Optimize Me

Recent Background:

Last fall I was on a cost cutting kick and I happened to read something about anti-depressants that said they only worked for six months, or they did their work in six months, or something. I had been taking Lexapro for years and it was costing me $60 a month, so I said, let's quit this, I don't need this stuff anymore. So I quit taking Lexapro.

Then around Thanksgiving I went to the doctor about something, and that visit convinced me to stop taking Benadryl at night and my nasal spray in the morning.

Johnny comes home at Christmas and I caught his cold, which predictably turned into a sinus infection, which resulted in my taking a couple of courses antibiotics and one course of prednisone.

So I got shut of the sinus infection, or inflammation, but I wasn't sleeping very well, and I decided it was probably because I quit taking my anti-depressant, so I went back to the doctor and got a script for Prozac which costs me nothing. I hate to think what Lexapro would cost without insurance.

Things got better, but I still wasn't getting enough sleep, so I started taking Benadryl again. I took two tablets last night and slept pretty well.

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Last week I paid a visit to Optimize Me! for an evaluation. They operate a unique bio-feedback system. They put electrodes on your head to record your brain waves, feed these into a computer which converts them into sound and then plays them back to you via headphones. The idea is that when your brain hears what you are thinking, it will adjust itself to provide the most harmonious thought patterns, or something.

For the evaluation, they hooked me up to the sensors and recorded my brainwaves, but no headphones, no bio-feedback. They recorded brain waves for maybe half an hour, then they processed them, printed the results, and discussed them with me. The chart showed that some of brain waves are out of balance. Can't say as I am surprised.

The "treatment" is time consuming and costly. It consists of two sessions a day for two hours each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a two hour break in between. You do this for five days.

If it worked, it would be well worth it. But no matter what anybody says, we don't know if it will work for me, and by work I mean I would start getting a good nights sleep every night.

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I think poor sleep is at the root of many of my problems, mental and physical. Daring daughter wants me to fly to Mexico city to visit with her for a weekend next month. I hate traveling. Well, I just realized the reason I don't like traveling is because I am always tired. Traveling takes energy, energy I could be spending on doing fun things, like eating donuts. If I was sleeping better, I would probably enjoy traveling.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I went to see Body Worlds at OMSI. Bizarre, interesting, and just a little grisly. On the walls there were some posters, and one of these posters said something to the effect that sleep suppresses the appetite, so one of the reasons people get fat is that they aren't getting enough good sleep.If I was sleeping better, I might be able to lose some weight. Shoot, this might be why so many Americans are so overweight. It's just like our parents said: we are over-stimulated and as such we aren't sleeping well. This also explains why most diets fail: they don't address the sleep issue. So put down the donut, chubby, and take a Seconal.