NaBloPo: Two Pet Peeves

Hey Friends, for the most part I try not to get my dander up about the small things in life.  But I do have a small list of "issues" and two of them came up recently, so I thought that I would rant a bit about:

Pet Peeve #1: people telling other people how often to wash their hair

Pet Peeve #2: sleep trackers

For all things NaBloPo head over to The Inbetween in Mine

Let's take these two topics one at a time

Hair Washing Frequency

As best I can remember, at some point in my 20s I heard a lot of chatter that you aren't supposed to wash your hair everyday.  That shampoo is bad for you (the "no poo" movement).  That's it better for your hair if you go several days between washes. People rave about how much they love dry shampoo, and I hear frequent brags about only washing once a week.

When I started hearing all of this stuff, I experimented with not washing my long, straight, and thick hair and it was a disaster.  By day two it looked terrible and I felt like I had an oil slick on my head.  Brushing did nothing to help "distribute" the "natural oils".  Rinsing in water only or water plus a shot of apple cider vinegar just made the oil coating on my scalp worse and turned my hair into straw and gave me gnarly tangles to comb out.  When I finally did wash my hair it took two days of shampooing to get back to normal and a ton of hair came out when I combed it afterwards.  I repeated this experiment many times because I mean if everyone is saying that it's fine and/or better to stretch out the time between washes then it must be true.  Finally I came to the conclusion that skipping washes was not for me.  

I remember once a friend was telling me about her teenage daughter "she washes her hair every day and it's so annoying!!!!  I keep telling her that she can go longer but she says it just gets greasy.  Why is she being like that??????"  I think that's when the thought came to me that - whoa - people are different and maybe just maybe for some people it is better to go longer between washes and for freaks like me it's better to wash every day.  It's just not that time consuming, you know.  Yes I wish I didn't have to blow dry my hair (on those unlucky days when I have early on camera meetings) but what are ya gonna do?

In short, I don't care how frequently or infrequently anyone else washes their hair.  You do you, dude.

Like many of the topics that I write about, I don't actually know anything about hair, so let's cite an expert: "in general, shampooing your hair every day is not inherently bad".

The reason that this peeve got on my radar is from the big stink last week when a bunch of dry shampoos got recalled for having high levels of cancer causing chemicals in them.  And my reaction is, "dude, I'm not surprised".

Your turn: how often do you wash your hair?  Do you think it's "bad" to wash every day?

ZZZZZ....sleep trackers

My first experience with a sleep tracker was when I won a fitbit in a work fitness contest.  I took it to bed with me and was excited to learn how I slept.

The verdict: not enough.  In a perfect world I'd go to bed at 10 and get up a 6 on workdays, but the reality is that most nights it's closer to 11 and back when I was running I was getting up at 5:30 on some mornings.  While I'm usually in bed for at least 7 hours, the sleep tracker would record barely 6 hours of sleep.  I sometimes spend 8 hours in bed but I never ever never get 8 hours of sleep on my sleep tracker.  My Garmin is much snarkier than the fitbit and often rates my sleep as poor.

My take: this is garbage data.  I often wake up before my alarm, I never take naps, for the most part I feel alert and chipper throughout the day, and I don't sleep in much later on weekends that I do on weekdays. 

Solution: I try my best not to look at my sleep data and honestly I should probably just disable it and be done with it.  I only wear my Garmin three nights a week as it is (the three days when I get up earlier than the rest of the fam and need it for the alarm clock function).  For an example of how using a sleep tracker can be useful, see Tobia's excellent post.

The reason that this got on my radar is that when I was traveling last Friday I heard Maintenance Phase's episode on "The Sleep Loss Epidemic".  They did a hilarious take down on a "sleep influencer" and the history of where the recommendation of 8 hours a night comes from.  Their conclusion: if you feel good when you wake up in the morning, your sleep is fine.  If you don't feel good, or if you have a change in your sleeping patterns, then you've got something that you need to look into.  As with so many other things in life, quantity doesn't tell you anything about the quality.

FWIW since I've talked about this in comments on other blogs and once in this space, I do go through phases where I have trouble falling asleep or wake up and then can't get back to sleep.  I've noticed that once it starts not being able to fall asleep starts to become a habit.

My go-to's are Mediation Oasis podcasts and Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Sleep (a hypnosis CD).  I downloaded the Mediation Oasis files back in the days of rss feeds so I'm not sure which exact ones I have, but I don't think the particular ones are important.   I forked out $3 for the app but I found it cumbersome to use so I stuck with the same old files that I downloaded back in the day.  And no I don't have a CD player next to my bed, I ripped the CD back in the days when people ripped CDs so it's all on my phone.  I don't actively try to participate in the meditations (i.e. I don't try to be aware of my left foot and process whether it feels heavier than my right foot...who cares) I just listen to them.  I think these programs work because they shut off my brain and (rude but true) they are boring so I think it's just the act of listening that makes me drowsy and helps to break the habit of not being able to sleep.  So if it's useful to anyone else, that's what I do.  When my sleep gets bad I don't need the tracker to tell me that and also it does nothing to help get me back on track.

Your turn: how's your sleep in general?  Do you use a sleep tracker and if so is the data useful?  Any tips or tricks for when you can't sleep?

Good night everybody!  I hope that your hair is clean to your standards and that you sleep well tonight!