Today I realized that I need to look at the emails I send.   My emails are probably too wordy.   I have set a new personal policy for emails that I write:  I will only use 5 sentences or less.   (I stumbled upon this website that describes the personal policy http://five.sentenc.es/)

If I cannot communicate what I have to say in 5 sentences or less I probably need to make a phone call or pay the person a visit.   People can communicate faster when talking and since the conversation is real-time followup questions can be asked right then.

The less I send maybe the less I will get in my  inbox.

 

I started writing in a journal for a couple of reasons

• In today’s fast paced world it easy to forget what was going just the other day.
• I felt I should stop to reflect on what is going on.  If live is worth living taking a few minutes every day to record the import things is a good idea.
• My journal may give some insight into my life for my children and grandchildren.
• I realized some of the most important people in history left journals – Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Lewis and Clark and many others.
• I like to look back and see where I have been from time to time; the journal helps provide the information to do that.

My journal today is a simple leather-covered notebook that cost me about $12.  A single book lasts about 6 months.

What do I write about?  I write about anything that is important going on in my life.  I have written about important accomplishments, ideas for how to solve problems, some changes I’d like to make to my diet.   I figure just about anything that is taking up cycles from my brain is good enough to go into the journal.   I find if I am working on a problem that going through the logic of how to write about it causes me to think differently.

After diner I usually set aside 20-30 minutes to write.  At least once a week I like to look back over the 7-8 days of entries.  On several occasions I am interested in a particular time and go back to that time to see what I was thinking.

In the past I have tried other methods to journal but found that putting pen to paper seems to be the most natural, relaxing and productive.

• Audio Journal – I have tried using a voice recorder to record a daily journal but found that it is very hard to go back and listen to a week’s worth of recordings.   I investigated having my computer transcribe the recordings to text but that didn’t work well.  Although an interesting experiment it just didn’t relax me.  Talking it not my favorite type of communication.  I used a Olympus Voice Record similar to this one.
• I tried using the computer to write my journal but found that it just didn’t relax me.  I work on a computer all day so the extra 30 minutes sitting in front of a computer seemed more like doing extra work. I did really like most of the journal software I used.   I feature I like the most was being able to search for keywords and dates very easily.   I have found that taking a computer on vacation or camping is difficult. Some of the tools I tried Microsoft One Note, Evernote, The Journal, and  LDS Journal
• I tried using a spiral bound notebook but found it did what every spiral bound notebook does.  The spiral binding gets squished and pages became difficult to flip. The standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ notebook just seemed too large to write in, I prefer something about half the size (it is easier to pack it too).

 

• I lost 20 lbs on the HCG diet.
• I have started taking Thyroid Replacement hormones
• I have stopped taking Sudafed daily

My sleep therapy is basically the same otherwise.  I have been letting the APAP adjust the pressure every night as a I sleep.   I have lowered the starting pressure of the system to 5.5 from 6.0.  I find that I spend most of my nights around the starting pressure.

Here is a typical graph from showing the pressure.

Pressure Graph for typical night

Here is a graph from an exceptional night of sleep

Graph from an exception night of sleep

My AHI and HI are remaining about the same.   I was hopping to see a significant improvement in these numbers but they pretty consistent with my previous post.

The nightly snore index has been improving significantly.  I averaged about 10-40 snores per night in December.  Through January and February my snore index is usually under 10 per night.

I just received my Didgeridoo and am starting to learn to play it.  I have not yet mastered the circular breathing part.   One thing I have noticed is I don’t breath deeply normally and it may be contributing to my sleep apnea since my breath is shallow anyway it may reduce my oxegen further when apneas occur.

 

The diet is pretty brutal for a few days after the Very Low Calorie Diet starts.  During the first week I thought about food often, there were even a few nights it was easier to go to bed than think about food.  The Very Low Calorie diet part of the diet is 500 calories per day.   We measured and prepared most of our food in advance.   It seemed weird in the sense that we really do spend a lot of time preparing meals and eating.  This left an extra amount of time during the evening.  An example of a meal (250 calories) is a 3oz piece of chicken and 2 cups of spinach.

The HCG diet does require injections of the HCG hormone.  The HCG hormone helps unlock abnormal fat and burn it.  I have given many injections over the years but this was the first time I had ever given myself an injection.

The diet consists of three phases:

• Loading  – This phase is when you eat a lot of foods.  Focused on fatty food to help you make the transition to the very low calorie diet
• Very Low Calorie Diet – This is when you will lose weight.  Eating only 500 calories per day.
• Stabilization – You keep your body weight within a 4 pound window determined by the weight on the last day of the very low calorie Diet.

Here are my results

Since the January 26, I have been maintaining my weight within 2 pounds of 207.6 on just 2000 calories per day.   I have one more week of stabilization at 2000 calorie and then plan to decrease my calories and increase my exercise to finish up and get to my next goal weight of 190 lbs.  Since college I have not been able to get below 195 lbs but I am hopeful that I can get there.

 

For the last three years I have had a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine to treat my sleep apnea.   The machine works by blowing air into my nasal passage. The positive pressure of the airflow inflates the airway much like a balloon so that it will not collapse and obstruct my breathing.

Over the last month or so I started to question my sleep apnea therapy.  My CPAP machine is set to a fixed pressure based on one crappy night of sleep in a sleep lab three years ago.  The CPAP machine I got was not too smart; it recorded every four hours that I used the machine and the total amount of time it has run.  I don’t have any other data to look at for how effective my therapy is other than how do I feel.  Some mornings I feel great other not so.

At the start of December I decided to try a new approach and get more information about what is really going on when I sleep.   I purchased a new DeVilbiss Travel Auto Positive Airway Pressure Machine (APAP).   The APAP machine works on the same principle as the CPAP except that it has sensors and can automatically adjust to the minimum effect pressure.   I can  collect lots of information from the APAP machine to that with my doctor.

My experiment for December:

1. Baseline my sleep for a week with the new machine
2. Stop taking Sudafed and see if my sleep is impacted

Baseline sleep for one week with new machine

My sleep didn’t look too bad during the baseline.  Here are some of the cool graphs I extracted from the monitoring software.

Apnea Hypoapnea Index(AHI) – Number of Apnea and Hypoapneas per hour

Apnea Index (AI) – Number of Apneas per hour

Stop taking Sudafed and see if my sleep is impacted

I have been taking Sudafed daily for the last 10 years for nasal congestion.  It has been nearly impossible to get off the stuff.  I have not made it more than a few nights without it for the last 10 years.  I have researched what the side effects of Sudafed are.  But I could not find any conclusive information on the long term side effects.  I am making an educated guess that over time the body becomes resistant to the effects of the drug.  However the symptoms that it relieves are likely to get much worse when Sudafed is stopped after long term usage.

I have experienced a full 1.5 weeks of sleep without Sudafed.  The first 4 days were pretty horrible,  I experienced stuffy nose, dry eyes and lack of energy.

From my experiment I determined:

• I need about 15 minutes more sleep per day than I did when taking the Sudafed
• My AHI/AI numbers increased but are still in range of effective therapy

Other observations

I have noticed in the nightly report my snore index has increased significantly without Sudafed.   The snore index is related to the vibrations (not audible) that are sensed by the machine.  I believe the algorithm used by the APAP detects snore vibrations prior to actual snores and increases pressure until the snore vibration stops.  The system makes a similar correction to bring the pressure down. When it lowers the pressure and starts detecting snore vibrations it will raise the pressure to minimize snore vibrations.   The real advantage of an APAP is the constant search for the minimal effective pressure.  The snore index is the primary feedback the system has on how you are responding to therapy.

Here is a snore index chart for a typical night taking Sudafed.

Here is a snore index for a typical night with no Sudafed.  Notice that there is a significant increase in the snore index events without Sudafed.

Conclusion

I don’t really want to use Sudafed again and correlate the results of my experiment with and without Sudafed.  However  I can say that Sudafed seems to help sleeping with Sleep Apnea but its effect is not significant and the long terms risks of Sudafed are probably not worth taking.

I have been without Sudafed for a little over a week and feel pretty good now.  The first 4 days were very difficult.  I recommend that if you quit Sudafed you start on a Friday and hopefully by Tuesday morning the worst of it is behind you.

Please remember these are my results,  they may not match yours.  Please consult with a professional before altering your sleep therapy.

Later this year I want to experiment with playing the didgeridoo.  I have read that several studies have shown it to reduce sleep apnea.

 

When I look at a typical suburban home today it only provides shelter and status.   Most people living in a suburban home do not make an income at their home.  The typical suburban homeowner goes to an office or other work environment for their income.  Almost no one I know uses the raw resources of their suburban home to create wealth.

The pioneers that settled the west would have a different view.   To the pioneer the home was shelter but it also had to produce most of their food and energy.  How do we make our suburban houses produce something today?

As 2010 draws to a close, here are a few things I want to investigate next year to see if my home can produce more and take less from me:

• Investigate a 4 kW solar system.
• Add solar shades to the house.
• Finish replacing most often used light bulbs with more efficient ones.
• Follow the watering guidelines set by Maricopa County to reduce watering.
• Investigate rainwater catching systems for the house to be used for irrigation
• Expand my garden and add more fruit trees to the property.
• Investigate raising 2-4 chickens but not sure how that will go over with the neighbors.
• Look for rural land that could be used initially for camping but ultimately some sort of homestead.  A place that could produce a significant amount of my food and energy.

 

When we left New Hampshire we left behind a house built in 1974 that had been added on to several times.  The old house required extra energy to keep it running.  My to-do list got shorter after we sold it.  I left my 51 mile one way commute behind.  We left the bitter cold winters behind.  We took several trucks loads of accumulated stuff to the dump so that we could fit in the moving truck.  In summary, we got rid a bunch of problems and stuff we didn’t really want anymore.

When we arrived in Arizona we moved into a 4 year old home.  We bought a larger house; our living space went from 1800 sq. feet to 3300 sq. feet.  We bought new furniture to fill the new house.   We decided to buy a big screen TV.  We bought a new used car for my 22 mile commute.  Our new home has a swimming pool that our children learned to swim in.    We explored all around the Phoenix area that first year.  Our house felt like it was the way we wanted it and it worked really well for us.  In short I think first six months that we moved to Arizona were very exciting and lots of fun.  It felt like we were living the good life.

We have now been here in Phoenix for six years and it seems that some of the excitement has worn off.   For example:  our swimming pool was underutilized this year.  We have too much stuff!  We spent at least 3-4 days this year cleaning out parts of the house stuffed full of junk that we have accumulated in the last six years.

I would really like to recapture that initial excitement of when we moved to Arizona.  I think it had less to do with buying new stuff and setting up a new house than it did with being able to decide what our lifestyle here in Arizona was going to be like.  Especially when compared and contrasted against the experience that we had when we lived in New Hampshire.

 

Today I am camping in the desert.  Getting ready to fry a turkey (in peanut oil).

If you really think about it Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the ultimate self-reliant people.  They could not run down to the store to get some more food. They hunted and foraged for their feast.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for many things.  Today take a few minutes stop and think of things you are thankful  for!

 

Almost every electronic gadget needs some attention on a regular basis.  For example, my cell phone keeps alerting me about text messages I already read or reminding me of missed calls from a week ago.  Checking my banks site to make sure my paycheck was received or payment for something was process.  Most of the calls we get on our home phone are solicitations despite being the Do Not Call list.   Or even worse during election season robo-dialers call constantly on behalf of various political campaigns.

I get about 50-300 email messages a day.  If I spend one minute on each email it will take at least hour to go through my mail.  I have found the majority of my email borders on spam.

Advertising is present everywhere.  If you tune in to your television or radio there is constant advertising.  I find that the TV has very little worth watching these days.     I used to listen to the radio during my commute.  I found myself waking up dreaming about a jingle a local real estate agent used on the radio.  I realized at that point I need to turn off the commercials.  About 75% of the U.S. mail delivered to our home is advertisements.

The Internet web browser is probably one of the greatest tools ever created.  However it is easy to get lost.    I know people who waste huge amounts of time playing online games.  However, I find my quest for useless information usually gets the better of me.  It is easy for me to blow a few hours a day reading just about anything.  For example, I have found myself on the internet reading about the migratory patterns of sea turtles and unique features of byzantine architecture at 11PM.  I am not sure how I will ever put those two topics to use in my daily life.

With ubiquitous access to the internet, it is easy to get access to vast amounts of knowledge and information.  The problem is developing discipline to only look at information you are interested in.  It is easy to get distracted by all the inputs into your life (Internet, TV, Radio, Phone, etc)  you must put limits on what you will look at.  This is also a very exciting time because in human history there has never been a time where a majority of people in the world have the ability to discover a new idea every day.  The idea may not be new for all people but it is a new idea for the individual.

Here are a few things I am doing to improve my focus on a daily basis:

• When I wake up in the morning I make a pot of tea.
• As my tea water is boiling, I Sit and think about the things I will accomplish today.

• I only check my personal email in the morning, most of it gets trashed
• I try not to multitask
• I write in a journal most nights
• I cleaned my office to remove a lot of the distractions
• I allocated 20 minutes a day to read the blogs I read
• I watch no more than 1-2 hours of TV per week
• Every night I flip the world upside down.   I stand on my head for a few minutes.

 

Not long ago people planted gardens and raised a lot of their food not because they wanted to eat organic produce but because they needed the extra food.   Today we have lost much of that self-reliance.   Most of what is available in the grocery store comes in pretty plastic wrap with no connection to how it was grown.  We have lost the connection to where our food comes from.  My children don’t think vegetables with dirt on them are clean and good to eat.  Most of the Vegetables I grow are not pretty like the ones in the store. My wife is even somewhat reluctant to enjoy some of the fruits of the garden.  I grew Valencia tomato’s which have an orange color when ripe.  What is funny is that the tomatoes tasted great but they were orange not red.  Getting over the orange vs. red color was difficult for my family.

There are couple key systems that we are dependent upon in our daily lives.   What do you think will happen if food deliveries stopped at the local grocery store, a virus wiped out all the round-up ready crops, the electrical grid stopped working or city water was not available for just a few days?

Food

All major grocery stores in the United States use a just in time inventory management system.  This means that if deliveries are not made daily the store shelves start to look bare in just 1-2 days.  I know people that have no food in their home other than the leftovers they brought home from a restaurant.  Storing as little as 10 days of food could most of us through most disasters.  We can do this by adding a little to our weekly grocery shopping.  If most people had 10 days of food stored bare store shelves would be merely an annoyance.  Keep in mind most disasters will be relatively short in duration and some services will usually return in a week or so.

Most of the food in the local grocery store is grown using monoculture.  Monoculture is the practice of growing just one crop in a large area (think corn, wheat and soybeans).  These crops have very little genetic diversity and in recent years genetically modified versions have been introduced to increase harvest.  Plants that are genetically modified are changed by directly manipulating the genes of the plants in a very unnatural way.  Apparently the folks doing genetic modification have never watched any 1960 era horror films.  Once these genes have been introduced it may not be possible to remove them from the environment.  Since the plants are genetically identical the right virus or other disease could wipe the entire crop out.

In a recent mother earth news there was an article that explained changes in the type of pesticides used in the US.  We move away from pesticides that just coat the surface of the plant to ones that actually become part of the plant.  So there is no way to wash off these pesticides since they become part of the plant tissue. What if these pesticides are really bad for humans?  We may not know since the EPA study will not be complete until around 2013.

Electrical

In Phoenix, our electrical usage in the summer is extreme.  I don’t think we could live here comfortably in the summer without AC.  Even during the spring and fall, I have found no way to cool the house without AC.   The amount of power required to cool the entire house would be about 80 AMPs (At least a 10,000 watts generator to run three AC units, fridge, and maybe a fan or two).  The Electrical  system is vulnerable to lots of events (including but not limited to storms, solar flares, squirrels, drunk drivers, terrorists,…)  Just about anything can cause the electrical  system to fail.   Most of the time failure is short term, but there have been extended power outages all across the country after large scale disasters.  Some of the equipment in the system is very difficult to replace quickly.  In 2004 an electrical substation was damaged by fire leaving a large part of phoenix constrained on their electrical usage.   It took over one year for a new transformer to be delivered and installed.

Water

The water delivered to my home comes from the Colorado River via the CAP (Central Arizona Project).  The CAP is 200+ miles of canals, pipelines, and pumping stations to deliver the water to the phoenix area.  Any number of things could go wrong with this system.  Including the local water treatment facility failing (Like this failure a few years ago http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/0125Water25-ON-CP.html )

Modern society has made us dependent on these fragile systems.   I don’t think it would take a large scale disaster for some of these systems to stop working for several hours.   However a large scale disaster could take these systems off line for a week or more.  Being able to produce your own food and rely on stored food is critical.  Having the ability to generate some of you own electricity and store water is critical.  Having these capabilities will soften a catastrophe and make it just a mere inconvenience.