A vacation from vacations

I don't know if you have ever come back from a frenzied vacation so tired out that it took you several days to recuperate. I heard about a couple that took a whirlwind tour of Europe with one of those budge tours you can sign up for at a travel agency. They visited a different country of Europe each day. When they got back, the couple co-wrote a book about their vacation entitled, "If this is Thursday, it must be Italy," or something like that. I can't believe they really enjoyed their vacation--at least not as much as they could have.

Some people have so much planned out for their vacation that if they see something that looks like it might be interesting to explore it is "too bad -- we are on a tight schedule." Work-a-holics tend to plan their vacation like it is an invasion or something: every moment filled with activity, and each thing planned out to the minute. It seems to me that this is not really a vacation at all, but just another form of work. And when things slow you down (as they tend to do) these people get super upset because they are "behind schedule."

Once when I was out backpacking in the Marble Mountains of Northern California and hiking a leisurely 6-8 miles a day on the John Muir Trail, I met up with this one fellow who was hiking at least 25-30 miles a day, and some days even more, because he had to get to the end of the trail in about a week. Somehow a forced march doesn't seem like much of a vacation to me. His schedule was like this: 6am eat a big breakfast. By 6:30 start hiking. Hike all day until 8:00 pm snacking trail food along the way. By 8:00 he was setting up camp and since he was so tired, he was basically eating supper and then crashing. Sure, he was hiking in the mountains, but -- was he really enjoying it? I sure did not envy him.

Vacations in my opinion should relax the person. I once spent 3 days camped out by one lake. That is all we did. We went to the lake, and then we camped out. In fact, I had a motor home, so my setting up camp was pretty simple--drive the motor home to the edge of the lake and park it. I really enjoyed this vacation. We swam. We built fires in the evening. We sat around and sunned ourselves. We ate a lot of good food. And we watched the other campers. I went home feeling refreshed.

So if you ask me, if you need a vacation from your vacation--you are trying to do too much. Slow down and enjoy yourself.

Happy vacations,
David A. Youngs

Sleep Deprivation is dangerous to mental health

Nearly everybody has experienced the results of a sleepless night or two. Perhaps worries about bills, mortgages, and other money problems weigh heavily on the mind. For other people it is the worry about the future. Their job may be ending unexpectedly, or maybe they live in a neighborhood with terrible neighbors.

In college, many students party all night on weekends. Or they might stay up all night the night before final tests. Stress keeps people awake.

And then there are people like me who may have sleep disorders like sleep apnea and not even know it. All these causes can lead to sleep deprivation.

It is really stupid for college students to stay up the entire night before the exam, because the ability of the brain to actually take the exam can be diminished. Research has shown that following sleep loss, some parts of the brain may be more adversely affected than others. The surprising thing is that sometimes, various parts of the brain might try to compensate for the sleep loss.

There was a study done through the UCSD School of Medicine combines with the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in San Diego found that when they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor the brains of people who were deliberately sleep deprived.
These sleep deprived patients were asked to perform simple learning tasks with words.

The big surprise was the more tired the persons were, the more active became the prefontal cortex. Another surprising result of this sleep deprivation was that the temporal lobe which normally was very active during verbal learning in rested subjects, did not become active in sleepy ones.

The researchers discovered all kinds of interesting things. The conclusion is this: The sleepy brain doesn't function as well as the rested brain. There is a huge degradation of performance. I know I can't remember things when I am super tired. And my inhibitions just die, so my creative imagination has no limits. You might think this is good, but the ideas I come up with are just not practical--in fact, many of them are worse than useless. So the bottom line is: get enough sleep.

David

Starting to exercise again to lose weight

Well, I noticed that the health club I signed up with keeps taking money out of my bank account every month whether I go and exercise or not. This sort of inspires me to go and exercise more so I can get my money's worth.

I had not been to the health club for about two weeks due to the fact that I am a cutting edge world class procrastinator. But today, I put it in the schedule and actually went. Ooooh. It was like starting over from scratch. I could only exercise on the stationery bike for half an hour. My butt got so sore, but I got my heart rate up to 116 or so. I was so tired. I sure hope I am actually losing weight.

Maybe I am dehydrated. I know I should drink more water, but that too is one thing I guess I tend to forget as I dash around doing all the things I think need doing. I do have bottled water in the car.

Tomorrow, maybe I can ride the stationery bicycle for an hour. That would be good.

Oh, and when I got done exercising today, I was so hungry I went and had a small milkshake. That is a great way to lose weight isn't it?

Happy exercising,
David A. Youngs
polybids@yahoo.com
http://polybids.blogspot.com