DienstagNun ich bin im Iran. Alles ist hier furchtbar normal. Die Einreise ist entspannendunspanned. Nur eins fehlt Mein Rucksack. All meine Befrchtungen werden war. Er ist in Kuwait oder Dubai oder inshallah in Lampukistan. Wrde man in Europa jetzt wohl einen hbschen Bericht ausfllen fllt es hier schon schwer jemanden zu finden der Englisch kann und sich einem annimmt.Mit Hilfe ei
Mida Creek eco camp
Mida CreekWe had read about a great sounding Eco Camp a couple of kilometers away called Mida Creek Eco Camp. After many frustrating hours trying to figure out the area codes for the phones the whole region had changed leaving all the information in our book absolutely useless we managed to get in touch with Billie the manager who booked us in to come and visit for a couple of days. Mida Creek i
Andaman Bond
A few thoughts on Thailand so far Yes you can fit 14 hot and sweaty tourists into the back of a flat bed truck posing as a bus without them complaining as they think it is all part of the adventure. Yes you can fit 4 people onto a small mopedmotorbike. Yes you can breast feed your baby whilst being a passenger on a mopedmotorbike. Yes you can take home the swordfish you just caught on the
uruguaysian persuasion
Hi everyonewell its definitely been ages since we last wrote anything on here. Mainly because we are lazy haha. Well when we left off last time we were leaving BA. BA was fab but we just had to get out of there mainly because we wanted to make it to a little place called Gualeguaychu pronounced wahlehwaychu where they have a massive carnival every saturday of februray.So we woke up very
Feb24march 2
Feb 24Day 40Today we got up and had a slowish morning we were hoping the weather would hold up for us to go do our big air experience. Around 10 or so we caught a taxi to the bridge where we had to walk through a small customs point to get on the bridge itself.After we signed our life away we were off. First up was the flying fox zip cord thing. It was nothing exilerating but a beautiful view. T
First month of flying Month of November 2007
Well I do have to apologize to all as I was away for awhile..been busy with flying and yeah now I have sometime off to write it down again Let start with story about 2 years ago I will start with my first flight and layover ever I have done in my flying carreer TXL Berlin We were accually really got excitting about the first month roster we have got and that what I have got on the first f
Day 8
I awoke to monsoonal weather today and it looked as if the day was going to be a complete write off from the start. I was feeling pretty down due to a combination of a lack of sleep and nervousness about moving on from Rio. I'd had to change rooms for one night due to a mix up in room bookings and I wasn't altogether happy about it. To compound things the guy sleeping above me snored horribly a
Patagonia Puerto Madryn
Total hours on bus 52Our first glimpse of Patagonia was from the small beach town of Puerto Madryn which has a very different pace of life to BA unsuprisingly. There is not a lot to do here but it is a good base camp for the two parks nearby and boasts some pretty stunning views. The past couple of days have been very much about seeing as much wildlife as we can before we move south where it be
Month of December 2007 Katmandu Maldives Algeria Dhaka Bangaladetch
The month of Yearend The roster was not that bad as I m new..another new 4 destination out of over 80 destionations to cover...Start with Katmandu Nepal I Love this place as it is such a very old town and country the architech art and all the old style building and living the people are very nice they are all smilling as well try to talk to us even they can't speak english I do remember to
"Hello. My name is Marc Josemans I’m a professional drug dealer I’m proud of it."
As dorky as this may be I thought our criminal law moot court was fascinating this morning so I'm going to share some nerdy law school stuff. To help hold your attention I'll bring out now that it revolves around the selling of soft drugs in the Netherlands Dutch drug culture in general...The Netherlands is quite famous or infamous for its drug policy. While under the 1976 Opium Act the se
The Hermitage
Finally a hint of Spring. This past weekend was the warmest I have experience since being here and everyone else on the trip was ecstatic over it as well. The sad part is all this excitement was expended on a measly thirtynine degrees but for us and for St. Petersburg that is a heavenly change considering the previous temperatures were in the mid teens. For the first time we were able to ditch
Spring in Gaspe Is it too early
Along with some friends my husband and I are considering a train trip to Gaspe in mid May. I am just wondering if it will be too early to experience this unknown to us area We would plan on spending a couple of days there perhaps renting a car so that we could drive around and see all there is to see. Will things be closed because it is too early in the season
Rome Day 1
Today was the first full day of the trip. After sleeping for 12 hours we headed to the hotel roof for a wonderful breakfast buffet consisting of meats cheeses and pastries. After breakfast the sightseeing began. First stop was Trevi Fountain located just a couple of blocks from our hotel. This was also the location to pick up the hop onhop off bus which we took on a 2 hour tour throughout
Serengeti Ngorongoro and Zanzibar
After the Masai Mara it was time to cruise down to Tanzania which is an exaggeration in itself owing to the shitness of many of the roads in Africa Irsquove had the good fortune to travel along its almost like driving along a cattle grid permanently. We stopped of for camp in a place called Arusha at a campsite named Snake Park which held a large collection of snakes from huge man eating Afr
Costa Rica
Pura VidaThe first thing you may notice about Ticos is the ldquoPura Vidardquo. This symbolizes a way of thinking or an idea of letting things go and simply enjoying life. After everything I had heard of Costa Rica the people Ticos and the beauty itrsquos not hard to understand why I have wanted to visit such a place for many years.Our itinerary for our first visit to this wonderful
Real chocolate bliss
I've now headed off to the other side of the country to Gisenyi on Lake Kivu border of DRC. Was fortunate to have two empty buses getting here and so didn't feel bad about my bag taking up so much room nor have to pay for 2seats. I was sat next to some guy who clearly wanted to practise his English but he did have some delicious swiss chocolate give and take a littleWe drove through hilly c
Taste of Life Shimla
I was not very sure to go there since it is a long journey but after seeing the nature and view it is worth for any single moment you spend in airports.It is a short flight from Delhi airport every day King Fisher has service with small planes. Shimla airport is on top of the hills you are at 2000mt and all of a sudden you land on the shortest runway you might ever experience. No need to descr
Zeo Personal Sleep Coach
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast. -William Shakespeare, Macbeth
The company that makes the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach kindly sent me one of their devices to try out. It’s a nifty little gadget, and if you are a techno geek, you would probably love it. It’s a fascinating toy; but for insomnia, there’s no evidence that it provides any benefit over standard treatment with sleep logs and sleep hygiene advice.
Polysomnography is done overnight in a sleep lab and costs around $1000. It records multiple parameters: EEG, EKG, EMG, breathing, O2, CO2, and limb movements. It is most commonly used to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a serious condition that is linked to hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke, and increased mortality. OSA can be effectively treated with CPAP and other measures. About 50% of snorers have sleep apnea. We typically think of it as a disease of obese, loudly snoring older men, but even young children can have it: snoring is probably never normal in children and should be investigated.
The Zeo is the first sleep monitor available for consumers to use at home. It doesn’t pretend to do what polysomnography does. It can’t diagnose sleep apnea. It is billed as an educational and motivational tool, not intended for the diagnosis or treatment of sleep disorders. A unit that looks sort of like an alarm clock sits on your bedside table and communicates wirelessly with a comfortable soft elastic headband that positions embedded sensors over your forehead to pick up your brain waves.
It provides a graph of the entire night showing when you were awake, in light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. It gives a readout of how many minutes you were in each stage and how that compares to your average readings. Most importantly, it gives a ZQ score: a single number that adds the “good sleep” numbers and subtracts the awakenings to provide a single score that you can use to compare your sleep quality from night to night and to compare your sleep to that of the average person of your age.
The information can be uploaded to the Internet and viewed on the company’s website. It is then used to provide individualized coaching. 6 months of coaching is included in the purchase price of $399, and it can be extended for another 6 months for $99.
Normal sleep architecture:
- We should not fall asleep the moment our head hits the pillow: that indicates a sleep deficit. It normally takes 20 minutes or so to get to sleep.
- REM (Rapid Eye Movement): 20-25% of total sleep time. Normally absent during the first 90 minutes of sleep and then occurs about every 90 minutes. Was thought to be the stage where dreams occur, but now we know dreams occur in every stage of sleep.
- NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement): 75-80% of total sleep time. Includes light sleep and deep sleep.
- Awakenings during the night are normal and more common as we age. We don’t remember awakenings that last less than a minute. The Zeo registers awakenings that last at least 2 minutes.
According to the manufacturer, two scientifically controlled studies have compared the Zeo’s sleep stage readings to polysomnography readings and found them valid. But how useful is it to know this information? We don’t know what the optimal time in each stage is, and we don’t yet know how to increase REM sleep even if we wanted to. One uncontrolled pre-marketing study found that home users reported significant improvements in the quality of their sleep and better functioning in the daytime, but with no control group these results are uninterpretable.
The ZQ score is an arbitrarily constructed score that has not been validated. If your score goes up 10 points are you really sleeping better? Is it a useful measurement? It is handy in one sense: my husband used to ask me if I slept well, and I would answer “yes” or “no” or “fairly well I guess.” Now I can tell him “68” or “93.” I can see a downside: it would be easy to become psychologically dependent on these numbers and obsess if your score went down. I lent my machine to a friend to try, and immediately found myself missing it. I had come to look forward to seeing my ZQ report every morning.
I chose not to try the online sleep coaching because I thought I could do my own coaching. It’s not hard to read about sleep hygiene measures and apply them, to notice whether the ZQ score goes down if you drink coffee in the evening, etc.
Zeo offers another intriguing service. You can set the alarm and ask it to wake you up to half an hour earlier, picking a time that you are in the stage of sleep that is easiest to awaken from, so you are not violently jolted awake from a deep sleep. I don’t use an alarm (I’m retired and have the luxury of sleeping until I wake naturally) so I didn’t get to try this function out. I don’t know if the benefits of gentle awakening would outweigh the harm of being awakened up to half an hour early and having total sleep time reduced.
Insomnia is a common problem and sleeping pills are not the answer. Insomnia can be treated effectively by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): it works to some extent in almost all patients, and has long-term success. It involves counseling in sleep hygiene, cognitive therapy and stimulus control therapy, and when necessary, sleep restriction therapy. It corrects misunderstandings about normal sleep, establishes realistic expectations, and uses simple relaxation techniques and measures like establishing regular sleep hours and a quiet 30-to-60 minute pre-bedtime routine, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, getting out of bed when you can’t sleep, using the bed only for sleep and sex, exercising during the day but not close to bedtime, keeping the bedroom quiet and at a comfortable temperature, banishing pets from the bedroom, addressing stress issues. Patients are instructed to keep a sleep diary, recording how long they slept, how often they woke up during the night, how refreshed they felt in the morning, whether any factors disturbed their sleep, when they exercised, when they drank coffee or alcohol, etc. It’s hard to see how the Zeo could add anything important to this approach except as a crutch to help motivate patients who are not initially cooperative. What I would like to see is a controlled study comparing optimum sleep hygiene and cognitive behavioral therapy to the use of a Zeo and online sleep coaching. One problem would be picking a reliable measure of sleep improvement to assess outcomes.
The Zeo program might turn out to be the best initial approach to insomnia, since it is less expensive than multiple office visits with a provider for CBT. But I wonder if a web-based program providing the same information about sleep hygiene and giving feedback and encouragement might be just as effective without the device. Pending controlled studies, I will have to assume that it is just a gimmick to enlist patients in doing what they should be doing anyway.
=============
Note: My source for the information about normal sleep, sleep apnea, and treatment of insomnia was a CME course on sleep disorders that I attended in Seattle on Feb. 20, 2010, sponsored by the AAFP in conjunction with the American College of Chest Physicians and presented by a panel of experts in sleep disorders.
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The Thompson Twins run for Senate; One conservative, and one libertarian
by Eric Dondero
No, we're not talking of the 1980s British New Wave band of the same name. And in actuality they're not technically Twins. But they are brothers, only two years apart.
There are increasing indications that former two-term Governor Tommy Thompson is preparing to launch a bid for the US Senate, challening ultra-progressive Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold.
A recent poll by Rasmussen showed Thompson ahead in a hypothetical match-up with Feingold, by five points. That's actually a slight increase in his margin, from a similar poll conducted a month ago.
Now CBS News quotes a top Thompson aide saying the chance that he'd run is now about 70% Yes.
From CBS:
Thompson has been the marquee Republican in the state for decades and was elected as governor four times. He also served as secretary of health and human services in the Bush administration and ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
He has been rumored to be interested in a political comeback, and today's news [beginning of fundraising effort] is the clearest indication yet that he could be doing just that.
If Thompson runs [that would put] another Democratic Senate seat in play for a takeover and increasing the possibility that Republicans could win control of the Senate in the midterm elections.
Interestingly, Tommy's younger brother Ed, has already announced for the State Senate.
Ed Thompson is the Mayor of Tomah, population 8,000 in southern Wisconsin. He's also quite the local celebrity; a former professional boxer, owner/operator of the downtown Tomah tavern/keno parlor The TeePee.
And he's a Libertarian, with a capitol 'L'; longtime member of the Libertarian Party. He is now seeking the Republican nomination to run against a Democrat incumbent for the local Senate seat.
If Thompson the elder does indeed jump in, there would be an instant novelty factor no doubt benefiting both candidates, of a brother running for the US Senate, and another brother for the State Senate. Precisely the stuff, the major network morning shows and cable news networks love to carry.
Not too mention the boost in votes for both campaigns such a novelty would bring. A voter in southern Wisconsin might be more inclined to pull the lever for the "ole' Thompson Boys" just to shake things up in Madison and Washington.
Full Disclosure: I was once a patron of Ed's Tavern in Tomah. While traveling through Wisconsin I stopped by for a visit. I was fortunate enough to have met him while there. He had his signature apron on, and was tending bar. He served me up a lager, or two.
Case of the Ft. Jackson Five suspected Muslim agents, gets even weirder
LR FOLLOW-UP
From Eric Dondero:
Three weeks ago CBN broke the story of 5 Muslim US Army troops suspected of an attempt to poison the food supply at Ft. Jackson base in South Carolina. The 5 were translators in a special division of the Army for strictly Middle Eastern recruits.
Now an update from CBN.com:
Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said the soldiers' laptops had been seized and were being analyzed. Congressional officials with knowledge of the case said cell phones and Arabic writings had been confiscated as well.
Wilson said the soldiers were discharged because of unrelated incidents of minor theft.
Four of the five have been discharged from the Army with "administrative separation," (military lingo for less-than-honorable).
Erick Stakelbeck, CBN News Terrorism Analyst advances the story, noting that the five now ex-soldiers are all from the metro-Washington DC area. His source indicates that there's reason to believe that they were allegedly in touch with another group of Washington, D.C. area Muslims "that traveled to Pakistan to wage jihad against U.S. troops in December. That group was arrested by Pakistani authorities, also just before Christmas."
