Health To-Do

If your head is messing you up and you don’t mean it, take a break. Cancer is hard to prevent and hearts that are weak aren’t up for this, but keep your immunities going, so you don’t get sick around the clock while you stress your body. Air temperature makes a difference; a tad cooler lifts you. Lots of things don’t work but exercise and simply standing do help, so do some of that. And crashing now and then keeps you recovering.

Drugs, Meds, and Alcohol

Do not medicate to achieve this purpose. That includes social drinking, coffee, and NoDoz. If you are on any relevant medicine, don’t attempt this.

I’m not qualified to speak about any specific drugs, legal or not, mild or not, over-the-counter or not. If you’re used to specific ones, you might know more about their effects on you than anyone else does. If you don’t, this is not a safe time to experiment.

Cigs

I don’t know about nicotine. Smoking elevates carbon monoxide in the body and that deadly poison leads to feeling sleepy, or, if there’s too much CO, putting you completely to sleep and killing you.

Fancy Gizmos

Uh-uh on thingamabobs. Things to watch your eyelids flutter or your head tilt probably exist but I don’t know how well they work. A few cars may offer that sort of thing, but, at this writing, I haven’t heard of one in a home or office or anywhere else. If you rely on them and they fail, you’re in trouble. And if you’re self-aware, you won’t need them.

Cancer Etc.

Cancer is at stake if you cut sleep, recent research says. Other diseases may be, too. Even night-shift work at normal length is getting tarred. You cannot fix that with antioxidant supplements, which can make you worse, cancer-wise. Find out whether you have any control in this matter and exercise it. We’d probably like you to stick around.

Heart and Waking

Hearts may not like your snapping awake. Your health is yours to deal with. Figure it out. Maybe wake up gradually.

Stay Immune

Be in good health. If your immune system is weak, this will tax it toward illness.

Exercise and Standing to Stay Up

Exercise pushes blood, delivering oxygen and talking wastes from your body. Standing instead of sitting (or lying) probably helps circulation, with the same kind of benefit, although there has been some dispute about this lately. Your work may not let you do either one, and you don’t have to do them constantly, but give them a shot from time to time.

Hallucination, Confusion, and More

Difficulty speaking, confused hearing, small hallucination, sleeping while standing even for a minute, a sense that your body is not connected to you or the world is far away (this has a name), and task errors you can’t explain any other way are superb reasons for getting major sleep right away.

Warmth and Getting Drowsy

A warm room, especially if it’s a little too warm, may lead to your feeling droopy-eyed and drowsy. You don’t have to make your room into a refrigerator, but adjust the temperature and see what happens.

The same is true about wearing too much clothing. Wear layers and add or peel to your comfort.

Making Up Sleep

Crash to catch up, like once a week, at which time you sleep without an alarm clock. No one is to wake you just to annoy you with breakfast. My record was to sleep 34 hours in a 38-hour period without getting hungry. Subsequent collapses in later weekends were all shorter.

Bottom Line

Listen to your body continuously, or your body will shut you down without notice.