I just found Guardians today, after following links around iTunes(I think), and after listening to the Chapter One Teaser I was hooked and ready to listen to it all. I really am intrigued by the premise, and the writing and delivery are great, so I’m hoping you WANT to continue when you are ABLE!

1. Sleep helps with your mood.
I know someone who claimed he couldn’t remember anything, was irritable, and zoned out. I asked him how much sleep her got and he said it was 5 hours. I told him that 8 hours is better. Since he’s been doing that his mood and everything evened out.

My cousin, who has anxiety also said that once she started forcing herself to sleep on a schedule that her anxiety went down.

From a scientific POV, I believe it has to do with the renewing process in which the body ups the white blood cell count while one sleeps and often evens out hormones.

I know from some people that some people can sleep 2 hours a night without bad effects, but since each of our bodies are different, our limitations are different. I *know* I go loopy without the right amount of sleep.

2. Exercise does help.

Scientifically it’s the adrenaline which lifts the heart beat, then serotonin (The feel-good hormone) starts kicking in to preserve the body from feeling injury. This sis why some people say that burning at the stake isn’t so bad, ’cause the rush of serotonin kicks in to cover the pain so one can get away. This is why one doesn’t notice bruises until days later, or people can walk after breaking their leg. If you go on the R-rated side–apparently that helps too. ^.~

It’s an artificial high which will make you feel good.

The first two most countries usually force the person to do before taking any medication. I watched a Japanese program in where the therapist told the person to regulate when they sleep and what they eat. The person got better.

Also sunlight and the regularization of receiving it can help. I know people often get depressed when they don’t go outside. People who work night shifts are often very tired compared to day shifts. I forgot the science behind it, but sunlight helps regulate sleep also. You can look up stats from Sweden about how sun is related to suicide rates…

3. Meditation.
I didn’t see this one listed, but for me, it’s saved me quite a few times. I learned how to do this when I was taking acting classes (When I was 9).

When I was anxious and couldn’t handle things I learned to force to slow myself down, breathe, normalize my breath and figure out what was wrong psychologically. It’s served me well. It helped me out of depression and when I felt trapped. Kept me sane in really tight situations, and helped me sort my head when I had no other way to cope.

It’s helped me through headaches, nasty flashes, stress, etc.

It doesn’t have to be complicated as learning how to do Om… it can be simple and when you get good at it, you can calm yourself in a 2-3 seconds.

My cousin said that alone helped her through her high anxiety without drug use.

There are basics of meditation I’ve found.
a. Regulate your breathing. Pay attention to it and how your breath effects your body. The slower you breathe and the longer you breathe for will help your lung capacity, your blood flow, and calm you. (Hinduism says to breathe in through your nose (cleared) and out through your mouth.)
b. Become aware of your body in space.
How are you sitting? How are you standing? How are you laying down? Become aware of that, what’s wrong with that, where your body hurts or doesn’t hurt, how your body moves. Then start shuffling your body until you’re comfortable in space and neutral. Then shut down the awareness. You don’t need it anymore until you’re done.
c. Block out the outside world.
The primitive way of doing this is to become aware of every single last sound as far as your can hear and take them all in. Then one by one start to ignore them. This was a damn good technique I learned because it allowed me to write and not get distracted as much.
d. Still your mind.
This is by far the hardest part. Especially with a headache. Sometimes headaches are stress, sometimes psychological fear, sometimes injury. This will help sort it out. If it was from your body, you should have felt it in the body step. I often find that headaches I get build from my neck so when I do this, I often find out my neck is under stress. The trick is to find what is disturbing you. Every single thought that will not still, earmark it, shuffle it into a concise list to deal with later (i.e. prioritize that list). There are sometimes pesky thoughts that are not really coming to the surface. Chase them. Find out what they are. Once you get through it, still your mind again. If you still have trouble, try the old, water drops into a pond follow the ripples as far as you can trick.

I usually konk out during this process, but feel better when I wake up later.

The 2-3 second one is usually close your eyes, breathe deeply, calm your mind, move forward. Takes practice though…

Anyway, meditation has saved my neck a few times and helped me to feel back in control of whatever my head does. I thought it might help you as well. It’s a technique like writing, so it take lots of practice. Might be worth giving it a shot.

As for your podcast, I’m sure that people are more concerned about you getting back on your feet than getting another installment. If you want to talk about being horrible about your lag, I think I have you beat. I had 14 technical failures in a row happen in a 2 week period. I promised it way back in December… so you’re doing better than I am. Get better and take care of yourself. I hope I wasn’t beating a dead horse…

Just read your post and I’d just like to encourage you to not give up and keep hacking away at those little nasties. I’ve had no shortage of those myself.

I’ve noticed a few over-riding principles, that definitely applies to myself – and probably will apply else where too,

Tiredness = Depression
Depression = Anxiety
Anciety = Sleeplessness

Thus the cycle would continue. The best way to break it is to do as your Dr told you make sure you schedule your sleep and get a good amount of it.

If you find there are more problems with sleeping it can also mean Diabetes but that would be a question for the Dr’s

Stick in there and don’t give up!