Afternoon Stimulation
 

not sure if I'm just getting old, the clocks have changed, don't eat breakfast or just working too hard and around the clock, but lately I'm pretty tired at 3PM these days. Start work at 7AM and work at least 6 days a week.

If I have a coffee at 3, I'm up all night. Even though I only would have about 1 Red Bull a month in the past, they don't seem to do much for me anymore.

Afternoon walk? Afternoon nap? Other stimulants? Eat breakfast?

Any thoughts?

Naps rule.

One of the advantages of working at home and having a wife on maternity and kids who nap in the afternoon is... um, well, if I finish that sentence I'll be in trouble :)

i have heard a little 20min nap helps
have you tried the 5hr stuff? maybe that wont keep you up all nite

My crash is at 2:00PM. You could set your watch by it. Coffee is the only thing that works for me...

Maybe you can drink less, or have a cup at 2:00 so it will kick in. It shouldn't take 8 hours for it to get out of your system.

Jumping jacks?

Are you staying hydrated? Di-hydrogen Oxide might be very helpful. I am not a big water drinker, but from what I have read it seems that a lot of afternoon fatigue is tied to lack of hydration.

Have you ever tried a morning exercise routine?

Getting my eyes away from the computer in the afternoon helps me too. I do think scrolling pelican works my eyes very hard, and as a result makes my eyes feel heavy and tired by the time 2 PM rolls around.

I've gotten into the habit of working out around 2:00 (after lunch has digested somewhat). I no longer need my afternoon coffee.

I had to look and see if I wrote that. :eek:

Naps rule! I crash at 3 pm. The dogs get me up anywhere from 5 am to 7 am. I do chores, head to the workshop to get a few things done and eat lunch around 1 or 2. By 3 I'm ready for a hlf hour to hour nap. Then I'm good to go until around midnight. This is the same routine even if I have a gig that will get me home around 2:30 a.m.

Methamphetamines are popular. Cocaine wears off, allowing you to sleep later.

Halloween candy works pretty well.

The hydration thing is worth a try. A half-cup of coffee can't hurt, after lunch.

Or you could drink a non-caffeinated tea. That would probably do the trick. Perk you up, with no caffeine.

Or, as I say, methamphetamines are practically on every streetcorner. I'm kidding. Of course.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
Adelle Davis (1904 - 1974)

Think of your body as a machine. Consider what you eat as fuel.

A big breakfast lights off your metabolism and fuels you up to charge into the day.

A lighter lunch gets you to the end of your work time without running out of gas.

An even lighter dinner (before 7:00 PM) sustains enough energy to see you through your evening.

Any left over calories when you turn in will be stored as fat while you sleep.

We all differ but chances are that if you try this routine you'll need no nap.

I'd take a look at how much sugar your consuming at lunch time. Barring any events like jet-lag, as I've gotten older I've found that I'm pretty sensitive to the amount of sugar that I ingest. I'm not diabetic, but my blood sugar does spike up and then down before settling at a "normal" level. One of the swings makes me crash.

For example, my lunches are usually some unsalted or lightly salted nuts, some tomatoes, carrots and cucumber slices. If I snack on candy or have a meal with lots of sugar (like b-b-q sauce) I get sleepy around 2. If I skip that and keep to low sugar snacks and fresh fruit I don't have any problems.

BTW, I also avoid caffeine. I don't drink any coffee, tea or colas since I usually get sleepy when they wear off. If I don't drink them, there's no let-down. Since I usually work out for about 90 minutes in the morning when I wake up before 5:00, I never need any additional stimulants to help me wake up in the morning. The flip side though is that I'm usually pretty worthless by 10:00 PM.

I rub one out between two and three, seems to do the trick...

It's my understanding that balancing sugar and protein intake properly allows protein to meter sugar into the bloodstream rather than excess sugar flooding in, causing a sugar energy high followed by a crash.

My $.02, Shauny


1. Excercise in the AM.

2. Make Breakfast the biggest meal of the day, instead of dinner.

3. After you drink coffee, chase it with LOTS of water for a few hours after. The buzz will be much bigger, but when it goes away you don't crash so bad.

What's for breakfast?



Shauny? Are you saying I should get checked? and uh, what's for breakfast?

whether it's the best 30 seconds of her life, or of mine between 3:00 and 3:01, still want to go to sleep soon after.:D

Good advice John. I'm hyper-conscious about refined sugar and think I have a fairly low sugar level on average, though I was eating 3-5 pints of Häagen-Dazs a week over the summer. Cut that out in Sept. Maybe I should bring it back?

I have been thinking of biking in the mornings, just got out all my old gear. I do need to do something.

from a old guy here, almost 61.

way back in the dark ages I started that real tired after lunch routine, naps would work usually about 20 minutes seemed to do it but some days I didn't get the time to do a nap and I started getting patients telling me I was sleeping with my eyes open. Gig up!!

So I had to do something else, I now take one panax ginseng capsule in the morning with my couple cups of strong coffee. I usually go home for lunch and have another cup of coffee and I blast thru that sleepie time like its not there plus the bonus is I still don't take viagra, thats all works mighty fine.

I feel pretty good with 6-7 hours sleep and if I get more than 8, the mack truck just parked on me.

Doesn't matter - as long as it's healthy. Just reverse the "normal" order; eat dinner for breakfast (there's no rule that you can't have spaghetti and meatballs with an antipasto for breakfast, or a steak dinner, or...), a healthy lunch and eat a healthy breakfast (could be ham and eggs, could be a Greek salad, or...) for dinner.

The point is, if, as has been dictated to us since the Industrial Revolution, it is deemed that we eat 3 meals a day (originally to accomodate factory work schedules) and are no longer hunter/gatherers, make them 3 healthy meals - big, medium and small, in that order. It's all about sustaining energy throughout the day, which is to say, fueling those needs at the right time.

Eating many small meals, grazing, throughout the day as we did when we were hunter/gatherers, is even healthier as it keeps the metabolism humming along and energy level high - for which reason, I think, hypo/hyperglycemics are told to eat in that pattern.

This happened to me a while back, ready to crash around 3pm. It turned out I had Lymes .
any tick bits latley?

I recently saw a story (Fox News?) that indicated naps help solve problems. Have a difficult issue/decision at work? Take a short nap. Upon awakening, you will be better suited to solve the problem.

While searching for that story, I found this:

Student napping detrimental to health, academic performance - Features

You know I may go to the doctor, haven't been to one in many years. Ticks, no, none around here, but a huge orb weaver scared the f*** out of me last night. OPened the garage door, drove the car in, was going to walk out the door and right in my face was the spider hanging down. body was close to half inch in diameter, it was massive. Used a prybar to catch his single strand web and move him but he fell...these spiders aren't very sturdy, body broke right open like a squashed blueberry, and you could hear the thud!

Here ya go, this should tighten you up...


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1257433946.jpg

If you're not sleepy afterwards... ...then you're doin' it wrong.

Nap. I hit the wall every day at 2:45. 10-15 minutes with my head on the desk and I'm back to work, no problem. If I don't put my head down, then I either go into that hallucinating half sleep where you end up typing eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee on your computer, or I get grumpy and start making mistakes.

It doesn't help that my office is always 5 degrees too warm.

Haagen-Dazs???? There's nothing in there that will help you.

I like biking in the mornings and would do about 37 miles 2 or 3 times a week before 9:00 in the summer. It's not possible now with my daughters' school schedules and the darkness. I did find that on those days when I did the full 37 miles, along with some bowflex and elliptical machine before sunrise (45-60 minutes combined) and then an hour of Aikido at lunch time, that I'd would need a 15 minute catnap around 2:30. I figure at that point I had kind of gone over the top a little.

+1... Likely sugar related... Same with me if I overeat @ lunch... generally due to a too-high-in-sugar breakfast that makes me hungry like hell at lunch...

when I have a nice breakfast - no problem all day... Rice and beans work for me (costa rican style, gallo pinto, discovered that on vacation) - of course not eveyone is ready for a "meal" at breakfast !

yesterday was a good day, very productive. I guess I should have listened better in third grade, breakfast is the most important meal, but then it was hard to focus with Michelle Rhiebold sitting next to you.

This is key. And the elimination of sugars.

And no carbohydrates in the evening. None.

Ginseng and Gingko Baloba on top, and you're laughing.

+1

..

Don't eat anything white, refined sugar, white bread, white rice, flour, all bad. High fructose corn syrup is freakin' poison, avoid it like Dipso avoids reality

If you are under stress, you need more physical activity. Do it early in the day and it revs up your motor for the day. Will also help you sleep better. If you are getting adequate, quality sleep at night, you should never need to take a nap.

Light meal late, low carbs, high protein, biggest meal in the morning, like farmers used to do. Drink more water than you think you need. Don't abuse caffeine, try going off coffee completely, switch to tea.

Bumping this older thread due to the 2 posts referring to Ginseng, which I was researching a bit as a health supplement.

One of the posts was from our old friend Dottore who wrote:

Then from gatotom: