Sunday, April 25, 2010

The irony in life, with regards to polyphasic sleeping..

Ironically, though I kept talking about polyphasic sleeping (and am pretty excited about it), I realized that I'm slowly evolving into a monophasic sleeper!
The horror of horrors!
I don't take naps anymore! (haven't been taking naps for 2 weeks..) I guess it's the lack of breaks in between to take a nap.. and since I'm crashing at 12pm almost every night, I didn't feel the need to take any naps...
but that meant that I have less time to do the things which I desire to do, as well as the need to catch up on sleep in the weekends. Catching up on sleep in the weekends kind of upsetted my sleeping schedule though.
I'm switching back to the Everyman 2 nap schedule!
For a brief look at what I'm talking about, you might want to consider this website:
http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

At last! Some research findings on polyphasic sleep...

Got this from polyphasic.blogspot.com. The author found this from a review of a book:

Christphe Saout writes:
In chapter 12 he (referring to the author) discusses the "Leonardo da Vinci Ultrashort Sleep Strategy" which is actually exactly the 6x 30min napping strategy.
Stampi had the luck to find a subject that was willing to try living on the Uberman schedule. The subject was a graphic artist, so he appearantly didn't have any trouble to sleep when he wanted to.
The first test lasted only 19 days. He tried it with 15 minute naps, but these were appearantly much too short and he had a lot of napping incidents, overslept, etc...
One year later he tried it again. This time with 30 minute naps. But he didn't try to follow the all-or-nothing strategy described on kuro5hin, he gradually reduced the sleep amount over 10 days. Starting with 8 hours of monophasic sleep, he reduced the core sleep to 3 hours over 5 days while adding 80 minute naps over day (80 minute naps). After these 5 days the nap duration was gradually reduced to 30 minutes. This was done to minimize sleep deprivation in the beginning. At the beginning it's easier to get asleep if have 80 minutes to get asleep, while later, when your brain gets the hang of the rhythm, your ability to get asleep for the 30 minutes naps increases. This is also the result of other studies (there a very many described in the book!).
At the beginning everything went the usual way. The subject was very tired, had some oversleeping accidents, etc... but it was motivated enough to continue and also had enough work. No real crashes.
The interesting thing now is that Stampi told the subject to do some test on a regular basis. Usually 30 minutes after waking up or so to minimize the effects of sleep inertia. These test were 2 kinds of performance analysis tests. The first was the so called "Memory and Search Test" (MAST), the second one the "Descending Subtraction Test" (DST). Okay, the MAST focuses on memory while the DST focuses on "thinking".
Both performance levels rapidly degraded after being on the schedule and remained on this level for two weeks.
But somewherey day 21 something strange happened: The MAST performance suddenly raised over the baseline levels! (baseline = the levels before the schedule with normal 8hour night sleep). And it stayed on this high level for the rest of the test. The DST performance however didn't change much. On day 34 the subject was told sleep for several consecutive hours (how much he could) and then immediately return to the Uberman schedule. Appearantly this worked fine. After that the DST performance also jumped over the baseline levels and stayed there.
After 48 days the test was aborted (not because of any problems, I suppose the subject simply didn't know what to do with all the time or something).
The subject had to wear a special gadget like a wrist watch that recorded when he was asleep or awake. Also an EEG,EOG, EMG and EKG were recorded when possible (to distinguish the types of sleep, REM, NREM, SWS).
What was found: At the beginning the naps mostly containted stage 2 NREM sleep and a reduced amount of stage 3/4 SWS sleep but nearly no stage 5 REM sleep.
After adapting (around day 21) suddenly the relative distribution of the sleep stages (stage 2 NREM, SWS, REM) returned to nearly the same distribution a normal night sleep has (30% REM, 70% NREM). This is very unsual because normally REM sleep is only possible after at least 60 minutes of NREM sleep and only lasts for a few minutes, except in the last half of an 8 hour sleep, where you find a lot of stage 2 and REM sleep. But after having adapted to the Uberman schedule some naps contain a lot of SWS, other contain "only" stage 2 NREM (light sleep) and other contain REM sleep. That's what is being described at kuro5hin, being able to jump directly to REM sleep. But where he was wrong: You won't get only REM sleep, the sleep distribution returns to normal, that's all (but under very unusual and surprising conditions).

Conclusions (from the book):

1. Adult humans appear to have a natural ability to adapt to polyphasic sleep schedules
2. The 4-hr ultradian cycle of sleep-wake pressure previosly described (note: from other studies before) may be an important factor in allowing adaptation to polyphasic patterns
3. The sleep-wake system appears to show a high level of flexibility in terms of sleep timing and duration
4. Polyphasic sleep may be a feasible, and perhaps the only, strategy allowing remarkable levels of sleep reduction during prolonged quasi-continuous work situations, without unduly compromising performance effectiveness.
5. THis may be analogous to what is observed in a considerable number of mammalian species, particularly in thos living in dangerous enviroments.
6. Further studies extended to a larger sample of subjects may provide powerfull tools for developing sleep-wake schedules for individuals involved in irregular or quasi-continuous work situations.
7. These findings and hypothesis raise challenging questions concerning what is known about the regulatory mechanisms of sleep functions.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Of reviews...

In the theatre review class which I went to, the workshop instructor said that a review seeks to recreate the subjective experience which you had in your interaction with the theatrical work. He also mentioned that there is no bad review, just not enough reviews. Upon being asked the question of whether there is such a thing as an unprofessional review, he mentioned that it could be unprofessional on the terms that the reviewer did not engage with the theatrical piece and did not consider two vital things about the work. These two vital things are:
1) Practitioner’s vision – what is the practitioner trying to do through the theatrical piece?
2) Reviewer’s response – what is the reviewer’s personal response to the work?
Many a times, people just dismiss off a piece of work if it’s not mainstream, or when it did not meet up to their own expectations, without considering the practitioner’s vision.
He also mentioned that quite a lot of pieces of work tend to be descriptive. As such, the review missed out on sharing the subjective experience of the reviewer, making it a sypnosis of the theatrical work, rather than a proper review.
Hahaa.
Personally, I find it hard to write a proper review. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort to think of ways to replicate the experience you have while viewing the theatrical piece. In addition, verbatim is probably needed at times to help to replicate that experience… and unless you both evaluate and appreciate the work at the same time, it is probably hard to remember the verbatim, or to recall specific elements that brought about the reaction you have as an audience.
UNLESS you have a video of the theatrical piece. Hahaha.
At any rate, I shall do my best to bring about reviews from another form of media – the movies. Of this, I have no experience whatsoever, and frankly speaking, no perseverance to rack my brains to write a proper review of the show. I shall just type out what comes to mind, and in the least, I will do a recommendation or rejection of the movie.
Haha.

Monday, April 19, 2010

7 ways to keep yourself sane and mentally and emotionally healthy in a care-giving profession

My mind doesn't work in a linear manner, but since many people's minds do, I will attempt to linearize my thoughts and present my own opinions on...

7 ways to keep yourself sane and mentally and emotionally healthy in a care-giving profession - written by Xin Ying!

Disclaimer: Do understand that I come primarily from the setting of a school counsellor. I have nil knowledge about how care-givers in other settings work 

1) Set a self-care day/evening and protect that time.

Being in a care-giving profession, it is the responsibility of each individual to take personal responsibility for his/her health to prevent burn-out. One good way of doing this is actually by setting aside a time for himself/herself in the week to reflect through the week, to plan for the next, and to basically just detox by engaging in projects you enjoy, or just by chilling out.
(This paragraph sounded as if it belonged to those self-help websites)

I usually take Sunday, Monday or Wednesday evenings as my detox day. Haha. Once a week. (oooh my brain is not working. Apparently this linear thing is not working very well for me. Hahahaa) A standard detox day will probably encompass me checking out the movie timings in the daytime and then going to watch a movie. In the time before and after the movie, I’d be either reading a book, or will be just thinking and praying through certain things. I find that an aircon environment with music in the background helps me to consolidate my thoughts better.

The key is to know what relaxes you, helps you make sense of the week, and for healing and filling of care tank to take place.

Certain things that one can reflect upon in that period of time:
1) What affected you in the past week? Have you resolved the emotions that arose from the incidents?

2) Taking another perspective (or if the situation was changed in just one day), would the reactions from you be different? What caused you to react that way?

3) Were there incidents in the past which influenced your way of reacting? Were there incidents in the past where you reflected the same way?

4) What are some things you may need to understand (or learn) to help yourself deal with the situations better?

5) Did you portray professionalism during the period of time in your care-giving? What limited you? What helped you?

6) What is one thanksgiving point you can give for this week? What is something you learned? Who is someone whom you can thank God for?

A self care evening is especially important if you know that your care tank is low and you are going to burn out very soon. Symptoms will include reluctance to go to work, an increase in diseases (such as colds, migraines) and prolonged tension in the body. You’d find that you feel more ready to be angry at the students, and find it harder to want to even meet the students.
Take care of yourself well : )

2) Know the reason for your profession

When there’s a purpose behind the doing, the doing becomes more bearable (if it’s unbearable) and directed. Remembering the reason behind why we came into the profession in the first place will drive us. Just like how people in the arts scene are primarily motivated by their passion and desire to practice that passion (and various other reasons), keeping in mind the reason as to why we wanted to come into the care-giving profession (which doesn’t pay much and puts us into the high risk group for mental diseases :D) would push us further and give us the drive to want to meet the challenges in our work and continue helping the people under our care.

I would guess that most of us came into the profession because we want to help. We want to help the hurting not to be as hurt, we want to help people make sense of things with the limited knowledge we have. We feel fulfilled when we invest our time and our life in another human being. We have gladness in our hearts when we see someone respond, or someone heal, or when we can help someone understand.

3) Know your strengths, weaknesses and limitations.

We are all human beings.
When you cut us, we bleed.
When we’re hurt, we cry, or become angry, or become sullen, or keep it all inside. Or develop defense mechanisms.
We have strengths, weaknesses and limitations.
Knowing your limitations help us to be soberly aware of how small we are as human beings, and sometimes, how small the changes we can effect are as well. But it’d keep you sane.

When you understand and really know in your heart that not everybody you reach out to will respond (but that doesn’t mean we stop reaching out to), that not everyone will change, that we’re not God and we can’t force the person to do what they do not want to do, we take things a little easier.

Knowing your strengths will also help you to be a person who’s more effective in the work. For example, I know that my strength lies in affective interventions. As such, I gear towards dealing with cases with self mutilations and emotional management. And I convey this to the people around me as well (such as my fellow colleague and the counselling ministry people). I am not so much of a discipline person. Students are not really scared of me. So I’m limited in the sense whereby discipline cases will not sit well with me, and they might not respond so well to me too.

Playing on my strengths help me to enjoy my work more, and it also helps me to be more effective in administering care to each person I meet using my own unique way.
Knowing your limitations is part of being professional too ;)

4) Plan interaction times

God created us to be interdependent. That’s why He created communities! Being a people person (which I’d suspect most people in care-giving professions are), I am often refreshed after pockets of times interacting with people who lift up my spirits. It might not have to be at the workplace, after work is good as well:)

Don’t be a loner. The last thing you’d want to do is to withdraw somewhere, stone and then wallow in self pity and misery (which is different from self care evening!) Look for people whom you enjoy the company with. Talk things out. Give them hugs. Receive hugs from them.
Know that you’re loved : )

Interaction times would also mean interacting with other caregivers, to share ideas, to identify with one another, to just grumble and gripe at times, and to hear of how others cope with the situations in their workplaces or to discuss cases.

5) Decorate your workplace

I find that it’s important to have pleasant memories associated with the workplace, rather than a sense of foreboding and fatigue and whatnots. Visual cues such as soft toys and bright colours keep me sane at times.

6) Keep work separated from home…

If you can help it. I understand that in a society such as Singapore, sometimes it’s hard to keep the boundaries between work and anything out of work clear. It gets especially blurred when counsellees sms or call you out of work hours with regards to certain things. When do you choose to reply? And when do you not? (This is more of a question that’s specific to boundaries in the counselling settings though).

I feel it’s very important to keep that boundary clear. The problems of the person you’re taking care of/helping is not of your own. Do not adopt these problems and ruminate over them. Not bringing work home to do will help to associate these things with the workplace, such that when you physically leave the workplace, it’s easier to ‘switch off’ (quoting one of my fellow counsellors). This is essential because one will burn out upon continual rumination of the things in the workplace. Protect your mind and emotional health please.

7) Spend extended time with God

We are not superhumans. Even as we give care to others, we have our own limited supply of emotional and psychological resources as well. And many a times, other human beings may not be able to continually meet our needs. (That’s not their role in life as well. Hahaha) So spending time with the One who can meet our needs infinitely will definitely refresh your soul.
I believe that the different areas in our lives are linked. Such that emotional fatigue can bring on physical fatigue and vice versa… When we spend extended time with God, we are emotionally refreshed, physically recharged, spiritually replenished, psychologically renewed : )

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A reason for the things that are

I think a standard start to a new blog is a welcome statement :)
I prefer to lay out the reasons as to why I started this new blog.
Along the way, I realized that I have a tendency to share things, but without much of a structure. As such, things are not consolidated and made digestible for people. I doubt that starting this blog will make what I share more digestible (in the sense whereby it's clearer and made easier to understand) to people, but it may very well force me to train my brain to think in such a manner. It benefits me in this way.
I wanted an outlet for movie and theatrical reviews. Personally, I feel it is a waste to just watch a movie and not be able to share it with others. Surely consumption of something will equate to an output as well (I'd think it's only natural that it's this way 'cos that's how our normal human body works;) ). A friend of mine likes to say (somewhere along the lines of)'good things are to be shared!', and though I don't quite agree with him on some things, in the area of movie and theatrical works, I do agree that good things are to be shared :) Or bad things to be avoided. LOL. (okay. there goes any attempts I have at being professional :P)
I have recently also started to have an influx of ideas for projects and articles. As such, I feel that this can be an outlet for the articles as well. The reason why I do not want to actually put it in my public blog is 'cos I wanna keep that blog more daily life based. The long article that is churned out will probably be hard to read and digest in that small worded, dark coloured blog of mine anyway.
And that's about it.
That's all there is to why I started the blog.
Hopefully it will be helpful to whoever reads it.
And do feel free to leave comments... for nothing is more valuable than having your post start off a stream of conversation and discussion. Let's sharpen one another even through this medium :)

Welcome :)