Caffeine and Sleep.

How much coffee did you have today? Are you expecting to sleep well tonight? This paper on Caffeine and Sleep shows how individualised the effect of caffeine can be to different people in terms of how it can disrupt sleep. After a recent 14-day hiatus from caffeine (and sugary drinks) I've pretty much convinced myself that I've become less "tolerant" on my usual caffeine intake (from coffee, tea and chocolate) such that I have consistent trouble sleeping. This I can attribute to my obedient non-consumption of caffeine during my pregnancy on to breastfeeding months. When I finally went back to drinking caffeine (tea first then slightly on to coffee) when I returned to work, I've become sensitive to how much I can drink and it really affects how much sleep I get through the night. How much caffeine I can tolerate, I can't really tell at this point without further subjecting myself to rigorous experimentation. However, plain to say that I should limit caffeine to coffee sips, if any at all.

Dreaming and losing weight.

Dreams help soothe your bad memories

From Scientific American

Every morning, my husband and I (even before we were married) ask each other what dream we had the previous night. It's one of those things that we've gotten used to, and sometimes it brings the first laughs for the day. (For a time we kept a blog to write our dreams that time we lived apart.) According to this article, dreams help us learn and process what transpired in our day. To boost your EQ, it helps to get eventful Zzzs. But I wonder if you can actually induce a sleep with dreams. Aren't there times when you have dreamless sleeps? I suppose those are times when you seem to NOT need the dreams, or aren't emotionally bothered by anything enough to merit a dream. And to dream, we must sleep. Hence the benefits evidenced by this research can be acheived when you can actually get yourself sleeping. Problem is, when stress sets in, for some people, sleeping can be disrupted (ehem, this is my problem). But that is a story in itself.

Weight-loss diets given run for their money

From ABC Science news, Dr Karl

A friend of mine once told me I can try limiting food intake so I can lose the stubborn weight I've gained from pregnancy, that time I've had so little time to find time for exercise. While it seems to make sense that counting calories in what you eat (eating much less than what you need to burn for the day) will be enough to lose weight, this article says it's significantly less efficient that having the same amount of claoric "deficit" brought about from exercise. Dr Karl (popular face/voice in Aussie science) writes about weight loss: "... doing the extra exercise takes off more kilograms than eating less, even though the energy deficit is the same in each case." In short, exercise is still the way to go to lose weight. No shortcuts.