Let us take a moment to appreciate the complexity of the human body—both yours and mine—and how this complexity affects how and why we sleep. For that, we will turn our attention to the limbic system located in the brain. You don’t hear much about this group of structures, though you feel their effects every ..read more

You must balance everything in your mind.  If you think this always goes off without interior controversy, you're sorely mistaken ..read more

Remembering even one thing can help you. All dreams aren’t sweet. Remembering some dreams is like trying to grab motor oil streaming out of an engine: slippery, unpleasant, hot, messy, confusing, and imperfect. Like the backyard mechanic performing routine car maintenance, one can have their “oil collection container” (think dream journal or scrap paper) handy ..read more

Buy 10 drinks, your 11th is free. Stay five nights, your sixth is free. Accumulate 10,000 points by flying, shopping, and bonuses, and you get a free flight. All kinds of businesses have customer loyalty programs. Should you make a personal loyalty program where you reward yourself for being loyal to yourself? Almost every business that competes with other businesses has a customer loyalty program. You won’t find them with all businesses, however. If the business in question doesn’t have to compete with other businesses, forget about finding a loyalty program. You’re never going to see one fro ..read more

One common reason people take narcotics and hallucinogens is to “relax” and “chill out.” They want to take the edge off of the hardness of life. The dangers and disadvantages of those often-illegal drugs are well known. Who hasn’t heard of overdoses, the lost families, the problems that they cause? Why in Hell would anyone want to risk taking them? Even once? It’s a risk, of course. Nevertheless, risk that it is, users feel it’s worth it. They’ll be careful, they tell themselves. Careful: what does that even mean? Don’t other people tell themselves that? Are they careful? If they were, narcoti ..read more

Dopamine is a drug that you make for yourself. Have you ever noticed how talking and joking with friends makes you feel happy? How about when you’ve been inspired and whip up something tasty in the kitchen? Have you ever taken a walk in nice weather and been happy that you got outdoors? You’ve taken a drug when you’ve done these and other activities that produce positive feeling: dopamine. The neurotransmitter plays a crucial role in regulating our mood, motivation, and overall well-being. By using science we can do these and other things that can end up making us feel better. What’s great abo ..read more

The rhythm of life, for most people, goes something like this: every day they’re awake, every night they’re asleep. The hours awake and asleep change as do some of the other particulars. Sleeping is something we do every day. We all sleep. We all need to sleep. And we need to sleep for several hours at a stretch. Yet the need to sleep still isn’t universally respected by people who definitely should know better, namely by people who spend years studying the body and how it works. In a post titled “CAM is a sham…Q1H Neuro Checks” on the nursing subreddit on Reddit, user 37040 posts that they kn ..read more

The first few lines of the dream journal entry read like a list: A park in summer with a bandstand. The Beach Boys song “When I Grow Up to Be a Man” playing in the background (The bandstand was empty. Neither the Beach Boys nor any other band was playing in the bandstand. The song played in the air). Friends and family gathered around. Hugging someone (Who? A generic person.) (A certain judgmental person) looks on. You can’t expect to make sense out of a dream when you’re having it. The subconscious doesn’t make judgements. When you’re dreaming (or soon afterwards) you’re in your subconsciou ..read more

When your AC calls it quits during the summer, getting a good night’s sleep can seem impossible. Fear not. We’ve got you covered with tips on how to catch some Z’s when your AC is broken. From creating a DIY cooling system to optimizing your sleeping environment, we’ll show you how to beat the heat and get the rest you need. Say goodbye to tossing and turning in a pool of sweat–with our practical advice, you’ll be snoozing in no time. Kick back, relax, and discover the secrets to sleeping even when your trusty AC is on the fritz. Key takeaways Stay hydrated: Drink plenty of water throughout ..read more

You can’t really massage yourself to sleep. Not really. When it comes to yourself, stretching works better, though there are instructions for massaging yourself. For massaging yourself, you’ve got to use the more active parts of your mind. That makes it hard to drift off. Even if it doesn’t take much thinking to massage yourself, it’s still too much. It’s easier to relax when you’re stretching out, and relaxing is what you need to so when you’re trying to go to sleep. Guidelines for doing that are simple. Anywhere you have tightness . . .stretch it out. You can, however, massage someone else t ..read more