, of course, but what I seem to tolerate best: wine (only reds for me), brandy and cognac, and Scotch. These rarely disrupt my sleep. One or two drinks is my limit, both to preserve sleep quality and to limit alcohol consumption overall.

Snacks that work for me include a few crackers with very sharp cheese, a banana with a few nuts, some pretzels or other salty snack, oatmeal, or the occasional cookie or two. With oatmeal, use the old-fashioned kind and add your own flavoring: I like a little brown sugar (1/2 tsp.) and some chopped up dried fruit like dates, figs, or raisins, plus a spoonful of plain yogurt and (if you have them) some chopped pecans. It’s delicious and it’s good for ya, so learn to like it (or something similar).

Here’s another list of suggested foods from a newsletter I subscribe to, from Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy at Newport Natural Health:

Foods and Beverages to Help You Sleep • Bananas • Lentils • Honey • Beans • Chicken • Sunflower and sesame seeds • Tart cherries, fresh or dried • Nuts, like walnuts, hazelnuts, and peanuts • Salmon • Dairy products • Halibut • Whole-grain bread • Shrimp • Oatmeal • Cod • Warm milk with honey • Eggs • Herbal teas, like chamomile and valerian • Chickpeas • Whole grains, like brown rice

People and their ridiculous SUVs, and how they annoy me

You, driving the SUV behind me, with the headlights that shine up into my car’s passenger space. Yeah, I’m talking to you.

I am really, REALLY starting to hate you.

You know why? Because your stupid f*cking SUV has stupid f*cking headlights that nearly blind me, that’s why. I’m just trying to drive around my town, taking my kids somewhere or going to the grocery store or some damn thing, and then suddenly, coming up behind me it’s HELLO! it’s super-duper bright headlights shining RIGHT into my eyes like that scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Do I need this shit? No I do not. I do not need this shit, my friend. I don’t need your headlights drilling into my eyeballs. I don’t need your dumbass $54,000 Cadillac Escalade – that weights 7,000 ridiculous pounds and gets 11 mpg downhill with a tailwind – blasting my mirrors with halogen hell.

You think you’re impressing me with that thing? Wrong. I think you’re a moron who spent $54k for a truck with leather seats and fancy headlights. Way to go. Well done. People like you are lining the pockets of sales managers at car dealerships and executives at car companies, all of whom think YOU are dumb as a box of rocks for – guess what – spending $54K for a truck with leather seats and fancy headlights. But they also love you while they make fun of you, because the profit margins on those vehicles are literally insane, driven by insane demand from idiots exactly like YOU. For $54K, give or take a few thousand, you could buy any number of really, really nice cars, cars that are ten times better than anything on the streets in the 60s or 70s. Personally, I’d go for a BMW 540i, but if Lexus or Acura is more your style, there are plenty of choices there too. Power, convenience, luxury, reliability, fun to drive, you name it, it’s all in there.

But instead, you want a truck with leather seats and fancy headlights. That blind me. EVERY F*CKING DAY.

In over 35 years of driving I have never seen this problem as bad as it is now. I am not kidding. It must be something about living in the Chicago area. Luxury SUVs are everywhere around here, but whenever I drive anywhere else in the country, I see very few of these vehicles. Hmmm. Let me go out on a limb right here, and assert that a certain segment of the Chicago area is both impressed with their wealth and stupid enough to buy a truck with leather seats and fancy headlights. That gets 11 mpg and costs $100 or more to fill up every week. Noted.

Whatevs. Be as stupid as you like.

Just get your stupid f*cking SUV’s stupid f*cking headlights out of my eyes. Also, I hate you, and I hate your dog too.

Thanks.

When two widely divergent groups like college English teachers and American businesses both complain loudly about the quality of students turned out by our educational system . . . .

. . . . you know they’ve got a point.

 

iPhone 5 released – making this five consecutive iPhone versions I don’t really need, and some of you probably don’t either

The newest iPhone is out, the iPhone 5, they’re calling this one. So all of you suckers that still own one of those huge, clunky, thick-as-a-brick versions before the miraculous iPhone 5, hurry up and get your ass over to the Apple Store, and drive up Apple’s stock price again! What the hell are you waiting for?!

Question: Say, how do we know when we have enough cool technology to live our lives properly? Just wondering when — or if – we can say, “thanks, I’m good”.

Yes, technology is cool and it enables us to do neat things like automatically track bike ride distance and time, and organize our lives more effectively, and is definitely useful for many things. But some of us are like mice on a wheel: it’s always the next version of everything that holds unlimited promise to provide the meaning we seek but never find, and never will, as long as we attach meaning to products and things we can acquire in our consumer-mad, technology-driven culture. It’s the whole “glowing rectangles” thing, like The Onion noted a while back, and it’s so funny because it’s so true. In fact, I’m staring at one right now – and so are you!

I heard yesterday on the radio that 1 in 8 people spend $200 a month on smartphone service. That’s $2400 per year so that you can text and get the latest Facebook updates and make a few phone calls. Oh, and check in with FourSquare, which fills a previously-unknown and very mysterious need in some people to inform their 500 or 1000 “friends” on Facebook where they are at all times. Are you sure about that? You might want to revisit that one.

$2400 per year is more than some people’s car payments (and not much less than my own car payment). For a gadget that didn’t exist until five years ago, and is easy to lose, and interrupts our lives and destroys our ability to focus on anything for more than two minutes at a time. My car, on the other hand, is big and heavy and made of steel and rubber and is fun to drive and comfortable and gets me to work and other places I have to go, and gives me an immeasurable feeling of independence and control over my life. So . . . yeah.

But whatever floats your boat, peeps. Yes, I have a smartphone, but I waited until last year to get one, and only because I got an unbelievably sweet deal through Virgin Mobile: $25 a month for unlimited texting and data plus 400 minutes of talk time. Now it has gone up, I think it’s $35. And I moved up to 1200 minutes to use the phone for work, but it is still only $45 per month for that deal, which is way better than the $80-100 per month for an iPhone. Add the cost of buying the new version every 12-24 months, which is another $10-20 a month, at least, and you’re up to $2500-$3000 every two years. Do you really think it’s worth that kind of money, for nicer apps and texting and Facebook on-the-go?

You want good pictures, spend $300 on a nice digital camera with full HD video and a 12:1 optical zoom, and it fits in your pocket or purse – and you don’t have to pay Verizon or AT&T or anybody else a monthly fee to use it! How cool is that?

My Android (LG Optimus Elite) works fine, and it takes decent pictures (not great, but good enough) and has tens of thousands of apps available for it through the Android market (now called “Google Play”). For me, it’s not a lifestyle or a fashion statement, it’s just a phone and an OK camera that is also a frivolous toy so I can do some very light texting and check work email and the like. But I could easily live without one of these, and I still wonder how vital it is to my life, or how vital it should be to anybody’s life. BTW, why do people like texting? Call me crazy, but I’m not a big fan of taking 60 seconds to type on tiny virtual keys what I could say in ten seconds.

But this is what “the kids” do with their money these days. It’s pop culture. So do what you gotta do, twenty-somethings. But some food for thought: devoting that much of your income stream to what is essentially a toy is more than a little silly, especially if you are struggling to find a decent-paying job, or still living with your parents. It speaks to priorities and making sacrifices for your own future, which continues to be the best way to get somewhere in life.