Unexpected ways to wake up your brain

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29817519

by anishkothari • 12 years ago

91 66 12 years ago

IgorPartola2• 12 years ago

Here's a trick I've been using: if you are driving and start feeling tired, hold your breath. Your brain will go into a bit of a panic mode: "Where's all the O2?!", and you will feel more awake for a short period of time. Do note, that this is a great trick to get you to the rest area 3 miles down the road, not a good way to drive all night long.

GI_Josh• 12 years ago

That's better than my old "increasingly harder slaps to the face" trick.

pbhjpbhj4• 12 years ago

Yawning is designed to wake you up. Yawn's apparently provide a boost of O2. We yawn when we're tired because we're trying to stay awake/alert and yawning enables that; if someone yawns when you're talking then they're actually trying to concentrate - that's a good thing.

I'm pretty good at fighting the panic response when holding my breath - lots of underwater swimming bravado as a child - at what point do you breath?!? Leave it too long and you'll just pass out at the wheel. I'd imagine for me this would be too distracting and make me more likely to crash.

A research contender though.

IgorPartola2• 12 years ago

I imagine, just like everything else, it doesn't work the same way for everyone. I have tried several techniques of this personally, including filling my lungs and holding my breath, and exhaling completely and holding my breath. The latter works better for me. I have no special training but I can hold my breath for about a minute if my lungs are full. The problem there seems to be that it gets me even sleepier. However, if I exhale and hold my breath it only takes about 10-20 seconds and the response is very immediate and sharp.

I should also note that I don't tend to pass out. Last time I came close to passing out, I was in a state where most people would have (blood pressure at 70/40). Perhaps this trick is not for you if you pass out easily.

eru2• 12 years ago

No evidence for the O2 boost for yawning. Actually, we don't really know what yawning is good for.

ebiester• 12 years ago

It's meant to help you catch bugs and thus acquire protein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mq7UKQ3Jm4&t=45m

(Yes, it's humor, but BAHfest is great at satirizing wild ass guesses that have become mistaken for legitimate hypotheses when we really don't have the evidence to say we know.)

filoeleven• 12 years ago

Neat, I hadn't heard of that one. Both of the tricks for staying awake and alert while driving that I have used involve discomfort: - If it's cold outside, roll down your window. - Find a radio station playing music you dislike and crank it up.

ajcarpy2005• 12 years ago

I have an additional hypothesis for why holding your breath might give you more cognitive energy for a period of time. It could be that the stomach compression and neck muscle tension that often accompanies holding your breath is raising the blood pressure in the head area and thereby increasing blood perfusion.

SiVal• 12 years ago

If you're alone in the car, try screaming. It creates an adrenaline rush.

But I MUST add that none of these tricks will last for more than a couple of minutes, and after you do them a couple of times, they stop working. Sleepy drivers start "microsleeping", which means they fall asleep for a second or so then wake up without being aware that they did it. The microsleeps gradually get longer until you start noticing---or you die or kill someone else.

Don't take sleepiness on the road lightly. You can use the screaming to get yourself safely to a parking place. If you are this sleepy, pull into a busy parking lot and go right to sleep for 15 minutes (set an alarm). You're unlikely to be bothered by anyone in the first 15 minutes in a very busy, public location. They'll assume you're waiting for someone.

jonah• 12 years ago

Very true. To add to this - prefer busier, well-lighted places to quieter, darker places to stop and sleep.

Argorak• 12 years ago

15 Minutes sleep is a good one. Also, if you are alone, singing along with music.

beagle3• 12 years ago

The trick probably works, but the body doesn't actually have a "low-O2" detector, but rather a "high-CO2" detector. Most of the time, they are equivalent; however, if you have e.g. CO poisoning (thus, no CO2 buildup), you don't feel suffocating even though you're out of oxygen.

sebnukem2• 12 years ago

There's one thing that fully wakes me up every morning better than a dozen cups of coffee ever would: biking to work.

JTon• 12 years ago

I'm curious about the logistics behind this. Do you have an issues carrying items to work? Spare clothes, laptop, lunch, etc. Also, do you shower and change once you get to work?

codyb• 12 years ago

A backpack solves all of those issues. None of that is necessarily very large.

As for the shower, some work places have showers. Depending on how much you work out and what the climate is like you may or may not be a heavy sweater after a ride to work. People who work out often tend to sweat more because their bodies adapt to their routines and start to sweat at the slightest hint of physical exercise. People who don't work out extensively often tend to be more reserved when it comes to sweating. You are going to work, not a date. So it may not be an issue at all.

I can't wait to get a bike next season and start biking to work.

hgh• 12 years ago

I recently took the plunge and started biking to work semi-regularly as well. Here's a few points that got me going.

Sweat. If you have a shower at work then great. If not there's no reason to go full tilt on the way to work. Relax, go at a reasonable pace to avoid working up a major sweat. We have a shower at the office, but I rarely use it because it's not too hectic of a ride.

Store stuff at work. Drive into work on a Monday and bring clothes and stuff with you and store in a locker or somewhere at work. Then bike the rest of the days and drive home later in the week.

If you can leave your laptop at work the odd day.. you'll enjoy life at home that much more :)

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

When I have plans to bike to work, I usually stage extra sets of work clothes/shoes at my office the day before(when I take mass transit), so I can carry a light load on my bike commute.

Luckily for me, my office provides showers and lockers, a laptop I can keep at home, and free lunch on the premises, so load is not much of an issue for me.

If you do need to carry some stuff, you can always get a pannier(a bag mounted to the side of your rear wheel), which is more comfortable than a bookbag filled with stuff.

npsimons3• 12 years ago

I can easily pack a change of "work clothes" (used to include dress shoes), toiletries, camp towel and lunch in a small backpack or largish messenger bag. Having a shower available is strongly recommended, however. Built-in in hydration for the backpack isn't a bad idea either.

I've gotten lazy and haven't biked in in awhile, but I used to do it every day by heading into work about 30-45 minutes earlier than I would drive, swapping my shower immediately after I got up for showering at work, and compensating for a slightly longer commute. If you compare the amount of time you'd spend driving to a gym, working out, then driving somewhere else, it's a no-brainer, bike commuting kills two birds with one stone and saves you gas money. Or you can try what I did for a while and get up even earlier to bike to the gym, workout, shower, then bike to work, using the cycling as warmup and cool down for the gym workout.

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

One thing that wakes me up every morning is not drinking any caffein on regular basis. No coffee, energy drinks, tea, or soda.

the_cat_kittles• 12 years ago

my pet hypothesis is that caffeine catalyzes energy consumption, at the expense of efficiency. that is to say, drinking a cup of coffee in the morning makes me a good worker for 1 hour, then i pay the price over the next 5-7. in contrast, no caffeine means a slower start, but more total "energy" towards work gets produced. basically, i dont think you can top natural energy regulation.

bbcbasic3• 12 years ago

So true.

That would be a combination of not being addicted to caffeine (so you are not in need of a fix) and the better REM sleep you had prior to waking up.

In my opinion!

cbd1984• 12 years ago

Where do you live? Because the climate would put a kibosh on that in a lot of places pretty quick. (Even if you're personally fine with being outside in -20°F (244 K) weather, there are rather serious mechanical issues with biking through deep snow and on glazed ice with a thin layer of loose snow on top.)

jib• 12 years ago

There's not that many places where you end up biking through deep snow, on ice, in -20F for a long part of the season, right? Normally its one of the other (really cold, or ice) - if you have long periods of -20F then you have packed snow on roads, not ice, at least we do back home, and packed snow is fine to go on.

I'm from Sweden, and when I lived in Gothenburg I had no issues biking in -10 - -20C or so (which is what it maxes out at in that area, and even then only for a few weeks at most).

Snow is fine to go on - the worst is like 0C when its been melting and freezing so you get slippery ice, but even then you do fine most of the time as at least the car parts of the roads tend to be maintained with gravel. Assuming you live somewhere that regularly has cold weather your roads are most likely decently graveled too.

pedalpete• 12 years ago

There are very few highly populated places where climate would reduce your ability to cycle most days of the year. I'm from Whistler, Canada, I spent a few winters commuting by bike every day, and it's in the Coastal Rainforest, so lots of rain too.

Sure, if you live in Moscow/Anchorage/Montreal/Stockholm/etc, it's miserable for a few months, but the rest of the time, you can cycle.

Plus, cycling in the cold wakes you up even faster than cycling in the heat.

colechristensen• 12 years ago

Not really, living in Minneapolis I've had several (perhaps crazy) friends who biked to work every day year round excepting maybe one or two of the worst days.

npsimons3• 12 years ago

http://www.icebike.org

bevan2• 12 years ago

If you want to see some of the papers about sage's effect on cognition, I've added them here:

http://paleoclaims.com/claims/sage-enhances-cognitive-perfor...

tremendo• 12 years ago

Or, IMO more clearly organized and presented information: http://examine.com/supplements/Salvia+sclarea/

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

Anyone else enjoy a very, very short nap? If I'm feeling sleepy I just find a spot to close my eyes for less than five minutes. Once a bit of hypnogogic imagery appears behind my eyelids, I quit, get up and go back to work. I get a few hours of wakefulness from doing just this.

bevan2• 12 years ago

There is indeed some evidence that very short naps improve memory consolidation, cognitive performance, and mood: http://paleoclaims.com/claims/short-naps-improve-cognitive-p...

Magi6042• 12 years ago

Here's a trick I learned in college.

Get something COLD (ice pack, a can of pop from the fridge, bag of ice. Even a swath of paper towels that have been run under a cold-running faucet for a while can do the trick

Place it on your forehead, centered, just above your eyes.

That always jolted me awake for a good 15-30 mins, though your mileage may vary.

I am not sure of the science behind it, though I do remember reading it on some sort of lifehacker-type blog, so I didn't invent this.

derefr• 12 years ago

Probably the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex

staunch• 12 years ago

In a test which involved pressing a button when I saw a light go on, my reaction times improved from an average of 650 milliseconds before the machine was turned on, to 550 milliseconds with it on. These findings are in line with results from other subjects.

The average reaction time is 256 milliseconds on this web site:

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

Phlarp• 12 years ago

I have no idea how the quoted test was formatted, but a twitch reaction when a subject is prepared for it within a short time-frame (10s like this website) will be much faster than a test where the subject rests or is made to focus on another task for longer periods between sampling.

Also, It sounds like that particular sample was from a cohort of stroke victims, perhaps the stroke also affected their reaction times, or stroke victims represent a generally older demographic and have slower reaction times outright than the younger cohort a website might be measuring.

sjcsjc• 12 years ago

I used to drive a lot and and would regularly become extremely, and indeed dangerously, sleepy. I recall reading at the time that sleeping for around 12 minutes would relieve sleepiness, but that any more than that would actually make you more tired. After doing no research whatsoever, I put this into practice, and it worked, remarkably well. And it still does, 15 years later, though I drive a lot less now. I recommend it to anyone with the same problem.

[edit] when I say it worked well, I mean that after that short sleep (using an alarm of course, without which I would have slept for hours), I could continue driving for several hours without feeling sleepy again.

gadders• 12 years ago

Strange - doesn't mention Nicotine. I believe in patch or lozenge this has as much affect as caffeine [1]. Note that I'm not advocating smoking, just the nicotine itself.

[1] http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/13-nicotine-fix

anotherevan2• 12 years ago

Recently listened to a Freakonomics podcast[1] about how to make people quit smoking. There were two related points that stuck with me.

1. Nicotine can have a lot of positive benefits. As one of their experts stated, “Good drug, bad delivery system.”

2. One of those benefits is a possible anti-depressant effect. So smoking may inadvertently be treating a person’s undiagnosed mental health issue[2], an additional difficulty when trying to quit smoking.

This second point has made me a little more compassionate towards smokers, and to the difficulty of quitting. (As least in theory, still get annoyed when I can smell cigarette smoke on myself after a trip down to the shops because of some smoker on the sidewalk.)

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/03/how-to-make-people-quit-s...

[2] NOT advocating this as an excuse to continue smoking. There are better treatments.

pbhjpbhj4• 12 years ago

If it's just about nicotine though one can use gum, patches, vaporisers - in fact I can't really see why anyone would smoke now, you can get the drug in a cleaner way more cheaply by vaping.

It seems like choosing to chug anti-freeze when you've got high-class liquor available.

aaxe• 12 years ago

Oh, just 250+ citations on nicotine here: http://examine.com/supplements/Nicotine/

RevRal• 12 years ago

Wow, I haven't read the article but I must say that I am very impressed with its organization and presentation of ideas/data.

hyperion20102• 12 years ago

I've been off caffeine for 2+ years now, I always feel like I've been poisoned when I use it, jittery and completely unable to concentrate. Also interesting that they didn't mention any of the longer acting transporter blockers like methylphenidate or other "performance enhancing" drugs that have been widely reported to improve attention (the button pressing test is actually diagnostic for the action of these drugs).

bbcbasic3• 12 years ago

Yes anyone else reading this who consumes any caffeine. Seriously ... give it up. Completely. It is a drug.

I did it and I now sleep better, need less sleep, feel more awake in the morning, and save money.

This is one of the best 'life hacks'

dllthomas2• 12 years ago

I've picked up and dropped a moderately sized caffeine habit at various points in my life. The biggest effect on me of being off caffeine is a reduction of my tolerance for caffeine when I have some next (smaller amount has bigger effect) and clearing out the addiction (can go days without caffeine without headache). I don't see appreciable changes in my quality of sleep (exercise does that!) or my ability to focus.

I have every expectation this differs dramatically person to person, and I encourage anyone with any sort of habit to examine it, but what you say does not necessarily apply to everyone.

AlexandrB• 12 years ago

I find I quickly become tolerant to the awakening and focusing effects of caffeine but not to the anxiety-inducing effects leading to increasingly anxious thought patterns.

Every time I start in on caffeine again because of a crunch I end up regretting it later.

tyoung• 12 years ago

reminds me of spiders on caffeine: http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm

hyperion20102• 12 years ago

Yep, that exact page is one of the reasons I stopped. I like to joke that I am an insect since caffeine is also a poison for many of them.

johnlbevan2• 12 years ago

Sage advice.

ilyaeck• 12 years ago

TL;DR

"Overall, regular caffeine consumers who'd been without caffeine overnight, were slower on the reaction time task, were sleepier and were less mentally alert than non-users,"

orand• 12 years ago

Apparently it was too long; you didn't read the most interesting bits: sage and electric shock have a measurable impact on improved brain functioning.

michael_h• 12 years ago

"They did improve after they got a caffeine drink, but only up to the level the non-users had achieved without caffeine.

When the non-users were given caffeine to drink their reaction times increased but they also became more jittery and anxious."

Seems like an important part of the quote.

glxc• 12 years ago

Where do you find 10 people who don't drink coffee?

dllthomas2• 12 years ago

BYU?

unclesaamm• 12 years ago

My dad's trick for beating jet lag is going swimming at the hotel where he lands. I have a hunch there's something about being in standing height or deeper water that triggers your body to stay awake (since you would otherwise drown)

hoggle• 12 years ago

Interesting, I like to go swimming midday or evening and it helps me "reboot" as well. After about 30 minutes of medium to high intensity breaststroke I often feel better than when I got out of bed that morning.

Energy1• 12 years ago

How about a Tabasco shot and/or a little sniff of Nose Tork?

Unexpected ways to wake up your brain

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