11 September 2025
Starting point on looking at 'Am I stressed' bbc article today
That was yesterday. Having had another interrupted nights sleep, I was awake at 5AM reading. The continual push by the Samsung health apps that this must be down to stress perhaps does not help along with it's insistence that I need to go to bed and wake up consistently! I am happy with my nighttime routine and have been going to bed at 9PM for the last year. I then get comfortable with a book and put some music on, classical at the moment, and read. Over the last week I've been putting the book down at 10PM despite the fact that I am getting near the end of the latest McCaffrey Pern one. One of Todd's additional works to Anne's excellent collection. Wanting to finish is perhaps a little stress that woke me up this morning? But it's the idea that I have some control over WHEN I wake up that irritates.
Getting to sleep is not too much of a problem when I put the book down but the earlier switch off time just means that I am earlier being woken for a toilet break. It bedtime incontinence down to the diabetes? Well that has recently been crossed of my medical record so there must be some other trigger. The new Watch8 does have more gaps in it's sleep record when it reports 'I should wear my watch all night', but I have been. That it can not cope with my more complex heart rhythm is simply a fact, and it has recorded my pulse rate overnight even when it has no sleep record. The problem seems to be that my rate has dropped below it's 30BMP limit for too long?
Do I get enough sleep? Well I am not tired during the day even after my various exercise sessions. Am I getting a good nights sleep? As I am not sleeping through then the answer has to be no. My short term memory has been a problem for some time, and even with the steps I put in place to ensure things like taking my tablets, I still occasionally miss having them at the normal time. Is part of this down to not getting a good nights sleep is the question. I am fairly sure that for the short times that my heart HAS been in sinus rhythm over night I have slept better, and I think I remember that I have written that before, but I am keeping up these logs because I can't rely on remembering things.
So do I need to reduce my stress with Mindfulness and Meditation? My problem is that I do not feel in any way stressed, although others have commented that what I am dealing with could be considered as stress. The battles with the software running this site is ongoing, and thoughts about the next fixes are certainly in my mind when I wake up. Sleeping on it, taking a break to exercise gives me an opportunity for that massively parallel relational database to connect the right pieces of information, and I will get back to the latest bug in a bit. So I don't see meditation as another useful addition to my routine at the moment.<.p>
Just have to wait on the latest test results to see if the statins are still affecting my liver function and I hope get the go ahead to simply drop them. My cholesterol has been classified as 'a little low' for some time now and my diet has little problem fat in it. Then perhaps we can look at the other tablets, but I am not stressing about any of this. Just biding my time once again.