Fall Asleep In 2 Minutes (Doctor Explains)

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Beyond “sleep hygiene”, Dr. Siobhan Deshauer has insights to share:

Rest for your body and mind

First, do still do the basics. That means dimming/filtering lights for an hour before bed, lowering the room temperature a little, ensuring you have nice fresh sheets, not having alcohol or caffeine before bed, and getting out of bed if you’re not asleep within half an hour, to avoid associating being in bed with wakefulness.

Next, the extra tips:

  • Progressive relaxation: tense and relax each muscle group from toes to head
  • Box breathing: inhale, hold, exhale, and hold for 4 seconds each; helps calm the nervous system (it’s called “box breathing” because of the 4:4:4:4 setup)
  • Diaphragmatic breathing: focus on belly breathing, with longer exhalation to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (note that this can, and even ideally should, be done at the same time as the previous)
  • Cognitive shuffling: think of words starting with each letter of a chosen word while visualizing them (this is like “counting sheep”, but does the job better—the job in question being preventing your brain from moving to anything more strenuous or stressful)

For more on all of these plus some extra side-along advice, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take ← a way to get many of the benefits of sleep, while awake

Take care!

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  • 5 Ways To Beat Afternoon Energy Slumps

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This is Nisha Vora, of Rainbow Plant Life fame. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she realized she hated being a lawyer, and pivoted completely to become what she now is 12 years later, a chef and health coach.

    Here are her tips for boosting energy through the day:

    Caffeine timing

    If you don’t do caffeine at all, no need to change that, but if you do, Vora advises that midday is the best time for it, with a very good rationale:

    • of course it should not be too late in the day, because the elimination half-life of caffeine (4–8 hours to eliminate just half of the caffeine, depending on genes, call it 6 hours as an average though honestly for most people it will either be 4 or 8, not 6) is such that it can easily interfere with sleep for most people
    • because caffeine is an adenosine blocker, not an adenosine inhibitor, taking caffeine in the morning means either there’s no adenosine to block, or it’ll just “save” that adenosine for later, i.e. when the caffeine is eliminated, then the adenosine will kick in, meaning that your morning sleepiness has now been deferred to the afternoon, rather than eliminated.

    Another reminder that caffeine is the “payday loan” of energy. So, midday it is. No morning sleepiness to defer, and yet also not so late as to interfere with sleep.

    See also: Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

    Simplify what can be simplified

    This one’s not from a physiological basis, but rather, that a lot of the time most of us have much of our energy being taken by constant task-switching (what gets called multitasking, but as our brain is a single processor, it really means switching rapidly between different kinds of cognition, which is not efficient). In order to avoid that energy drain, try to streamline things and make a particular effort to not only single-task, but to do so without distractions.

    Counterpoint: if you have unmedicated ADHD, then chances are you’ll do better with a single small distraction chosen by you, than trying to go without distractions, because your brain will find distractions anyway, so you might as well choose one (for many people it is background music, or a podcast or TV show that one doesn’t may attention to but it’s there) as a matter of harm reduction, and that way you’ll do better at focusing on your primary task than if your brain were reaching out for every and any possible distraction.

    Manage your blood sugars

    In particular, she advocates for avoiding sugary breakfasts, opting instead for protein, fat, and fiber-rich options. For more in this regard, see:

    10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars

    Walk after meals

    You don’t have to don hiking boots and “I am just going outside and may be some time“; rather, even a 2–5 minute walk after a meal helps regulate digestion and glucose levels, avoiding postprandial energy slumps.

    So,

    • if you have a treadmill, after eating is a great time to use it for a few minutes
    • if you have stairs, now’s a great time to go up and down them a few times

    One last technique for when everything else fails

    We’ll quote her directly on this one:

    ❝Despite my best efforts, soemtimes I just have one of those days. Maybe I didn’t sleep well or I’m distracted by my never ending thoughts. If I need to be productive or energized on those days, I will do something that I absolutely hate:

    I will take a cold shower.

    And I hate it because I’m already always cold all the time, so why would I want to get a cold shower?

    Well, it’s because cold water immersion has been shown to dramatically boost your dopamine levels, which gives you more energy and motivation.

    In the moment though, it’s mostly painful and I hate everything and everyone around me.

    But I know that if I can suffer through two minutes of a cold shower, I will feel so refreshed.❞

    There are more benefits than just that, though, see:

    A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

    Want more from Nisha Vora?

    We reviewed one of her books a while back:

    The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook – by Nisha Vora

    Enjoy!

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  • Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory – by Dr. Andrew Budson & Dr. Maureen O’Connor

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    First, what this is not: a “how to improve your memory” book of the kind marketed to students and/or people who want to do memory-themed party tricks.

    What this book actually is: exactly what the title and subtitle claim it to be: seven steps to managing your memory: what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do about it.

    Drs. Budson & O’Connor cover:

    • which memory errors can (and usually do) happen at any age
    • how memory changes with normal aging, and
    • what kinds of memory problems are not normal.

    One thing that sets this book aside from a lot of its genre is that it also covers which kinds of memory loss are reversible—and, where appropriate, what can be undertaken to effect such a reversal.

    The authors talk about what things have (and what things haven’t!) been shown to strengthen memory and reduce cognitive decline, and in the worst case scenario, what medications can help against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

    The style is halfway between pop-science and a science textbook. The structure of the book, with its headings, subheadings, bullet points, summaries, etc, helps the reader to process and remember the information.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to get on top of managing your memory before you forget, then this book is for you.

    Click here to check out Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory, and safeguard what’s most important to you!

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  • America’s Health System Isn’t Ready for the Surge of Seniors With Disabilities

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The number of older adults with disabilities — difficulty with walking, seeing, hearing, memory, cognition, or performing daily tasks such as bathing or using the bathroom — will soar in the decades ahead, as baby boomers enter their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

    But the health care system isn’t ready to address their needs.

    That became painfully obvious during the covid-19 pandemic, when older adults with disabilities had trouble getting treatments and hundreds of thousands died. Now, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health are targeting some failures that led to those problems.

    One initiative strengthens access to medical treatments, equipment, and web-based programs for people with disabilities. The other recognizes that people with disabilities, including older adults, are a separate population with special health concerns that need more research and attention.

    Lisa Iezzoni, 69, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has lived with multiple sclerosis since her early 20s and is widely considered the godmother of research on disability, called the developments “an important attempt to make health care more equitable for people with disabilities.”

    “For too long, medical providers have failed to address change in society, changes in technology, and changes in the kind of assistance that people need,” she said.

    Among Iezzoni’s notable findings published in recent years:

    Most doctors are biased. In survey results published in 2021, 82% of physicians admitted they believed people with significant disabilities have a worse quality of life than those without impairments. Only 57% said they welcomed disabled patients.

    “It’s shocking that so many physicians say they don’t want to care for these patients,” said Eric Campbell, a co-author of the study and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado.

    While the findings apply to disabled people of all ages, a larger proportion of older adults live with disabilities than younger age groups. About one-third of people 65 and older — nearly 19 million seniors — have a disability, according to the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire.

    Doctors don’t understand their responsibilities. In 2022, Iezzoni, Campbell, and colleagues reported that 36% of physicians had little to no knowledge of their responsibilities under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, indicating a concerning lack of training. The ADA requires medical practices to provide equal access to people with disabilities and accommodate disability-related needs.

    Among the practical consequences: Few clinics have height-adjustable tables or mechanical lifts that enable people who are frail or use wheelchairs to receive thorough medical examinations. Only a small number have scales to weigh patients in wheelchairs. And most diagnostic imaging equipment can’t be used by people with serious mobility limitations.

    Iezzoni has experienced these issues directly. She relies on a wheelchair and can’t transfer to a fixed-height exam table. She told me she hasn’t been weighed in years.

    Among the medical consequences: People with disabilities receive less preventive care and suffer from poorer health than other people, as well as more coexisting medical conditions. Physicians too often rely on incomplete information in making recommendations. There are more barriers to treatment and patients are less satisfied with the care they do get.

    Egregiously, during the pandemic, when crisis standards of care were developed, people with disabilities and older adults were deemed low priorities. These standards were meant to ration care, when necessary, given shortages of respirators and other potentially lifesaving interventions.

    There’s no starker example of the deleterious confluence of bias against seniors and people with disabilities. Unfortunately, older adults with disabilities routinely encounter these twinned types of discrimination when seeking medical care.

    Such discrimination would be explicitly banned under a rule proposed by HHS in September. For the first time in 50 years, it would update Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a landmark statute that helped establish civil rights for people with disabilities.

    The new rule sets specific, enforceable standards for accessible equipment, including exam tables, scales, and diagnostic equipment. And it requires that electronic medical records, medical apps, and websites be made usable for people with various impairments and prohibits treatment policies based on stereotypes about people with disabilities, such as covid-era crisis standards of care.

    “This will make a really big difference to disabled people of all ages, especially older adults,” said Alison Barkoff, who heads the HHS Administration for Community Living. She expects the rule to be finalized this year, with provisions related to medical equipment going into effect in 2026. Medical providers will bear extra costs associated with compliance.

    Also in September, NIH designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities that deserves further attention. This makes a new funding stream available and “should spur data collection that allows us to look with greater precision at the barriers and structural issues that have held people with disabilities back,” said Bonnielin Swenor, director of the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center.

    One important barrier for older adults: Unlike younger adults with disabilities, many seniors with impairments don’t identify themselves as disabled.

    “Before my mom died in October 2019, she became blind from macular degeneration and deaf from hereditary hearing loss. But she would never say she was disabled,” Iezzoni said.

    Similarly, older adults who can’t walk after a stroke or because of severe osteoarthritis generally think of themselves as having a medical condition, not a disability.

    Meanwhile, seniors haven’t been well integrated into the disability rights movement, which has been led by young and middle-aged adults. They typically don’t join disability-oriented communities that offer support from people with similar experiences. And they don’t ask for accommodations they might be entitled to under the ADA or the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

    Many seniors don’t even realize they have rights under these laws, Swenor said. “We need to think more inclusively about people with disabilities and ensure that older adults are fully included at this really important moment of change.”

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    When it comes to intermittent fasting, the plethora of options can be daunting at first, as can such questions as what fluids are ok to take vs what will break the fast, what to expect in terms of your first fasting experience, and how not to accidentally self-sabotage.

    Practised well, intermittent fasting can be a very freeing experience, and not at all uncomfortable. Practised badly, it can be absolutely miserable, and this is one of those things where knowledge makes the difference.

    Dr. Fung (yes, the same Dr. Fung we’ve featured before as an expert on metabolic health) shares this knowledge over the course of 304 pages, with lots of scientific information and insider tips. He covers the different kinds of fasting, how each of them work and what they do for the body and brain, hunger/satiety hacks, lots of “frequently asked questions”, and even a range of recipes to help smooth your journey along its way.

    The style is very well-written pop-science; it’s engaging and straightforward without skimping on science at all.

    Bottom line: if you’re thinking of trying intermittent fasting but aren’t sure where/how to best get started, this book can set you off on the right foot and keep you on the right track thereafter.

    Click here to check out The Complete Guide to Fasting, and enjoy the process as well as the results!

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  • Heart Healthy Diet Plan – by Stephen William

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve covered heart-healthy cooking books before, but variety is good, and boredom is an enemy of health, so let’s shake it up with a fresh stack of recipes!

    After a brief overview of the relevant science (which if you’re a regular 10almonds reader, probably won’t be new to you), the author takes the reader on a 28-day journey. Yes, we know the subtitle says 30 days, but unless they carefully hid the other two days somewhere we didn’t find, there are “only” 28 inside. Perhaps the publisher heard it was a month and took creative license. Or maybe there’s a different edition. Either way…

    Rather than merely giving a diet plan (though yes, he also does that), he gives a wide range of “spotlight ingredients”, such that many of the recipes, while great in and of themselves, can also be jumping-off points for those of us who like to take recipes and immediately do our own things to them.

    Each day gets a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and he also covers drinks, desserts, and such like.

    Notwithstanding the cover art being a lot of plants, the recipes are not entirely plant-based; there are a selection of fish dishes (and other seafood, e.g. shrimp) and also some dairy products (e.g. Greek yoghurt). The recipes are certainly very “plant-forward” though and many are just plants. If you’re a strict vegan though, this probably isn’t the book for you.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to cook heart-healthy but are often stuck wondering “aaah, what to cook again today?”, then this is the book to get you out of any culinary creative block!

    Click here to check out the Heart Healthy Diet Plan, and widen your heart-healthy repertoire!

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  • Breadfruit vs Custard Apple – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing breadfruit to custard apple, we picked the breadfruit.

    Why?

    Today in “fruits pretending to be less healthy things than they are”, both are great, but one of these fruits just edges out the other in all categories. This is quite simple today:

    In terms of macros, being fruits they’re both fairly high in carbs and fiber, however the carbs are close to equal and breadfruit has nearly 2x the fiber.

    This also means that breadfruit has the lower glycemic index, but they’re both medium-low GI foods with a low insulin index.

    When it comes to vitamins, breadfruit has more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, and C, while custard apple has more of vitamins A, B2, and B6. So, a 4:3 win for breadfruit.

    In the category of minerals, breadfruit has more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while custard apple has more calcium and iron.

    In short, enjoy both, but if you’re going just for one, breadfruit is the healthiest.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

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