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Is good sleep hygiene the route to better sleep?

admin · Apr 16, 2021 ·

I was sceptical that it was. I’d read all about the 12 tips that sleep expert Dr. Matthew Walker talked about in his excellent book that I’ve posted about before. I just didn’t put them into practice.

Until that is about a month ago when I’d had a couple of weeks of really bad sleep. A couple of nights of not sleeping at all. That’s never good. I’d come across Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s excellent book: The 4 Pillar Plan which aims to help you Relax, Eat Better, Exercise Better, and Sleep Better. He takes a very holistic and preventative approach to medicine, and one of the stories that stuck with me was about phones. He had a young patient come in who had been told to come to see his GP to get some anti-depressants. Rangan asked him a few questions about his lifestyle and said that he wouldn’t prescribe them that day but that he wanted the young man to make a tweak to his lifestyle and if that didn’t work, then he would prescribe the meds. The change was: turn off your phone about 2 hours before bed and don’t reach for it for at least an hour after waking up. A few weeks later, the young man came back to see Rangan and the change was remarkable. The young man was much less anxious and sleeping a lot better.

Why the massive improvement? From other parts of Rangan’s book and from Matthew’s book, it seems like the brain needs to wind down before bed. Scrolling through social media or news right up until you turn the lights off for bed sounds like a recipe for keeping the brain active, looking for that next dopamine hit. It sounds like it’s also the blue light that’s emitted from screens. Rangan is very strict about the light that he’s exposed to whilst winding down. Blue light (from backlit screens) interferes with/inhibits the production of melatonin in the brain, a chemical that helps us feel sleepy and eventually sleep.

That’s one of the biggest changes I’ve made to my sleep routine in the past few weeks. I stop using my phone around 90 minutes before going to bed. This, and another change to my routine, has helped the last 3 weeks have the best sleep I can remember for a long time.

The other change is: write a to-do list for the next day in the wind-down period before going to bed and also write down things that you’re worried about (like a worry journal). It sounds crazy but just dumping down the thoughts that would probably keep you lying awake thinking about, really helps clear your mind. I still have to jump out of bed to jot down some thoughts every now and again, but doing so stops me from worrying about them.

So overall, what’s my current sleep hygiene routine? It’s:

Turn off or stop using your phone at least an hour before bed, if not before that.
Write down your to-do list and a worry list before bed.
Don’t use your bed for anything besides sleep and sex.
Don’t clock watch – when you’re in bed and not asleep, don’t ever look to see what the time is.
No caffeine after 11am.

And that’s about it. There’s probably a lot more I could do (and Rangan and Matthew both have a lot more tips such as wearing amber glasses in the evening to really block out blue light), but this has had great results for me in the past 3 weeks: averaging at least 6.5 to 7hrs per night. That’s a huge change for me! If you have trouble sleeping well, give these tips a try and get yourself a copy of both Rangan’s and Matthew’s excellent books.

Trying to break a lifelong caffeine habit

admin · Mar 24, 2021 ·

I’ve drunk a lot of coffee since I was at university, more than 20 years ago now. I think I’d read somewhere that Spanish men were so macho, that for breakfast, they only drank strong black coffee and had a cigarette. I thought that was pretty cool. Angelique rolls her eyes when I tell her that. “That’s the reason you drink coffee?!”, she says.

I used to drink a double cafetiere of coffee with one ‘fingers-worth’ of ground coffee in the bottom of it. Before going to work, I used to have a coffee before leaving the house, have a double espresso from the cafe in the train station, then have one when I got to work, and then one in the late morning, then maybe one after lunch. Perhaps not surprisingly, I used to get a lot of insomnia.

The insomnia has calmed down in recent years, and I attribute that to a new-ish rule of no coffee/caffeine after lunch. So in general, I’ll have a fairly rich and punchy instant espresso when I wake up and another before noon at the latest.

Recently though, I’ve had some insomnia come back, and so I’ve made a connection that I’ve probably been avoiding for years, like an ostrich:

Maybe I’m much more sensitive to caffeine that I previously thought. Maybe I should really cut back on my caffeine, and maybe it would cut down any excess anxiety.

We’ve seen from Why We Sleep that caffeine has a half-life of around 7 hours, so by bedtime, there’s always going to be some caffeine in your system, unless you’re an outlier that can process caffeine better than most.

Day 1 – Monday

I started off with a decaf but soon got tiredness and fogginess. I had to supplement that with a very small amount of instant. I did some quick research into stopping caffeine cold turkey, and it was not recommended! Common side-effects are headaches, jitters, insomnia, irritability. Not good. I resolve to wean off it slowly.

Day 2 – Tuesday

This time, I had a very small amount of instant espresso to start the day. I never measure coffee out – always by eye instead. Today though, I put a flat teaspoon in the cup, and it was watery as hell. But that plus a decaf afterwards meant no headaches and enough oomph to get through the day.

Day 3 – Wednesday

Same as Day 2 – Tuesday.

Day 4 – Thursday

I made the same coffee, but I had just two mouthfuls and then tipped the rest down the sink. I had a decaf after that. Felt pretty good for the rest of the day and even had some unexpected peppiness. Tomorrow, I’ll try just a decaf or two before 10am.

Day 5 to 8

Just decaf on these days. Felt okay and not too tired. But still tired.

Day 9

No coffee, not even decaf.

Oddly, I had some serious insomnia that evening of the 9th day, and the following night as well. Not even a wink of sleep. I had thought that trace amounts of caffeine in my body at night might be keeping me from falling asleep really easily. However, it didn’t seem to make a difference to whether I slept or not. Which was pretty much the whole aim of this experiment! Oh and reduced anxiety. I did notice a reduction in anxiety, which is one plus to take away from this.

Conclusions

Giving up caffeine is hard, particularly if you’ve been drinking buckets of the stuff for decades. I couldn’t really see any benefits in terms of insomnia. There were benefits in terms of reduced anxiety.

The negatives of giving up caffeine is a reduced peppiness and less mental sharpness. Both things I couldn’t live without.

I stopped the experiment around Day 10. I now limit myself to 2 coffees maximum in the morning, and ideally before 11am. I might even forgo the second one some days. My coffees are less strong and instead of double espressos, I’ll order a single shot. (Often, it’s actually the same amount of volume in the cup as what I thought was a double espresso, so maybe I’ve been overpaying all these years.)

Overall, would I recommend this experiment? I’d have to say no. I didn’t see a benefit to getting to caffeine-zero. I do see a benefit of having some caffeine but not lots of it. So we get to the conclusion of trying caffeine in moderation, which isn’t that ground-breaking! But maybe try experimenting with where your level of moderation is. Maybe like me, you’re more sensitive to caffeine than you think. If you think you’re drinking a lot of coffee and it’s potentially giving you anxiety or insomnia, just try reducing your caffeine intake, and timing your drinking to earlier in the day.

Picking bang for buck investments for a Junior ISA (JISA)

admin · Mar 2, 2021 ·

DISCLAIMER: I do write some stuff about financial topics such as cryptocurrency and investing. I am not a financial professional and please don’t rely on what I say to make financial decisions. Please check with your financial adviser before making these decisions.

A JISA is a great way to test Einstein’s Eighth Wonder of The World: Compound Interest.

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
Attributed to Einstein

Zach is one now, and so setting his JISA up now would mean his JISA would have 17 years until he took ownership of its assets. The maximum you could invest in a year is £9,000 (which we can’t afford to do!), but that’s a lot of tax shelter. 17 years is a long time in compound interest terms and could be even more if he doesn’t bomb it all on booze and good times when he’s 18.

A fun tool to play with is a compound interest calculator. Bear with me.

If we assume an 8% return a year using equity index trackers (the historic returns over the last century of the stock market is around 8%), and assume a conservative £5,000 cash deposited as well into the JISA, that’s a huge £193,263.60:

https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php

If we assume a 15% return a year, with the same £5,000 annual deposit, it’s a whopping £439,074.39:

The three main drivers of the final amount over this time period are:

the Rate of Return
the number of years
the size of the annual deposit

(and not paying fees. You won’t pay tax on any returns in a JISA)

The Rate of Return

I reckon you could get 8% fairly straightforwardly with cheap equity index trackers.

The number of Years

This graph from Seeking Alpha shows that returns are not linear with the number of years. The more years you add, the greater the relative returns for that extra time. You’ll also notice that the non-linear impact of small changes in the rate of return.

The True Power of Compounding

If you just invested £5,000 today and left it for 17 years at a 8% rate of return, it would be over £19,000! That’s more than £14,000 in returns!

What investments to put into the JISA?

Unlike with my ISA asset allocation, which is a mix of equities and fixed-income, a child at the age of one is young enough to not have to think about the greater volatility of equities vs bonds. So it could be 100% equities in his JISA until he hits 18.

I’m looking for:

Strong returns over at least a 5 year period (around 15% to 20%)
Funds, so that I don’t have to do any stock picking.
Exposure to as much of the world as possible. Funds with US and Asia stocks have been going great guns in the past 5 to 10 years (in part because their indexes have strong exposure to tech growth stocks). I also read a book that shows how with a bunch of trackers, and funds, you can literally own the world. Eg. if you invested in a Global fund, in theory, you should have exposure to geographically diverse companies.

The funds I’ve picked

FUNDSMITH EQUITY CLASS I – ACCUMULATION (GBP)

*Screenshot from Hargreaves Lansdown as at 30th Dec 2020*

I also want some Asia exposure so I made up this watchlist of Asian focused funds:

There’s a fair bit of overlap in these funds, so of the Asia-focused funds, I’m leaning towards:

FSSA JAPAN FOCUS HEDGED CLASS B – ACCUMULATION (HEDGED GBP)
SCHRODER ASIAN ALPHA PLUS CLASS L – ACCUMULATION (GBP)

I haven’t decided how to split the allocation between these funds yet. Will add an update to this post when I do.

The joys of getting a free health checkup because I’m 40

admin · Dec 24, 2020 ·

The NHS kindly offers anyone over 40 a free health MOT. (TBH I haven’t actually checked whether you get these under 40, so please check!)

In Covid times, you get a phone call appointment from your GP and they arrange a blood test for you. I asked if I could get every available blood test including testosterone levels, and they said yes.

Some weeks later, you get a phone call from your doctor to discuss your results.

And mine were all good! There’s something reassuring about having a doctor say that all is fine, and all fine at a granular level.

My sugars were all fine, so not diabetic. Calcium all good. Even my cholesterol was all good, which Angelique was both surprised with and delighted about. I’m sure she’s been a positive influence on my cholesterol, as I do love my junk food and beers. She hates it when I buy McDonalds for breakfast!

My testosterone levels were well above average which I was chuffed about. My doctor wondered why it mattered so much to me and for me, it’s just that I know that as men get older, their testosterone levels go down. Along with their pep and vigour! The doctor didn’t disagree, so I take that as an endorsement!

As an aside, here’s some of the benefits of decent testosterone levels from a Harvard Health Publishing article:

Muscle size and strength
Bone growth and strength
Sex drive (libido)
Sperm production
Testosterone — What It Does And Doesn’t Do:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/drugs-and-medications/testosterone–what-it-does-and-doesnt-do

The only point of concern that the doctor raised was something about ‘big’ red blood cells and she asked me if I drank a lot. I reckon I drink about 30 units a week, and she said that was probably too much. You can’t change everything though, can you?!

Anyway, I recommend getting one of these MOT health checks done if you can. It’s a real weight off your mind and gives you a lot of confidence about your lifestyle (if it’s good of course). And things to focus on if it’s not so good. Health compounds, so if you’re able to get one of these, do so!

How fit can I get in a month? (part 3)

admin · Nov 11, 2020 ·

*Er not my gym! (This is a photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash)*

Since benchmarking my fitness against the tests in the previous post, I’ve focused on:

Improving my best-effort one and half mile.
Press-ups according to the technique in the previous post
Sit-ups according to the technique in the previous post.
Pull-ups
Plank
500 metre row

How am I tracking progress?

I’m using a simple Google sheet to manually plug in my numbers each time I do exercise. Here’s what it looked like for Week 1:

Improving my best-effort one and half mile

I’m pretty excited about doing this one. I’ve run a lot of miles since May this year but I haven’t really been seeing any improvements in pace. I’m always hovering around the 9min 30sec/mile pace for 3.5 miles. I’m hoping that by using the treadmill to get faster over shorter dosctances such as 1.5 miles, I’ll get baseline quicker.

I bust a gut to hit that 13min mark for the 1.5miles in the benchmark exercise and I’m really hoping to break 12mins in this event before the end of the month. I did that on Week 4 with an 11:50min. That’s a hard run! I want to break 11mins now. And then 10:30mins because 10mins is considered ‘Excellent’ by Men’s Health (see the previous post for the link). I think it’s doable in a month or two!

(A note post-new-lockdown: my gym is now closed in line with the national lockdown. So that puts treadmills out. I ran outside for the first time since starting this experiment, and my pace was significantly faster. Beforehand, I would be doing around 9min 30 secs per mile, and now I’m doing around 8min 30 secs per mile pace. Speedwork on the treadmill really does have an effect. To do this, I recommend cranking the pace up on the treadmill to almost as fast as you can go and try to hold that pace for as long as possible. Try for a minute, then two minutes, then 3 minutes. Try to make your sprint finishes longer and longer. Try to beat your times every session on the treadmill.)

Press-ups

These Royal Marine-style press-ups are hard! Try it, especially if you’ve been doing them with a wide grip all your life like I have. At shoulder-width apart, these feel like my hands are almost touching each other.

In 6 weeks, I’ve gone from 20 to a best-effort maximum of 40 press-ups. The final 10 press-ups of that set were pretty slow going but 40 is 40!

According to the Coach Mag article from the previous post, 50 and above is considered Excellent. My target is to do 60 is one smooth go, and with strict form. I think that’s fully doable in a month or two!

Sit-ups

My first benchmarking effort on this was 27 sit-ups in 1 min 10 secs. By the end of Week 6, I got to a best-effort maximum of 45. The execution of these 45 was very similar to the press-ups execution above, with some pretty slow and strained situps towards the end!

From the Mayo Clinic article in the previous two posts, I should score around 37 situps in a minute for my age. My target is now 85 as I’ve seen that’s a benchmark for the Royal Marines, and also because I’ve exceeded the Mayo Clinic’s benchmark. I think 85 should be doable in a couple of months!

Pullups

This didn’t see as much of an improvement as the other metrics. My initial benchmark in Week 1 was 3 pull-ups and I never got above 4 pull-ups for a maximum effort.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been on the pull-down machine instead, doing 3 x sets of 75kg. My bodyweight is 80kg, so I need to be able to pull down 80kgs to be able to pull myself up better. Or I need to shed a few kgs! Probably a combination of both.

My target is 12 proper pull-ups. I think that should be doable in about 3 months, once lockdown ends and I can get back into the gym.

Plank

I started with a 1:01min best effort plank in my initial benchmark and I got to 1:30min pretty quickly by the end of Week 1. More than 2 mins is Excellent according to Coach Mag so I stopped there and focused on the other metrics above.

500m Row

This was hard. My initial benchmark was 02:08mins. (I don’t seem to have updated my tracking spreadsheet beyond Week 1 – oops. But by the end of Week 1, I got to 01:57mins, which is just squeezing into the Average bucket according to Coach Mag. (I will get back on this once gyms open up again)

Next steps

I’ll report back with an update in a few weeks.