The Blindboy Podcast - Gelded Dennis

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

I chat about New Years resolutions, and also about getting better sleep Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy New Year, you gelded denises. How are you getting on? What is the crack? Welcome to episode 65 of the Blind Boy Podcast. It's fucking 2019. It's 2019, l, serious business, holy fuck, my voice sounds slightly different, because I had a bastard of a sore throat for two days there, a strep throat, which is a bacterial infection, it's not a fucking, a flu, it's not a virus, just came out and over, aggressive, do you know what, so intense, that it nearly counted as a spiritual experience, do you know, it took away any concept of like time or human needs or anything it was just i could barely swallow right swallowing

i was running away from my own throat such was the intensity of some of the swallowing i was doing so and it's still a bit sore when i swallow but not as bad as it was with say the day before yesterday. Another thing to... Now, I can laugh at it now, but, like, there's a form of torture called waterboarding, right, where, like, the CIA were using it in Guantanamo Bay to extract information from Al-Qaeda prisoners, detainees, people who were detained without any fucking evidence,

just flown on these extra rendition flights, probably through Shannon Airport to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But the CIA were using waterboarding as a torture method. And what waterboarding is, is they place a cloth over the interrogation suspect's, what do you call them? Interrogation subject. Place a cloth over the interrogation subject's mouth,

then you pour, you drip water on top of that cloth. And what it does is, the subject is, they're actually physically safe but what they do is they experience the sensation of drowning the brain thinks that they are drowning which is psychologically very fucked up so when i was my throat was so bad that when I was drinking water, at times I was experiencing the effects of waterboarding. So I'd be like, okay, I gotta take a sip of fucking water because I'm dehydrated, I can barely move in the bed. I'd get the glass of water, take a measured gulp, hold it in my mouth and go right i'm ready for the swallow it'd be so intensely painful i couldn't and the water would be held in this kind of stasis between my throat and my

tonsils and then i'd get this massive kind of wrenching anxiety and heart pounding because I'm actually experiencing the sensation of drowning and then I'd finally swallow it so that wasn't a laugh although it is kind of funny when I think back at it now just this really intense strep infection in my fucking tonsils and it felt like someone was stabbing me into the neck and you have to swallow like i was trying to minimize the amount of swallowing i could do um couldn't eat or drink anything

literally trying my best to sip bits of water any any type of food forget about it not happening trying to get the you know bits of water into me. Of course, this meant swallowing, so, you know, the smallest amount of water required me to weep like a small child. Very high fever. An incredibly unpleasant 48 hours. Incredibly unpleasant. an incredibly unpleasant 48 hours incredibly unpleasant fever dreams fucking sweating like a lunatic

during the night and a very unique sweat in that I don't know I can't be describing my sweat to you, you're probably making your morning commute, and I'm here describing the, the candor of my sweat,

but it was, I sure fuck it I will look, 2019 lads, when you're dehydrated, and you don't have any water left in your body, and you're sweating two litres out, your sweat smells like piss, because all that's left is urea.

So. I was sweating. Human piss. Essentially lying in a bed. Of my own piss. Freezing. Shaking. Feeling like I'm getting stabbed into the throat.

When I swallow. Um. Having mad, mad dreams while I was being chased by Keystone cops, and I never really get dreams, but I got dreams this time, waking up in states that can't be described as reality. That's the most disturbing thing, I think, when you have fever dreams.

It's when the very construction of what reality is breaks down. And I can't describe it. It'd be like listening to someone describe their ayahuasca trip. Sometimes when you get a bad fever and you wake up in the middle of the night, the very plane of reality and the logic of reality like such things as like understanding the walls around you

as being physical structures like that's all gone I can't even get into it words do not exist for what I experienced so that was my. That was my New Year's Eve. Anyway.

But you know what. You need one of them every so often. I haven't had. Like food poisoning four years ago. Again. Severe dehydration. And I would class that as a spiritual experience

and the reason why is now I would have been I went to the doctor right now the doctor said I was about 12 hours away from needing to go to the hospital to be put on a drip because I couldn't consume anything

but the lucky thing with strep throat is that you just take an antibiotic. And a good antibiotic gets right into it. And it got working in about four hours. And I was drinking water and I was grand. And I'm about 80% back to normal now. But yeah, I had food poisoning about three or four years ago. And again, that was spiritual.

In that the level of suffering was so intense that do you know what it did for me i was so dehydrated that and i couldn't with the food poisoning if i consumed anything if i tried to suck an ice cube i would immediately puke it up so my body was rejecting everything and i was about two days into it and i i didn't want i've never wanted anything more in my life than a teaspoon of water do you know and it was just humbling it really puts uh wants and desires and needs into perspective when when you know what it feels like to be so dehydrated that you're like begging reality for a teaspoon of water. But again, big privileged cunt talking away.

You know, I got to have my experience with fucking food poisoning. My lovely western medicine very quickly sorted it out same with my strep throat i got i got to visit the theme park of suffering but uh for god help anyone around the fucking world who experiences this without access to medication. So, yeah, fucking hell, what's that? Two weeks ago, I compared my experience of having to stay in a hotel room for two weeks with people who were living in emergency accommodation, and now I'm comparing my experience

of having a sore throat with Guantanamo Bay inmates. So apologies for that shocking level of privilege there. I'd be kicked off Twitter. If that was a Twitter thread, if I had a Twitter thread that said, hey guys, I just had strep throat and you know what, it made me realise what it was like to be in Guantanamo Bay and to be waterboarded. Here's a thread. I'd be cancelled and I'd be removed from Twitter. And not being that facetious, for fuck's sake. So anyway, why am I getting sick all the time?

This is my second time being sick in six weeks. And the last time I had like a disastrous ear infection what's going on so I went to my doctor doctor told me I was run down I am I am officially run down and I couldn't get my head around I'm like what do you mean I'm fucking run down so apparently I'm I'm overworking myself and this is compromising my immune system and that's why like i hate it i'm on two rounds of antibiotics now in six weeks and i don't like that i hate having to take antibiotics i prefer fighting things off on my own but i just can't this time and the doctor just asked me like what are you up to at the moment and And I said to him. Weekly podcast.

I'm writing a book. And I'm writing and performing a BBC series. And he goes. Holy fuck. And I had to take custody of the fact. Or take ownership of the fact. I'm very fortunate. I don't experience any of this stuff as work. Because.

It's what I love doing. It's my leisure time. So I don't experience any of this stuff as work because it's what i love doing it's it's it's my leisure time so i don't have an off switch like i wake up in the morning and i work until i go to bed it's as simple as that i i wouldn't know what to do playing red dead redemption you know playing my xbox that that's the only the closest thing to leisure i get and even that to be honest it honest as i've mentioned many times before i have to put a cap on that because it makes me feel very drained and upset whereas work for me gives me an intense sense of meaning and joy so i my doctor's theory is i don't know if i'm doing i don't know when I'm doing too much of it. I disagree. I'm good with my food.

I'm very well nourished because I cook everything. Do shit tons of exercise. I think what has me run down. Is my sleep situation. And it's something I want to speak about. And it's going to be a little. A goal of mine for 2019. So I'm going to make this podcast about sleep I think. Make it a bit hot takey if possible.

But. I'm. Generally like how much sleep humans need, it depends on the person, right? I personally think I need eight hours of sleep, personally, right? I have not got eight hours of sleep in maybe six years, about that time. maybe six years about that time and i was retracing back thinking because obviously since you know when a doctor fucking tells you you're after getting two sore throats and you need antibiotics because you're run down that's when i start looking at my lifestyle so i started drifting out of sleep and i started to think back to like when I used to remember getting eight hours of sleep.

Now here's the thing with me and sleep. I'm well able to sleep. I don't have any sleeping issues. I just don't like it. I don't like sleeping. I find it really boring. For me it's literally going to a dark room and lie down there for ages will ya I'm constantly kind of thinking

and wanting to do things wanting to read I'm wanting to create something like non-stop all the time obsessed it's just my that's my way of existing so when you tell me and as well my brain gets

very active after about 11 o'clock after about 11 o'clock is when my brain will say to me you need to make a techno tune now so i'll go into my studio and i might decide to make a techno tune and go to bed at six in the morning and it could change the next day I don't have a regular habit of sleeping at all it's all over the gaff and I don't like sleeping because I literally I'll go to the bed I'll go to bed annoyed I'll go to bed going sleep now is after taking me away from a short story or something I was reading. And now I have to go and do this stupid thing where I close my eyes and then wake up wanting to revisit whatever it was I was engaged in the night before. So that's my attitude to sleep. So because of that, I don't like having loads of it, to be honest.

so because of that I don't like having loads of it to be honest so I'll average between five and six if I'm honest hours of sleep and I don't wait I don't feel tired in the daytime at all because the first thing I do when I wake up is I exercise I'll either go to the gym or run when you do that you have a ton of energy for the rest of the day. So I don't experience any tiredness. But I remember, I used to get eight hours of fucking sleep. And when I remember when that was, it was before I had a fucking smartphone. What has fucked up my sleep is owning a smartphone. I used to I used to have a phone in 2011 around

yeah 2011 I think was the last time I just had a regular phone and the only thing I'd use it for was texting or ringing simple as that

and it had a shitty green screen and I'd have a lamp beside my bed and a pile of books and I'd have a lamp beside my bed and a pile of books and I no longer have a lamp beside my bed or a pile of books

I'd turn my shit phone off at 11 o'clock at night or whatever open up a book or a magazine or whatever read that physical piece of paper with a dim light in the distance

enough for me to be able to see the page and then I'd go to sleep and wake up 8 hours later and that changed when I got a fucking

smartphone now I don't have a light beside the bed because I don't need one and if I want to read I still read articles and read interesting things but it's my fucking phone screen glowing into my face reading these articles not not even articles worse than that that, it's social media. So, like, when you're passively reading a book, right, or reading an article, that's a one-to-one experience. It's me with a piece of text.

And it doesn't require any emotional labor or emotional baggage. From me the reader. Okay. But when you read social media. That requires emotional baggage. You're not. Even though. The experience of consuming social media. As in Twitter.

Instagram. Facebook. The experience of that. The experience of it is reading it on a screen just like it's an article in the Guardian or whatever mentally it's not, it's a social interaction so a Twitter post can make you feel angry a Twitter post can make you feel

anxious a Twitter post can make you feel happy but these are all emotions that are social emotions and these social emotions don't really belong in when you're lying down in bed to try and sleep you know i mean you're essentially inviting a couple of hundred people into your bedroom and you might just be sitting back watching them argue with each other. But that's, those are big emotions to be dragging into a space when you're supposed to be sleeping. So all the things that are supposed to be happening to your brain before sleep kicks in, I'm already fucking with these things by being on social media, now on top of that, there's no light in the room other than this bright blue glow in my face,

now I still have the, I know there's a thing on your phone where you can go into night mode or whatever, and it claims that it will dim the light, and yes it slightly works, but still, and yes it slightly works but still my brain is going man you're staring into a light for an hour what the fuck are you doing like let's just for a second remove the fact

that it's a screen full of information imagine 10 years ago it's like oh what do you do before you go to sleep I just stare into a light for an hour yeah stare into a light and then stick my head down so that's what i've been doing and ever since that ever since i got my smartphone i've been getting between five and a half and six hours of sleep

because now not to mention in actual hours it fucks with the quality of my sleep as well I wake up more and when I do wake up what do I do I check the time on my phone then that blue glow is in my face now I'm more awake than I would have been if it was just an alarm clock in the corner or I might wake up and go like I used to remember before my smartphone I'd look forward to I'd wake up and I'd go I can't wait to get out of bed

and look at the internet to see what's happening in the news to see what's happening on Twitter I don't do that anymore I now wake up at 3 or at 5 and go let let's check Twitter, or let's check Instagram, and I do for 2 seconds, well not 2 seconds, like a minute, but it's only a minute of checking my phone, but it's a minute of waking up in the middle of the night, staring into a light and engaging with these social emotions engaging with other humans

which kicks the brain into a different form of fucking being so getting back to sleep then is a bit more difficult and like I doubt I have any circadian rhythm

and circadian rhythm is it's not just not just humans all animals have it but it's our brain's relationship with our environment it's it's our internal clock it's our body's way of knowing day and night and when you're supposed to be awake and when you're supposed to be asleep and it's like the it's it's the unconscious gathering of information from the environment to transmit this to the individual human's brain and my circadian rhythm must be all over the gaff because you know my smartphone like I said staring into that blue screen part of the problem there is your your brain doesn't know it's a screen your brain thinks

it's daylight so you're fucking with that cycle of day and night with the brain and also for myself I can keep very erratic hours I could get a burst of creativity at 11 o'clock at night like sometimes this podcast I might decide to to record this podcast at 12 o'clock on a Tuesday night and I'll keep going at it

and I'll deliver it at 6 in the morning you know and then I'm going to bed at 6 in the morning and if I'm going to bed at 6 in the morning you know and then I'm going to bed at 6 in the morning and if I'm going to bed at 6 I don't like wasting the next day so I'll most definitely get up at 11

anyway which is 5 hours of sleep so I still get the day but fuck that like I'm gonna try and stop doing that shit in fucking 2019 have a bit of discipline around it because

I just don't I don't have any respect for sleep and I should and we all should and I imagine this is ringing true with a lot of you too because

honestly who fucking who doesn't stare at their smartphone when they go to bed we all do it short break for the ocarina pause

em this is so that you might hear a digital advert that's inserted by Acast em I'm gonna play an ocarina so it doesn't surprise you

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so if you don't want to pay you don't have to but if you can afford it it's like you're paying for someone who can't there's that too so please consider that and thank you so much to all my patrons for the entirety of fucking 2018 i've had a guaranteed steady income all this year and that's the first time i can say that as someone who i've worked in the fucking entertainment industry a long time this is the first year ever that i was able to have a reliable income and to not have the anxiety of knowing where my next check is coming from so thank you so much for that i Really appreciate it. Yart. So anyway, back to the topic of sleep.

And I really want to take responsibility for it for myself because, you know, I speak me a full mental health regime right in order for us to have a decent mental health regime and for us to be the happiest version of ourselves possible which is for me that's good mental health if you can be the happiest version of yourself possible then you have good mental health

it's holistic in that it has to embrace and incorporate every fucking factor so you know there's the cognitive aspect of mental health that's that's the first part to call it's it's you know monitoring and and keeping in check how you think about yourself how you think about other people how you think about the future you know having compassion for yourself compassion for other people making sure you're practicing empathy this this is part of a good mental health regime but you must also then incorporate things like exercise you know the the physical aspects of expressing your body

so that you can have those lovely chemicals like those endorphins that fly around your brain and enable happiness so you know good thinking good exercise eating properly you know you're not going to have good mental health even if you're looking after how you think looking after how you exercise if you're not giving yourself the right nutrients or if you're drinking like a lunatic then you can't have the best mental health from that either but what I've never factored in is sleep I've never factored in and it's because I don't have respect for sleep and there's two reasons i don't have respect for sleep it bores the fuck out of me um number one

because like i said i'm continually active so when sleep comes around i get pissed off with it and it's like oh here you are again to make me lie down for several hours and then the other thing is i'm not around when sleep happens because i'm asleep i'm unconscious for it i'm not there to observe myself sleeping so the benefits of what happened during sleep it very easy. To take them for granted. And. It's fucking insane. Like. We said the importance.

That I would put in. An exercise in my life. Like. Here's another. Potential hot takey. Type of thing now. And I don't know. If I'm right or wrong.

But. There was a period in my life like i said when i was getting eight hours of sleep a night okay now i was also younger but i used to go to the gym i used to lift weights i used to have these exercise regimes and the results that i would experience from them from the physical results they would be I'd have much better results we'll say I if I was lifting weights if I was doing if I was bench pressing or squatting eight years ago or six years ago I would get better physical results my muscles would be harder my muscles would grow quicker now that's not the case nowadays i would have to do twice the work i know that some of that

is just simply as you go on in your 20s your testosterone drops so you won't have the same responses to exercise but also i'm getting less fucking sleep and anyone who exercises will tell you if you lift weights in the daytime the actual growth happens when you sleep because muscle growth is the repair of damaged cells so like i i lift weights because i love the intense almost the rush of endorphins i get from putting effort into lifting something heavy that feels amazing that makes me feel alive it gives me purpose purpose. It gives me these beautiful life-affirming chemicals rushing around my brain. And I like the pain in my muscles afterwards. But when I go to sleep, that's when my body is like,

all right, all that shit you did to your muscles today, now we're going to take the nutrients and actually repair those muscle fibers and grow them more like people who are trying to lose body fat and you wonder how do you actually lose body fat most of it happens during sleep I mean in the daytime you might be cutting back on your calories or you might be exercising but the actual loss of the body fat happens during sleep the body fat i think is it's kind of eaten and burnt off by the body and it's expressed as as through your breath like your fat cells leave your body through your breath you breathe them out because they're burnt they're oxidized is oxidized the right word i'm cautious of talking out of my hope here but yeah i'm very interested in seeing how improving my

sleep quality and my sleep hygiene how that will possibly impact on the amount of exercise I already do because I don't like like I said now I do not I don't run and I don't lift weights

for physical results because as i've mentioned many times before if you do that that's when you end up when that's when you stop that's when like there's gonna be a lot of people here now i'll say this because it's the start of january and a lot of you might be thinking i'm to join a gym for January. If you want to be in that gym this time next year and still doing it, don't go into that gym wanting physical results. Okay? I know that sounds nuts. Don't be like, in six weeks I want to have a bigger chest.

Or in six weeks I want to lose this amount of weight. Okay? When you're starting off, that's a bit of a dangerous mindset. Like I'm fully sure that a lot of the people listening here today have decided, it's January, New Year's resolution. I'm going to get into shape. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to start running. Get rid of the get into shape bit, okay?

And I know that sounds insane, but let me explain it to you, right? Instead, right, when you go from a position of being inactive inactive right when you're a person who doesn't exercise and you decide in january to join a gym or to start running it's going to be horrible it is going to feel rotten because your body is going what the fuck are you doing that time on the couch we had was amazing why are you you doing this? Why are you lifting that? Why are you running? Your body will punish you, and not in a good way. Your body will go, stop, stop, stop, okay?

And that will last three to six weeks, right? That's how long that initial period of the gym or running being a disgusting, horrible horrible unpleasant thing last three to six weeks make your goal not i'm going to lose x amount of weight or i'm going to get a pair of pecs or i'm going to get big shoulders or put on muscle fuck those goals make the goal i want to get to the phase whereby when i go to the gym it's something i really fucking enjoy okay when you do that people who have that attitude about the gym or about running these are the people who are always in the gym who never give up people who go to the gym with specific goals of i'm gonna lose 10 pounds i'm gonna do this it's it's an unhealthy cycle what you're looking for is

happiness and when you lose the 10 pounds you will look in the mirror and lose the 10 pounds and you feel happy for about two seconds and then still be left with a sense of emptiness and when the goal of the gym is this the simple process of enjoying exercise because that's why i go to the gym all the time i feel like shit if i don't or if i if i don't run i feel like shit i like the process i love doing it it feels amazing and that's why I do it I'm aware of the fact that you know putting on muscle uh being more flexible feeling healthier looking better I'm aware of these things because these are consequences of what happens when you exercise all the time but they're not really goals as such they're kind of micro goals they're like little challenges but they're certainly not the most

important thing the most important thing is this thing that i'm doing today makes me feel amazing and when i'm finished doing it i love that it makes me feel so hungry that I just want to eat something really healthy because my body wants actual nutrients. And I love that it hurts for the rest of the day. And I can't wait to do it again tomorrow. That's a process that has no ending. Because it's ritualistic. It has no ending. It's just I'm chasing a feeling.

It's not I'm chasing a version of myself in the mirror. So I've deviated from that. I've deviated from the theme of the podcast. But I just felt it was necessary. Because I imagine that's really relevant to a lot of you cunts listening. Who've made your New Year's resolutions. Trust me on that. I've been going to the gym since I was 14.

Who've made your New Year's resolutions. Trust me on that. I've been going to the gym since I was 14. And. Like. I've gone through phases when I was younger. Of. Buying the one year fucking.

The one year subscription to the gym. What's it called? Membership to the gym. And doing it for two months. And then feeling like shit. Because it's been another two months. Since I didn't go to the gym and it just reminds you of you you've paid for a year and you've only done two months it's a horrible feeling and because when I was younger I was going to the gym just so I could improve my physical appearance it is a fool's game go to the gym to enjoy the process of it

physical results will happen anyway as a consequence all right just let them happen like think of it this way imagine you're out of work so a local pub offers you a job working in the kitchen just doing kind of basic cooking you're going to take that job because you need a job and you want the money and you want to occupy your time a consequence of that job means you'll become really good at cooking do you know what i mean but you're doing it because i need a job you're not doing it because you want to become a better cook that's just going to happen anyway that's the way to look at the gym or to look at running or any other type of exercise so to take it back on topic though your sleep hygiene is essential to the process of exercising

that's when the benefits occur that's when the repair happens, that's when the repair happens. All the effort during the day is the body kind of takes note of that effort and repairs itself and grows or sheds or whatever the fuck during sleep. so sleep occurs in um obviously part part of my reading my kind of reasoning for like i've decided in 2019 i'm gonna go back to eight hours of sleep what i do when that happens is i try and learn as much about the thing i want to do as possible so learn as much about the thing I want to do as possible so I've been reading about sleep the past few days you know um mainly to not to scare myself but so I can learn to respect sleep so I can learn to be fascinated with it to truly appreciate what it is to stop having it as this annoying thing in my life that keeps me from working and instead realize that if I have a bit of cop on it can actually improve the work I'm doing it can make me more alert it can

maybe give me greater access to To the condition of flow. That I talk about you know. Certainly it'll. Make my exercise. I do feel a bit more worthwhile. So sleep happens. In like a. Different phases.

Like a cycle. And the sleep cycle lasts. About 90 minutes. between 90 and 120 minutes and it has different phases so the first phase when you go to sleep is it's they call it nrem i don't know what that means but it's a really it lasts between five and ten minutes it's when you close your fucking eyes and it's that semi-conscious state

where it's mad like you you're aware at the start of it actually I love that I love that experience of sleep

I love it when you close your eyes and there's certain intrusive kind of irrational irrational thoughts creep in or sounds or whatever and you kind of know all right that's when you're going to go to sleep but you never remember when you went to sleep you never remember the moment it just happens but this is the stage as well where some people can experience I'll get it the odd time it can be a bit of crack

where you suddenly feel like you're falling you know that is, that's called a hypnagogic jerk and it's it's like an intrusion from the wakeful world, you know, getting in the way of your brain, like shutting off and going to sleep. If you're very stressed, you can get pretty bad versions of those, you know. There's the falling one. The falling one, I wouldn't associate the falling one with stress.

There is the one where you, like, you jerk your entire body or feel like screaming. When my dad was dying, which is obviously, like, massive, massive existential stress, you know, and I was in a young fella, I, when I, I used to be terrified at that period of sleep, of drifting off, because what would happen is that I'd be so stressed that I would wake up with these hypnagogic jerks. But the stress would. Keep me in a state.

That was half dreaming. And half awake. Very very surreal. Kind of like. What I described earlier. With the fever dreams I was having. Where. Like with fever dreams.

You wake up and you're present in the room. But you're also in the room but you're also in a dream and your concept of reality is fucked up but during heavy heavy stress like bereavement i used to wake up with this really strange sad terror and an inability to, again, like process the room. Very, very abstract kind of, because again, at the end of the day, lads, reality, like the room that you sleep in all that is is is this externality and your brain processes that you're like light hits your fucking eye or whatever and your brain has to turn that into into information into your head so under heavy stress it happens as well in sleep paralysis if anyone's ever experienced sleep

paralysis um sleep paralysis again you wake up in the middle of the night you're half asleep you're half awake your body is frozen so i used to get kind of weird hypnagogic jerks and sleep paralysis with this intense i won't say fear or anxiety it wasn't a threat it was just a looming sadness do you know what it was to be honest when when you experience a bereavement very suddenly you never truly experience the pain of it. It's too shocking. Like if someone close to you dies and it's kind of sudden. Or someone close to you gets sick. Or even a pet dying and being taken away suddenly.

You don't... That grief doesn't reveal itself to you immediately on the day. Your body kicks into these coping mechanisms when you go a bit numb but i was experiencing in sleep it's it's like my unconscious was revealing the true weight of the pain that was being repressed during the day time so i could cope and this was expressing itself during very very odd half dreaming half awake states where the room was

mathematics that's all I can like again it's like someone telling you about a fucking acid trip the language of reality was not computing in my brain I was left with nothing but half dreaming half awake state of intense sadness great podcast lads hope you're having a lovely 2019 so far um so anyway i just

described a very a very unhealthy model there of stage one of sleeping so usually stage one of sleeping lasts about five fucking minutes. And it's, your brain goes from being awake to drifting into sleep. And then you go to stage two, where you're fully unconscious now for stage two. And that's where, like, your brain slows down. Like, most humans need about 2,500 calories a day, okay? A massive amount of those calories are taken up by the brain just being fucking awake.

The energy that our brains consume just to be what they are, to interact with people, to think, is massive. When you move to stage two of sleeping. Which is about 15 minutes into the whole shebang.

Your brainwaves slow down. It actually goes quiet. Could be talking out of my arse. But I think you can achieve things close to this through meditation. Where the brainwaves can slow downse, but I think, you can achieve things, close to this, through meditation, where the brain waves, can slow down, during meditation, I think,

don't quote me, on that one, I could go, and look it up, on the internet, but, sure that wouldn't be, an off the cuff,

hot take then, would it, but, in stage two, your body temperature, decreases as well, your heart rate rate begins to slow it's kind of the preparation journey to go into stage three stage three is this that's the really

important stage that's where the seriously kind of beneficial um work of sleep gets done. That's where your body is essentially like your muscles are shut down, your brain is practically shut down, your heart is only going very, working away very slowly. You're like just, you're out of it. But that's when your body goes now we do some repairing that's when your muscle fibers repair themselves and grow that's when your immune system repairs itself and becomes you know healthier bacteria replen. All this stuff happens during this phase of sleep. Phase three.

Also what happens is. It's a thing called memory consolidation. It's. It's. It's when the shit that happens you throughout the day. What parts of it. Like what most important parts of it. Are actually committed to your memory and

stored in the human brain like a hard drive you know. I'd love to know, I'd love to find out how memory consolidation in sleep, how it works with the Freudian model of conscious, unconscious, pre-conscious. But memory consolidation is very much kind of neuropsychology. The physical, biological aspects of the brain and how the brain works. But yeah, during this phase of sleep, that's when the events of the day are stored to memory. And what's remembered and what's discarded. Because a lot of stuff is discarded, lads.

You're awake for fucking 16 hours of the fucking day or whatever. A lot of stuff does not commit to your bloody memory. And during memory consolidation that's where the brain decides what are we going to keep and what are we going to leave out synaptic pruning occurs synapses are like i don't know tiny wires all along your brain that carry all the information that we experience throughout the day. Like everything. Like when I described earlier about the brain needing loads of calories just to be awake.

Like what you're touching, what you're smelling, what you're seeing. All of this information goes into the brain and is carried around via these synapses. all of this information goes into the brain and is carried around via these synapses. And they're like, you know, if you leave your TV on all night, all the time, or your computer or your laptop, it gets hot. So while we sleep, and, you know, when we're asleep, we're not taking any information in from the external world our synapses get to shorten and relax and they're not taking information in they get to rejuvenate and be stronger the next day but if those synapses are not getting the opportunity

are not getting pruned or the opportunity to relax then like a laptop that's on for fucking ages it'll become unhealthy and you can end up with problem issues with stress but anyway during this kind of regenerative phase of sleep it's very difficult to wake someone up from this phase. I'll never forget a fucking... We were doing a gig in Leicester over in England and myself and Willie, our DJ, were due to get on a plane and we missed it. We missed the plane over to... I think we were getting a plane to London

and then a train from London to Leicester or whatever. So we missed our fucking plane, at the gate, typical Ryanair, like, we ran up, and the cunts closed it, like, in front of us, ran up there, it's like, come on, lads, we're there, open the fucking door, they wouldn't do it, so we had to book the next flight, Aer Lingus, grand, then, and we, like, we were cutting it tight, do you know what I mean, then we eventually got a new train from London to Leicester, and as we're, like, when we got on this train from London to Leicester, we had to be aware of our stop,

and the stop was, like, Leicester or whatever, I don't know London Railway, but, so anyway, we're on this train, very stressful day for the two of us, we've missed a fucking flight, we just had to buy really expensive fucking trains and planes again, so Willie O'Deejie anyway has a snooze on the train from London to Leicester, so as we pull into Leicester, and the train says we are now at Leicester I turn to Willie who's asleep beside me and I say Willie come on it's fucking Leicester now now we only had a window of about less than a

minute because they don't fuck around with trains in England and I and then he didn't answer and I was like Willie we're at fucking Leicester sir and he wouldn't answer so then I had to like shake him so I grabbed his shoulders and I shaked him gently and it's like this cunt isn't answer. So then I had to like shake him. So I grabbed his shoulders and I shaked him gently. And it's like this cunt isn't waking up. And then I shook him harder. And then eventually I had to hit him a full force. Boxing to the fucking back. I had to punch a man on the train.

And then he woke up. And I apologised after. It's like fuck that. No way am I missing a flight in the morning, and then a train, and then he's not waking up on the fucking train in Leicester, after the second flight in the train, but anyway my point is, most likely DJ Willie O'Deejay,

was in stage three of deep sleep, N-R-E-M, at that point, and the only thing that woke him up was another man hitting him into the back full force and this is like i said probably the most important part of sleep but also people who have sleep disorders sleepwalking is what happens during this phase of sleep. Night terrors happen during this night terrors. Oh, they're no crack.

Oh, bye. Again, I had night terrors around the time of bereavement. Just waking up, screaming. No crack. uh just waking up screaming no crack um sleepwalking can be really fucking dangerous you know because the this again is why it can be very difficult to wake someone up from sleepwalking even though they appear to be cognizant and awake they're in the stage three deep sleep cognizant and awake they're in the stage three deep sleep after stage three sleep we get rem sleep which was invented by microsoft only joking rem sleep is um it's it's kind of it's light sleep it It's, REM is when we dream.

The previous two stages of sleep, the brain has kind of shut off a bit and the body has done its maintenance work and its repairs. And for REM, the brain is reawakening. And it's called REM because it's rapid eye movement. This is when the eyes dart around the head

looking and thinking behind the fucking eyelids. And it's rapid eye movement this is when the eyes dart around the head looking and thinking behind the fucking eyelids and it's when we dream and our eyes move rapidly and our brain waves are active it's very easy to wake someone up during REM sleep um I tend not to remember most dreams but if I'm waking up during REM sleep then I do remember the dream when you wake up during REM sleep if you're waking up suddenly during it

you can end up feeling kind of groggy not very nice you can wake up feeling tired of groggy, not very nice. You can wake up feeling tired. Now there's apps you can get where you put the phone on the bed with you and it records your sleep throughout the night based on the amount of movement. So the way these apps work, when you're in deep sleep you don't move at all

right but when you enter REM sleep you're physically moving a bit in the bed while asleep because your body's getting ready to wake up and what these apps

what they do is like if your alarm goes off at 8 o'clock in the morning and you're still in REM sleep, when that alarm goes off and wakes you up, you can wake up feeling really groggy, even though you've gotten loads of sleep. It's because of when it woke you up during the sleep. It didn't wake you up at the right time. didn't wake you up at the right time some of these apps claim to like monitor your body movement and know we say you say i want to be woken up somewhere between half seven and eight and this app can tell by how your body moves in the bed when that exact time should be so that you can wake up feeling refreshed i don't know what the research is.

A lot of the apps require you. To have your phone charged. The entire night while you're using it. I wouldn't recommend anyone do that. Don't charge your phone overnight. Phones go on fire. And they explode. Look it up. It's happened in Ireland.

Don't be plugging your phone in overnight. I know of fucking Fitbit watches and shit like that I think they do the same thing but yeah, yart but this cycle of sleep it happens multiple times throughout the night in 90 minute cycles and that's why you kind of

might wake up a little bit during the middle of the night and then quickly go back into sleep but you introduce a smartphone into that mix you fuck it all up you might go to bed and get one sleep cycle done this is look this is my pattern I'll go to sleep probably will have done about an hour and

a half of sleep, which means I've gone through the full cycle, and then I wake up out of it, because I've just had the REM period, and traditionally, you know, you might need to go for a piss, or something like that, or just stretch stretch and then go back to sleep, or it's when you wake up and, you know, move to the cold side of the pillow or move around. They're usually at the end of the sleep cycles. If during the middle of that, I decide I want to take out my phone and even look at the time, you know, not even social media. I want to see the time. and even look at the time. You know, not even social media. I want to see the time. And the only time piece in my room is the screen of my phone that suddenly turns on and ambushes my eyes.

I'm going to fuck up the next sleep cycle there. So even if I think I'm getting six hours, am I really getting six hours of quality restorative sleep? And is this why my doctor's telling me i'm run down even though i can't really identify anything in my waking existence that would have me run down if you get me uh so what am i going to do to improve it very simple i bought myself an alarm clock. Alright? I bought myself a nice alarm clock in Argos. A fancy one. I press a button on it and it projects a laser up into the ceiling that tells me the time.

And when I go to bed, my phone is going to get turned off and it's going to go into a different room. Because I don't need it. If you were to say to me, why do i need my phone in bed the only answer i can give you is because i i need to see the time i don't need to be contacted i don't need to contact someone i just need it as a time piece so fuck that it's going into a different room and i'm going to have an alarm clock, and I'm going to reintroduce a bedside lamp into my life, and I'm going to have a couple of books, and that's the routine I had pre-2011, when I used to get eight hours of sleep,

so that's my, that's what I'm going to start doing in 2019, and hopefully I'll reap the improvements from it and i'm not going to take sleep for granted again it's stupid to take it for granted it doesn't seem important but just that this simple basic bit of reading i've done i'm like holy fuck that's what sleep does how arrogant of me to dismiss it. I was going to answer questions. But I don't know if you can tell. Doing this podcast is physically quite painful for me this week.

Because of my sore throat. I'm very much on the mend. But like yesterday I couldn't swallow. And I was like speaking in tongues and dripping sweat I was very sick yesterday and I'm lucky to be a lot better today but it does feel like there's a razor blade in the back of my throat when I'm talking so apologies for not getting around to the questions part this week I'll do some questions next week next week I will be in London

I'm going back to London to work on my BBC series and I'll be in London for the next the bond of two months so all my podcasts will be from London hopefully my new lodgings I have an apartment by the way as you know before Christmas I was two weeks in London

in a hotel and I nearly went mad so I have an apartment be able to cook my own food I'll be able to live autonomously preparing my own meals fucking

living a normal life and working that's all I want so I can do that now hopefully the apartment will have decent acoustics or else poor old blind boy is gonna have to put a quilt over his head and record the podcast from inside a quilt so that the sound is okay look after yourselves have uh have a

lovely week I'll be back to you next week. Embrace the year. Embrace the new year. Embrace positivity. Here's the thing. The theme of this. I know it was sleep. It was sleep because.

That's my new year's resolution. But. A lot of you might have new year's resolutions. Be cautious around. Like New Year's is a lovely opportunity to go. Where is something in my life that I want to change to become better? Just be careful you don't take too much on board. Be realistic with your resolutions.

I'm only taking one on. Don't be taking ten on. Because it's easy to set ourselves up with these resolutions that we actually can't kind of we can't do them and then in February you feel like a prick so you're setting yourself up for a bad year already you know i'm gonna fucking i'm gonna take up golf camogie and learn french get fucked you're asking for a disappointing february be realistic with your new year's resolutions please because you're setting yourself up for a narrative of failure february will come along and your Duolingo app will be nothing but a painful reminder every day, just this shithead of an owl jeering at you to learn French and that won't be great for your mental health. So realistic resolutions please. Mine's not

too bad, get 8 hours of of sleep grand I can do that have a good one lads I'm gonna go gargle some honey Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City

at torontorock.com.