Why use drugs to stay awake when you can use light?

Its exam time, and lots of students will be desperate to extend their hours of wakefulness so they can fit as much study in as possible (or soon will be) and many of them will turn to drugs such as caffeine to keep them awake and alert for longer, however, putting chemicals into your brain is a BAD thing, especially things that speed up the brains processing speeds too much as the neurons begin to misfire and signals don't go where they're supposed to.

But there is a much better way to stay awake, and that, is white light, no chemicals, some people would argue no particles at all! (but then we get into photons vs waves, packets verses continuous energy blah blah) and what causes this wakefulness? our old friend the pineal gland.

The pineal gland secretes melatonin, and as few people know, melatonin fights cancer, but a more known fact, is that melatonin controls the sleep wake cycles of the body,

Normally, melatonin levels begin to rise in the mid- to late evening, remain high for most of the night, and then drop in the early morning hours, so the best time to fight cancer is when you're sleeping, huh, being awake CAN increase your risk of cancer, so there's a down side, but you'll sleep and the risks will level out after exam times.

The reason why melatonin levels alter throughout the day is due to the amount of light, as light affects melatonin production, during shorter, darker days, the body will produce more melatonin and its levels will increase earlier in the day than usual, this change CAN lead to symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression, so by staying up longer with this light you reduce your risk of that.

This is due to the darker days and longer night time periods we experience in the winter months, (ever noticed you feel more tired or gloomy on a grim wet day? its not JUST because of the weather, or it is, because the clouds are stopping the sun light)

So, if melatonin increases you become sleepy, this happens at night, so the converse must be true for during the day, melatonin decreases, you feel more awake, when the sun is out, so the best way to feel more awake? Have a very white light in your room.

It is worth noting (but not going into) that different wavelengths have different effects on wakefulness, red light, for example, promotes melatonin production, making you feel more sleepy, white light is the best, but certain wavelengths will have increased/decreased effects

providing you sleep and get SOME REM sleep, your brain will process the information still :) 
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12004644
www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/pineal.html
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview

more interesting than revision xD

Time is false

Ask a child, we have 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night, and that makes sense if you look at the standard 12-12 clock, say sunset is about 7 pm that means sunrise is about 7 am, and this is pretty constant, given a few hours differences at key times (we're near the top of the earth so get less sunlight than in summer due to the earths axis)

but the actual order of time is very different, sticking with the average clock and based on "government recommended" sleep patterns we can see we have more "hours" in the day that first given to us.

We start our day at work at about 9 am, or 0900 hours, we will call this time 00:00
then as each hour progresses we add another hour to 00:00, but assuming an average 8 hour working day:
0900 - 0000 < work day starts
1000- 0100
1100 - 0200
1200 - 0300
1300 - 0400
1400 - 0500
1500 - 0600
1600- 0700
1700 - 0800 < work day finishes
1800- 0900
1900 - 1000
2000 - 1100
2100 - 1200
2200 - 1300
2300 - 1400 < most  lights are out by now
0000 - 1500
0100 - 1600
0200 - 1700
0300 - 1800
0400 - 1900
0500 - 2000
0600 - 2100
0700 - 2200 < people start to wake up here
0800 - 2300
0900 - 0000

As i have mentioned before in great detail here, we only  need 3 hours sleep a night, so we lose 5 hours to pointless sleep making us zombifide

we have 4 bonus hours each day that aren't considered "useful" as they're "down time" from the days work, and we spend this time where? sat in front of the TV getting brain washed, how many times have you gone to bed thinking "well, that was a waste of a day" or "i really wish i'd done task x"? this is because we spend all our time staring at a box, This box is filling your head with ideas and you're not even remembering them, you're loosing that time to the tv,

we're all being brain washed and conditioned to think the way THEY want, even down to the simple adverts that are shown on tv are bombarding our senses with ideas and messages that sit in our subconscious and loiter, this has been proven and used in the media before.

First example:
the macdonalds cartoons in England with the hamburgerler  and his friends, these used to flash up Marlborough cigarette packets up on screens, not aimed at the kids, but the adults subconscious,  getting them to smoke, explaining why a lot of elders smoke, however, as kids brains were like sponges, they also absorbed the message, however, the law stopped them from smoking for many years, but at high school, a lot, if not most, people try smoking, because they were bombarded with these images as children!  thats why the smoking ages has moved constantly with the 1989-1992 generation, to try and control the smoking messages that were implanted by restricting access, this was a contingency plan they CLEARLY decided upon at the time of showing the cartoons, now think back to those shows, they hardly seem memorable, because they are brainwashed out of you as soon as the damage is done, scary isn't it!

Second example:
it was well known that adverts used to use subliminal messages to sell their products, however, this was made illegal recently, but it doesn't mean its been stopped, just that they got more sly and influencing...

Also, in the George bush campaign (i want to say against al gore, but i'm not 100% sure) there was a subliminal message from bush's party, in a party political broadcast (or equivalent in America)  where bushes party was outlining gores (assumption, correct me if i'm wrong please. these things are easily re-searchable) and the word "RATS" flashed up, just a frame to quickly for it to be seen running full speed (but your subconscious still saw it, your brain just didn't register it process worthy, but it still had to detect it to decide that, planting the message) this was found by people slowing down the real time recordings by a few frames per second, this shows how sloppy bushes party were at assassinating their opponents policies, they knew they were going to win because the Rothschild were going to make it so, because this kept them in power and with control of effectively the world.


haha, post about robbing time, flowed into brainwashing, then onto political corruption and the controllers of the world.

who says i don't have a brain :P
even if its wrong haha

Liam

OUT1

Its been 4 days guys D:

to the stage where firefox logged me out and i had to remember my password (i have 6 different passwords i used for everything, so it took me a whole ¬¬ )

Got my extended project presentation tomorrow, and its not finished yet :( so i have to take my beautiful laptop into college tomorrow and work my pasty white butt off trying to cram about 1000 words into 4 more slideshows (if i don't post tomorrow, assume i took it upon myself to throw every piece of tech i own out of the window in a strop)

life, currently, sucks if im honest, exams are getting closer, which means uni is getting closer, and theres this little niggling doubt in the back of my head that keeps telling me that maybe i'm doing things the wrong way, maybe i SHOULDN'T share with ellie and sarah, because that defeats the whole objective of uni life

maybe i've chosen the wrong course, or what if i fail and drop out halfway through the second year?

all these questions bombing around inside my head, its any wonder i can actually SLEEP at night, let alone concentrate in college.

i dunno

i'll keep you posted as always :D

liam


OUT!