12/06/2022
Here are your 3 Brain-based tips and tools to help you get a “head start” on the week…
🔅 Training Tool I’m Loving: HRV Training
HRV is the most reliable way of measuring whether we spend most of the day in Fight or Flight (sympathetic nervous tone), or Rest and Recovery (Parasympathetic nervous tone). And it turns out that it is one of the best measures of stress and overall health (including mental health)
HRV biofeedback technology can help you learn how to raise or lower your HRV, which then raises or lowers your stress STATE (how you feel in the moment). We use an advanced form of this technology at Vital, to not only give you the tools to lower your stress on command, but also because it acts synergistically with neurofeedback to create deeper changes in your stress TRAIT (how you typically feel; your “normal”).
🔅 Sleep Tracking Insight I’m Appreciating: Alcohol and REM Sleep
Holiday parties have officially begun, and there is no shortage of alcohol when celebrating with co-workers or friends and family.
I remember reading multiple papers about the role of alcohol in reducing REM sleep (dream sleep), but the lesson didn’t sink in until I noticed my sleep monitor reporting nights of 1 minute of REM sleep after having a drink or two.
Well, REM sleep is vital for consolidating memories, learning retention, and emotional processing. I average 2 hours of REM sleep most nights, so this was naturally concerning.
It doesn’t mean that I won’t enjoy a drink on occasion, but I’m much more aware of the cost to my brain when I do
🔅Money Blog I’m Liking: Mr Money Mustache
This guy is smart, unconventional, and above all, thoughtful.
◦ First, I love his commitment to pursuing the “good life”,
◦ Second, he uses principles of engineering to find ways to structure our private lives so that we can actually live this “good life” by allocating our most important resources (like time and money) to the things that give us the most joy.
◦ Third, he unapologetically breaks the constraints of convention (“we always do it this way”, or “no one does that”, or “only x people do that”), which appear to be the primary barriers between the good life and our current lives
