Funny agreements between the book, and my experience with sleep include-
Needing to be exactly the right temperature...I use a down blanket-not duvet. Duvets are too hot. I also use a thin, but rather dense quilt, because I like the blankets to have a little weight to them. I think it could be to keep them from getting stolen too easily. Also, I like to have a long nightshirt...pants? Too hot. Great for wearing around the house, but TOO hot in bed...and I'll wake up between 1 and 2 am, freaking out with hot legs-and I mean like, and by freaking, I mean toddler-tantrum freak! Can't get the blankets back quickly enough. Oh, and while my legs are too hot, my arms get too cold... sound finicky enough yet? That's apparently a wonky effect of thyroid...temperature intolerance. And I do feel intolerant, and I do get cold feet. I've put socks and blankets in the dryer to heat them so that I can fall asleep, because until my feet warm up...I'm up. That's also hormones in action...we need to warm up to fall asleep. I discovered this via the best teacher of all--experience. Lying awake, with feet that won't heat... I've also heated socks up with my hair dryer-careful not to smoke out the motor, and then quickly gotten into bed with hot socks. The book backs me up on this, simultaneously proving I'm not a princess. In Chile, where the nights are very cold-I actually giggled involuntarily when the heater pad I'd put at the foot of the bed was on for the first jump into a preheated bed. Here, where it's less cold, a blanket across the bottom half of the bed does the job.
Light...living in the light all night Arctic messed with me and showed me the power of the sun. We blocked out every little sliver of night sun there was, for ourselves and for the kids too. I've always covered lights, charger lights, alarm clocks, etc...and The Hormone Diet research says that the light physically interacts with the skin, waking us up. Again- not crazy- I'm just sensitive!
Tactile...I like quiet, soft blankets (to the point of replacing a rustle-rustle duvet when we lived in Chile, where the nights were so cold). Sensitive skin means itch, burn, chill, or other unpleasantness can happen at any time; and it's not induced by a fussy nature, but a symptom of allergy, affected by hormones...This is relevant when I shop for sheets. The Fairmont in Vancouver had it all solved, so they had either great designers, or sleep experts on the payroll...because it was an incredible night's rest. Pillows..that could be a whole other blog. This isn't necessarily to do with the book, but more with having had a concussion, followed by weeks of migraines, that meant neck position was relevant. I've Goldilocks'd many a pillow, and found a few that work to support head and neck without fighting to plump themselves back up too quickly. I enjoy a 'just right' pillow.
And the big changes--we're not going to have any screens in the room-that energetic blue light sends all the wrong signals, and humans are so masterfully adaptable that reserving the room for the bed only is smart. No parenting, or work triggers from parenting or working in the bedroom-so that when we enter, it's all about getting into bed.
I'll be trying it out tonight...but the only new bit is the screen, so that's a bit of a habit to break usage-wise, because my cell is my alarm...which incidentally, I've set to a non-jarring wake up tone, because I don't like startling awake-it's officially good to do that, because the body doesn't go flight or fight first thing...
Tonight's reading, which is both allowed and recommended (I've saved some texts just for this!), will be lists of foods that are on both the hormone balancing and low histamine index. Yes...mentally cross referencing might truly be a snore.
Cheers and chao.
No comments:
Post a Comment