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Blog #23 for HONO1397

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 For this part of the personal blog I want to discuss a caffeine problem I have dealt with for some time. As you know through my previous blogs, I’ve struggled with sleeping for a couple of weeks and although I blame it on me staying up late, the reason behind me staying up late is because of caffeine. It is difficult to explain and it’s even harder to open up about it but I’ve realized that I consume a hefty amount of caffeine. I’ve noticed that I tend to be more attracted to caffeine by the end of the night rather than in the morning or throughout the day. This obviously results in my inability to sleep and why you read that I’ve literally gone to bed at 4am for consecutive days. I drink at least one caffeinated drink a day and in some instances, just because I need a drink to go along with my food I’ll sip on another one. The effects that caffeine used to have on me no longer exist, the only neurological effect my body has is the blocking of the adenosine receptors in the brain whic
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Blog #22 for HONO1397

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 Hello sleep bloggers, I hope whoever reads this finds you well. For this weeks in-class lectures and discussions we talked about the religious and faith related topics that are tied to sleep. We looked at a lot of Bible verses, and by a lot I mean a LOT of verses. Most of them came from the book of Pslams and it was mostly pieces that David and Solomon wrote. These chapters related to how we fell asleep knowing God protects us and how He guides us to some sort of revelation that comes through sleep. There was also this topic of being asleep and having to wake up in order to acquire a certain type of understanding and maturity. The Bible also mentions this idea of being able to receive proper and true rest and how we are able to receive that through Christ alone. We also analyzed a chapter from John Bigelow’s The Mystery of Sleep. In this chapter we analyzed how through sleep not only are we able to recover in all aspects but how we also recover and regenerate spiritually. Bigelow disc
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Blog #21 for HONO1397

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 DEAR BLOGGE- Wait, there we go. Ahem… Dear bloggers, This week’s in class lectures were rather interesting, as are all of the lectures we’ve learned and discussed about so far. This week we we were presented with the opportunity to read a research article written by Roger Schmidt. This piece of the research of the enlightenment era and the introduction to certain things and objects which have affected sleep as a whole played a primary role for the class’s overall topic of sleep. The article, titled “Caffeine and the Coming of the Enlightenment” named for us three objects which aroused the want/need to stay awake rather than sleep and spend time with God. Schmidt argued that we were leaning more and more away from God by desiring to stay awake, whether by stimulants, hobbies and time consuming readings, and even the concept of time and its present existence in our lives. Caffeine was argued to have kept the men and women of God away from God since the only way we could really be with G
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Blog #20 for HONO1397

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 This weeks sleep schedule was a bit of a weird and inconsistent one. I was trying to figure out why my sleep schedule would not get fixed, even after I continuously went to bed rather early the week before and the one before that but I had no clue what my body was doing.  Sunday morning, I woke up around 10am to go to church and I felt tired but it easily went away as soon as I got in the shower and headed to church. That night, I slept like a newborn and went to bed at 11pm, a first in such a long time. I woke up at around 9:30am, just with barely enough time for me to get ready and  head to class. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but might I add that I had no caffeine the entire day. Once nighttime came however, I felt as if I had drank about 600mg+ of caffeine because I was wired and wide awake. I would not be able to go to sleep until 4:30am or so. Because of the lack of sleep, I missed my first and only class Tuesday morning (sorry Dr. Strovas) and woke up just minutes
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Blog #19 for HONO1397

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 This week for our weekly class discussion we took a look at a well developed article relating sleeping habits. This article was written by Arthur Roger Ekirch and was titled Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles. Essentially what it covered was a bit of an unorthodox and not so much researched topic relating sleep which was the sleeping habits of individuals within the 1600s. The article touched bases with sleeping schedules, sleep routines, the pros and cons of the lack of light back in these pre-industrial times and even talked about this idea which apparently was very common called first and second sleep. So basically what that entailed is basically what you read: two sleeping hours within one night. Yeah, I know, its weird and crazy and unordinary and why even do that?? Oh your poor body.. Yeah so these folks would go to bed within 9 or 10 pm, wake up an hour or two after midnight and then go back to bed until sunrise. And wait ‘till you read this: in bet
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Blog #18 for HONO1397

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 A lot to tell and a lot to tell to you indeed! We are arriving at the last stretch of this semester and we are finally at that final stage where it is all finally coming together. All the final assignments and essays are being given out, final presentations are beginning to get prepared, there is lots to do with what seems to be very little time which will somehow find a way to go by even faster than we expect. For our sleep class we are getting ready to write both our critical analysis for a scholarly article as well as the big research and analysis essay! I am excited for both in terms of what the assignments entail and how we are able to use what we’ve learned to write about our topics.  For my analysis essay I decided to write about a topic that I am very much familiar with as far as the consumption of it which is caffeine. I will be talking about caffeine and its effects on the human body and how it affects everyone differently. In my research paper I want to talk about what exac
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Blog #17 for HONO1397

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 This week’s learning consisted of some wiiild things that are both pretty interesting and incredible but scary and worrisome as well. We got the opportunity to dive into yet another field of work which is the military and we focused on the engineering of products, food items, and the pharmaceutical research industry that is working to keep our troops awake in the battle field. There are multiple studies that were done to see what sort of chemical or food/drink could keep our military troops alert as much and for as long as possible. It was found that caffeine (duhh) reigned supreme and was added to nearly every food item troops would be given. From apple sauce with caffeine to caffeinated gum and beef jerky, there have been a lot of items which are being manufactured to boost troops wakefulness. Another research is beginning to test out pharmaceuticals that boost endurance by increasing red blood cell productions. There is also pills that help fight off insomnia as well as the effects
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