• andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    How does one get off the energy drinks to stay awake and beer to fall asleep train? I’ve been trying to cut back to 1 Monster a day, but I get too tired to function at work without it. (And then when I’m off - I want to feel awake and active during my free time too!)

    Like, I know my stomach feels bad because 2 pipeline punches and then binging on a can of pringles + frozen dinner + beer when I get home from work is not good for me. Everything is happening too fast though for anything else to work.

    • Chocobofangirl@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I’d definitely at least suggest chugging water and getting crunchy water like apples and cucumbers in you. Also if you drink caffeine less than two hours after you wake up, your body hasn’t flushed out the sleep receptors from last night yet and you’ve gotten them shored up to hit you again later in the afternoon. Caffeine literally has zero energy in it. Speaking as someone who still drinks it but is trying to be VERY careful with the timing (never later than 6hrs before bed time, that’s the half life of Caffeine), it doesn’t give you energy. It just shuts off sleepiness temporarily, but if you were already sleepy when you drank it you’re gonna be sleepy again later. Maybe supplement with those Caffeine-free energy drinks like the gamersupps options for the placebo effect?

      (As for the beer, is a little weed an option in your area or is that just trading bad for bad? I had a can of thc plus the other thing drink once and holy damn that was the best sleep I EVER had. Finally shut the brain up.)

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Weed is part of the equation, but it’s also become something I’m kind of dependent on as well. It can really fuck up your sleep if you use it regularly and stop too.

        • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          The unfortunate truth is that the entire equation is balancing out to a stable - but shitty - equilibrium. Any deviation you make at this point will cause instability and short-term negative consequences.

          But a reduction in any (and all) of these variables will bring long-term benefits. The only solution - the only solution - is to endure the short-term consequences for long enough that you replace them with positive feedback loops and stabilize at a better equilibrium.

          When you consume less caffeine, you’ll feel tired. When you consume less alcohol, you’ll feel restless. When you consume less weed, you’ll feel agitated. All of this will contribute to shitty days and worse nights.

          But when you keep consuming caffeine, you’ll lower your baseline energy level. When you keep consuming alcohol, you’ll reduce the quality of your sleep and your time in REM. When you keep consuming weed, you’ll reduce your focus and productivity.

          But you keep going because you are hitting the negative swing of the feedback loop and doing the only thing that will immediately fix it - more.

          This shitty self-fulfilling equilibrium is likely a primary - if not the only - cause of your perpetual exhaustion. You don’t sleep enough, you don’t get enough REM while you’re asleep, and you cope with the symptoms enough to muddle through but you also ensure that it happens again the following day. Each little bad decision leads to the next.

          Find whatever will help you endure your short-term consequences without jeopardizing your long-term recovery, and you will break out of the loop. Groups, hobbies, therapy, exercise, whatever works for you. Good luck and stay strong!

          P.S. I didn’t mean to make so many assumptions or make it all about you, it’s not! But I do think this sort of thing is an epidemic and a lot of people could use some help even seeing it, let alone beating it.

          • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I think maybe there’s something larger with “hustle culture.” We’re all working ourselves to death and are trying to self medicate against the effects of things like blue light from screens and spending most of our time indoors.

            There’s just so many varieties of energy drink now. I didn’t get hooked on Red Bull or the original Monsters because they tasted like piss. Thinking back to like twenty years ago, I don’t think that gas stations were wall to wall with energy drinks.

            If I could just “opt out” of human society for like two weeks, I think I could detox.

            • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 days ago

              If I could just “opt out” of human society for like two weeks, I think I could detox.

              I, too, thought the same thing. But emotional engagement and human connectivity is requisite for recovery and growth. In other words, you need to keep doing things and being around people. Otherwise you activate and reinforce the most powerful negative feedback mechanism of them all: isolation.

              We are not the logical creatures we imagine ourselves to be. We are - ever and always - the emotional animal first. From an evolutionary perspective, the animal brain developed a long time ago, and things like logic and reasoning were only very recently stapled on top of existing structures. From a neurological perspective, the emotional centers of your brain are physically central. They activate first, and outer regions - like the prefrontal cortex - respond after. Often to rationalize whatever it is you just felt.

              When you are down (not sad, but down) - perhaps from poor sleep, caffeine withdrawal, etc - your neurochemistry is out of balance. You don’t just feel grumpy, or irritable - you are quite literally less capable of feeling happy or excited. It’s not something you can think your way out of or power through. You don’t have the right mix of serotonin and dopamine to pour a nice cocktail of happy, healthy emotional response.

              Instead, you will often find cynicism and apathy. The logical brain is stapled on top, remember. If you don’t feel happy or excited in response to a given experience, then logically, that experience does not make you happy or excited.

              You can try to explain to yourself why. Perhaps the thing shouldn’t make you happy. Perhaps it’s just yet another shallow grasp at meaning in a meaningless world, and lesser things like that aren’t meant to make someone like you happy. Perhaps it doesn’t make anybody happy, and we’re all just pretending?

              If you notice, these thoughts don’t do anything. You can’t test them, you can’t be moved by them. These thoughts don’t have any way to improve your life or the world around you. They don’t even have evidence behind them. They just go in a loop - I don’t care -> why should I care? -> nobody should care -> nobody cares -> I don’t care.

              These ‘rational’ thoughts were triggered after the emotional response. You were apathetic before the experience, not because of it.

              Maybe you’re paying attention to yourself, being mindful. Listening to your body and your thoughts and your emotions. Maybe you can recognize that you’re just tired, but that doesn’t change how you feel. The dopamine doesn’t rise, the serotonin doesn’t release. Logically - rationally - stapled on top of the way you feel - is your consciousness, explaining to itself what is happening, and still unable to move the needle of your internal experience. The emotional animal brain is still first and foremost in control and it is not getting its rewards, so it will be even less likely to generate dopamine in pursuit of those experiences again, because it didn’t work last time.

              The solution is not to opt out of society, but to opt in. Find things that invigorate you. Embrace new ideas and experiences. You feel you have no time or energy - that the world is too fast and too exhausting to do anything but exist.

              But the better you treat yourself, and the more you build of your life - the more exciting things that you plan and do for yourself and others - the more time and energy you will find.

    • sexy_peach@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      Caffeine tolerance is fully gone after 2 weeks without it. Stop drinking energy drinks at all for two weeks, then don’t start again. They’re nice for special occasions, but I don’t think it’s good to drink them every day. Maybe drink a set amount of cups of coffee per day or sth like that.

    • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      General: Drink a shitload of water and eat green things.

      Morning: take a multivitamin, vitamin D, and either sublingual B12 or methylated B-Complex.

      Throughout the day: take electrolyte supplements like potassium gluconate, magnesium citrate, or drink Gatorade or equivalent in place of the caffeine. I’ve tried Liquid IV more recently and subjectively it does feel like it works better than standard sports drinks. Light therapy can also help if your work environment is conducive to it. The good lamps are kind of expensive, though.

      Night: limit use of glowy screens for an hour before bedtime or use a blue light filter / night light type application or system setting. Take ZzzQuil, melatonin, and if you’re not opposed to it, try to supplement weed for at least some of the alcohol. Indica edibles are the best for sleep for most people. Be super careful with the dosages at first because as Snoop Dogg put it, that shit ain’t got no off button.

      Do you snore? If so, you probably have at least moderate sleep apnea. Ask your GP for a referral to a sleep specialist. You don’t have to stay overnight in a lab anymore, they have a little kit they send you home with. All of the stuff I’ve listed above is what I tried before realizing the apnea was the main problem, and it all worked to varying degrees. The CPAP has basically given me my life back after decades of not realizing how shitty the quality of my sleep really was. It made the biggest difference, but I still do all the other stuff and most days I feel like a fucking superhero compared to my previous self.

      I hope this helps!

  • jBoi
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    4 days ago

    This is the “feel miserable and sleepy all day” diet

    • rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      If you’re looking for a serious answer, not at all. Snacking all day is the opposite of fasting. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it’s not food.

      If he actually didn’t eat all day and then had a huge meal at night, that would be it. That would also be called OMAD (one meal a day), which is a type of intermittent fasting.

      • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I think this more of those “It depends” situations. Does the caffeinated drink have sugar? How many crackers? Which biological processes are you using to get a benefit from?

        If there’s no sugar in coffee, you’re body stays in a fasting state*. If you eat three crackers, you might not cause the body to release insulin. But if you’re looking to get the benefits from ketosis, then those crackers will be a problem.

        So, it depends. But zero is the safest answer.

        * The article says it may interrupt autophagy

        • jet@hackertalks.com
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          3 days ago

          Any amount of external carbs will cause the release of some amount of insulin.

          They could make baked cheese crackers (so no carbs) and then their daily snacking is just fat.

    • _____@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Take a look at how much calories crackers pack. It’s way more than I thought, I don’t eat crackers at all anymore.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yeah I was about to comment that if people do that they will get butt problems. Human digestion is gravity based, so you have to wait a few hours after a big meal to go to sleep or you’ll have partially digested food in you, irritable bowels, and leaky butthole for starters. As the problem progresses it will cause hemorrhoids and bloody stool.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Also, it should be noted that everyone is different and just as many people, if not more, can destroy a whole chimichanga platter right before bed and fly out of bed the next morning without a problem.

        I would love to be one of those people, but yah, the human body is wildly adaptable, and it’s not reliant on gravity or our astronauts would die in space. (Although there was a fear early in the space age that humans couldn’t live long without gravity.) The contents of the meal and your own body’s chemistry and adaptations have far more to do with how your meal processes than if you’re laying down or not.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Space nutrition and the biochemical changes caused in Astronauts Health due to space flight: A review Angel Dakkumadugula, Lakshaa Pankaj, Ali S Alqahtani, Riaz Ullah, Sezai Ercisli, Rajadurai Murugan

          PMCID: PMC10740090 PMID: 38144801

          Food Chem X. 2023 Sep 15;20:100875. doi: 10.1016/j.fochx.2023.100875

          7.3. Abnormal digestion and absorption

          Digestion and absorption are disturbed due to microgravity primarily because the absence of gravity alters the normal functioning of the gastrointestinal system. In microgravity, the absence of gravitational forces significantly impacts the motility of the gastrointestinal tract. Peristaltic movements, which help propel food through the digestive system, are diminished or altered. This can result in slower transit times and inefficient movement of food through the digestive tract, leading to digestive disturbances (Yang et al., 2020).

          In microgravity, fluids in the body shift towards the upper body, causing fluid volume changes and redistribution. This can result in a decrease in blood volume and an increase in fluid accumulation in the head, leading to a condition known as “puffy face syndrome.” The altered fluid dynamics can affect the function of the digestive system. Microgravity can disrupt the normal functioning of the stomach, leading to gastrointestinal discomfort and gastric upset.

          The gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract, plays a crucial role in digestion and nutrient absorption. Microgravity can lead to changes in the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome, which can impact the breakdown and absorption of nutrients. These alterations may also contribute to gastrointestinal issues and nutrient deficiencies. Due to the effects of microgravity on digestion and absorption, astronauts may have altered nutritional requirements. Nutritional supplements and meal plans are designed to meet the unique needs of astronauts during space missions (Yang et al., 2020, Amidon et al., 1991).


          Amidon G.L., Gary A., DeBrincat N.N. Effects of gravity on gastric emptying, intestinal transit, and drug absorption. Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. 1991;31:968–973. doi: 10.1002/j.1552-4604.1991.tb03658.x.

          Yang J.-Q., et al. The effects of microgravity on the digestive system and the new insights it brings to the life sciences. Life Sciences and Space Research. 2020;27:74–82. doi: 10.1016/j.lssr.2020.07.009.

          • ameancow@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            This is all true but not the “rule” and no part of any of these studies says that digestion is “gravity based” and in fact many astronauts have no problem with their digestion. Some do, some don’t. Space and microgravity can exacerbate issues and cause acid reflux for all the reasons cited, but again, not the rule, and most astronauts adapt. UK astronaut Tim Peake has given talks about how you feel full faster because the lack of gravity’s “tug” but otherwise, as this paper describes, the primary force for pushing food down and through your winding tubes is peristalsis, in some people this action is strong enough for astronauts or burrito-eaters to not feel ANY ill effects eating and then changing orientation, in some people, everything flies right out both ends.

            Either way, most bodies adapt to conditions they’re in regularly, and it’s just wrong to characterize digestion as reliant on gravity and an upright position, or eating before bed as leading inevitably to “irritable bowels, and leaky butthole, hemorrhoids and bloody stool.”

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              I’m glad you reversed your stance after being presented the facts, thank you for being reasonable.

              • ameancow@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                Oh, so you’re not having a conversation but you’re in fact unhinged. I see now. Have a good one. blocked.

                • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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                  3 days ago

                  You said it wasn’t gravity based, cited space travel, I provided evidence directly contradicting you and you said “yes thats all true, but [paragraph] [paragraph]”

    • adj16@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Just gonna throw a random one out and hope it lands for ya: Raging Burrito in Decatur, Georgia. So good, so hefty.