Monday

A bunch of interesting things from over the weekend. And maybe (!) some help for my sleep.

First, to the sleep. On Friday, Kevin Cann posted an article to Robb Wolf's site, discussing brainwave entrainment and an app that might help with it. For four bucks, I figured it was worth a try, spent the money and downloaded it, and tried it every night since then. It has a 10-minute program that is called "deep sleep", and that's what I've been using. Results so far:

• Friday (granted, I took a Benadryl) - slept solidly from about 11 pm until about 5 am, with one brief interruption for a leg cramp
• Saturday - slept from about 9 pm until 2:41, ran it again and fell back to sleep until 5:30. This was with magnesium, honey, and melatonin
• Sunday - slept from about 9 pm until 11:14 when the dogs needed to go out, ran it again, and slept until 4:30, but went right back to sleep then until the alarm went off at 5:30. This was with honey and melatonin.

I have also tried the "espresso shot" program on waking, to try to get alert a bit quicker. I think it's helping, but it's hard to tell. I used that, and some of the concentration and focus ones, to wake up for driving after work on Friday, and I certainly wasn't sleepy.

So far, so good. Maybe placebo effect, maybe it's really doing something. I'm not dreaming, that I can tell, and I'm not moving much - both Friday and Saturday night, what woke me up had to do with limbs falling asleep or in pain from being stuck too long in a single position (and having leg cramps in the same leg as a foot that's fallen asleep is somewhat amusing, since you can't tell whether or not you're stomping on it - and I was hard asleep when it happened, so it was even more difficult for me to keep from scattering my possessions off the bedside table I was wildly grabbing while trying not to fall).

Definitely worth the four bucks.

The second useful thing that cropped up over the weekend, I can't quite recall the source, but this seems to be the same info. Depression might be a symptom of a disease of some sort, or an allergy. Maybe that wouldn't be a lightbulb-lighting "aha" moment for others, but it was for me. And it's saying that I feel sluggish and what-not these days because I feel ill. True, that. I've taken a lot more pain-relief stuff in the past month or so than I have in years - I ache all over, all of the time. Which means I'm inflamed for some reason, and that has led me to not want to do much of anything. Duh.

So, this morning, I'm at 157.0, which I don't like much. Didn't eat that bad over the weekend, but not that great, either. Here's yesterday:

• tea with cream
• no supplements (I should probably make magnesium and fish-oil a no-skip option, but took nothing yesterday)
• string cheese
• ham and cheese slices
• walnuts
• coconut flour pumpkin bread with walnuts and craisins (total of 2 1" slices)
• butter
• hamburger stew/soup - ground beef, tomatoes, mixed veg from a can (carrots, beans, peas, potatoes, celery), chicken stock
• dried strawberries

I think that was it. I'm feeling some side-effects from the fiber in that bread, although after putting it into LoseIt, seems that I only had 4 g of fiber in the 2 slices. And lots of carbs - 40 g total in the 2 slices. Bother.

So, moving forward - probably will avoid inflammatory foods as much as possible, and I think when we get the new bottle of cucurmin, we'll both be taking it. See if that helps with my aches and pains - and my general disinclination to do much of anything right now. And I will probably be trying out the stress-relief sessions on my brainwave entrainment app as well, to see if I can mitigate any bodily side-effects of stress.

I still have a doctor's appointment on Friday to rule out any non-menopause causes of feeling mildly crappy, but if this new information and these new tools continue to be useful, things are looking up a bit. Yeah!