Quantified self

[manux]

This thread is to discuss quantified self. Maybe I'm not the only one wanting to measure, understand and improve myself. This topic encapsulates all kinds of things from food/diet to exercise to sleep to stress management,... etc. Anything that can (potentially) improve/worsen life quality and/or life expectancy.

One of the most interesting things I have been doing lately is measuring heart rate variability(HRV), sleep and sleep quality. For sleep quality biggest thing I have found out is that blocking blue light at least for me has significant effect on sleep quality and ease of falling asleep. I got an Oura ring and using it I saw I get almost no deep sleep(0-30min night). After googling around how to increase deep sleep I bought blue light blocking glasses and I wear them now 2 hours in the evening before sleeping. Filtering out blue light has doubled deep sleep as measured by oura. Blocking blue light also makes me super tired which makes falling asleep easier.

Are there other people experimenting with things for self improvement, feeling happier, sleeping better, recovering better from exercise, living longer etc? What kind of things are you doing and how are you measuring improvement? HRV is one thing I'm now super interested in and I'm following how different things I do affect HRV. I'm also actively working to improve HRV.

For reference this is the device I use for measuring sleep and heart rate variability(HRV)

 

[manux]

Below is pretty good talk about HRV and why one might want to pay attention to it. In short it correlates really well to how recovered/stressed one is be it physical or mental stress. Improving HRV makes at least me feel better and more in the "zone/happier". There isn't a magic number that is good but getting your personal trend on HRV and then working with is good.

 

[orangpelupa]

hmm i dont know what im posting this is gonna be right for this thread or not but.. here we go:

* unenergetic body: fixed by playing beat saber everyday at morning and night
* stress: fixed by playing beat saber everyday at morning and night
* boredom: fixed by playing beat saber everyday at morning and night
* feeling gloomy: fixed by playing beat saber everyday at morning and night

With beatsaber,

* i feels energetic
* i feel less stressed, less tense, less anoyyed at work.
* im no longer bored, i feel like my life have purpose (getting high score full combo hohohoho)
* i feel happy

now my problem... what happen when i got bored of beat saber? O_O

 

[manux]

I found video below interesting. Pretty compact packet on all kinds of hacks people are experimenting to better themselves. Not that I would be first in line to get stem cell injections in my private parts but some people are,...

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Well for me health is often associated with my weight. I've been staying in Thailand for the last 4-5 winters. (4-5 due to the first one being a shorter than the other trips) and I've pretty much always gained around 15kgs of weight, which I then burn in Finland during the work season, only to repeat the next time This time I decided to burn those 15kgs and thus avoid doing that during the summer. I'm on track so far and actually have 10 day or so diet break starting this Thursday! I'll do most of my weight training exercises during these plus calorie periods and while I'm cutting I'll just do walking and disc golf. I went super hard the last two weeks with my diet and looking forward to take a little break. I've been sleeping pretty good lately, which is good.

 

[manux]

Well for me health is often associated with my weight. I've been staying in Thailand for the last 4-5 winters. (4-5 due to the first one being a shorter than the other trips) and I've pretty much always gained around 15kgs of weight, which I then burn in Finland during the work season, only to repeat the next time This time I decided to burn those 15kgs and thus avoid doing that during the summer. I'm on track so far and actually have 10 day or so diet break starting this Thursday! I'll do most of my weight training exercises during these plus calorie periods and while I'm cutting I'll just do walking and disc golf. I went super hard the last two weeks with my diet and looking forward to take a little break. I've been sleeping pretty good lately, which is good.

You have cracked the system. Thailand for winters sounds amazing and finnish summer is simply the best

 

[DuckThor Evil]

You have cracked the system. Thailand for winters sounds amazing and finnish summer is simply the best

I am not complaining I also have 4 weeks of holiday in September in Crete . Got to be careful with the finances, but this becomes easier every year.

 

[green.pixel]

Dr Evil, do you work online/have your own business which can you manage from abroad, so you can enjoy split Thai-Finland residence like that?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Dr Evil, do you work online/have your own business which can you manage from abroad, so you can enjoy split Thai-Finland residence like that?

I used to have a business, but that doesn't really come in to play with anything anymore. Now when I am in Thailand I do zero work, I do all the work in Finland. The company I work for always requires people to work during the extended summer period to substitute holidays for the regular workers and they are of course happy to hire people that already know the job and there has been excellent over time opportunities.

The work has various tasks related to making products into silicon discs and happens inside a clean room environment. Not too hard or stressful makes it easy to put in the hours. The place runs 24/7 365 in five shifts. My shift is the weekend, so I work 12h on Saturday and Sunday. In Finland you get double the hours from Sunday work, so those two days give me already 36h weekly hours and I still have 5 days left to do overtime in any of the 3 Monday-Friday shifts. Next summer I will also do a part time contract to another company with very flexible hours to have work on those weeks when overtime is not available at my main job. I try to do at least 2 "monster" months which are basically all work, but that will already bring most of the money I need for the winter.

I would say that compared to a regular fella in Finland I work for 6 months, but get salary for around 10 months due to the overtime and I more than make up the missing 2 months with highly optimized budget control and general choices supporting this lifestyle, you can save quite a bit by optimizing things and not putting money on things that bring little to no benefit. The hourly salary is not really very good, but after all the fees and life expenses I'm able to save a very high percentage of it. Our progressive taxing system also makes it so that I don't have to pay a ton of taxes as the general yearly income is quite modest, feels like the system is made for me. I have zero dept and only have to pay low maintenance fees of my apartment. Sometimes I rent my place in Finland during the winter, effectively bringing my living costs in Finland close to zero.

I could get some work here and stay the whole year, but I like the Finnish summer and of course family and friends are there. The current system is a good mix for me.

 

[orangpelupa]

now my problem... what happen when i got bored of beat saber? O_O

dangit. bored with beat saber a bit (NEED NEW TRACKS!!!) and my mood goes downhill fast.

combined with my leave got delayed until dunno when...bleh

 

[manux]

dangit. bored with beat saber a bit (NEED NEW TRACKS!!!) and my mood goes downhill fast.

combined with my leave got delayed until dunno when...bleh

Try polybius, it gets me in the zone

 

[manux]

I found this talk about diet pretty interesting

 

[orangpelupa]

Try polybius, it gets me in the zone

already blown my money on ace combat 7

hopefully it have good enough VR mode

 

[manux]

My quest to improve sleep quality took a giant leap ahead after 23andme gene tests. I found out that I have genetic deficiency in absorbing zinc and copper. Looking at what those deficiencies mean made my blood results from many past years make much more sense. Too bad my doctor never figured that out and just said my blood values are normal to me, don't worry. Very curious to see if my blood values and immune system become stronger now that I'm supplementing zinc and copper.

When I started to use oura to measure sleep I got only 20minutes of deep sleep per day(average from multiple weeks). After fixing sleep hygiene issues, blue light filtering etc. I got my average to around 40 minutes. Adding zinc and copper supplement raised my weekly/monthly average to ~60 minutes per night. This starts to be reasonable for a person of my age. For zinc it was very surprising for me to find out that most of the zinc supplements don't work(for me). Through sheer luck I tried zinc acetate tablets that absorb through mouth and those do wonders for me. Those tablets are claimed to help on fighting flu/common cold and I was feeling like getting sick, tried tablets and Boom, my sleep quality went through the roof and has stayed up ever since.

I have all the obviously working ducks in the row. I'm now experimenting with woo woo things that might not work at all. Red light/near infra red light seems interesting. Leds around 660nm and 850nm are good if one wants to experiment with red/near infra light. The somewhat proven results from those lights relate to skin condition/collagen production, wound healing, fertility. There are some woo woos related to joint pain/muscle pain/recovery, testosterone levels, blood pressure, brain health, fat loss, lymph node drainage improvement, ... Interesting stuff but quite unproven and not really worth it until sleep, food and exercise are optimized.

edit. If you are wondering why I obsess about deep sleep it's following: During deep sleep brain cells shrink and there is fluid flowing between cells doing cleaning. This cleaning process or lack of it is correlated with brain health. I very much would like to stay sharp as I get older. One of the things is that aging lessens the amount of deep sleep we get. The quest is to slow down effects of aging as much as possible. These things start to matter when things are going right/wrong for tens of years.

 

[orangpelupa]

@manux if you sleep at noon, maybe it's easier to get into deep sleep?

For me, I can quickly get into deep sleep when sleeping at noon compared to at night (according to cheap Chinese smart watch).

But I always wake up groggy with headache after noon deepsleep. If I only nap for ~15 minutes. I woke up with fresh feeling.

 

[manux]

@manux if you sleep at noon, maybe it's easier to get into deep sleep?

For me, I can quickly get into deep sleep when sleeping at noon compared to at night (according to cheap Chinese smart watch).

But I always wake up groggy with headache after noon deepsleep. If I only nap for ~15 minutes. I woke up with fresh feeling.

I'm trying to avoid naps as much as possible. My focus is getting solid good nights sleep that carries me over the day. Often(not always) needing naps means one isn't sleeping well over night and that causes the need for naps. My sleep is super solid after working on it for 10months or so. Very happy about where my sleep is now.

This is great book on sleep and why/how we sleep: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325