June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Seven: Replacing Coffee in the Morning with Cold Showers
I never been a morning guy, am not currently and probably never become one so you can only imagine that my mornings are the same as a snails walk. It takes me about half an hour to come to "reality" everyday and it seems that I'm not the only one in that position, thus I will share with you a life hack for this kind of mornings that I've been sunig for some time.
For about a year I tried to "fight" these mornings with coffee and it kind of worked. Kind of, because I haven't felt energized and "alive" the minute I drank it so its effects started to show up almost when I was close to work and only last for maximum an hour. If I hadn't faced some healthy problems I would probably continue with the well known coffee booster in the morning, but fortunately I can't anymore.
I said fortunately, because I'm not a believer in coffee on the long run as it is somehow of a drug that in time asks for higher dosage, BUT I tried that too. Coming back to "sleepy mornings" I have to say that I found another trick to boost my...everything in the morning and that's cold showers.
I heard about them from Wim Hof who has some videos on youtube about the power of the cold on our health and overall well being and in one of them he talked extensively about these cold showers that for me seem the most accessible, cheap and efficient coffee replacement at the time. Cold showers are just one ingredient from Wim's method that I borrowed, but there are some other "cold hacks" that you can check if you care about your well being and health and not scared of facing directly low temperatures.
Coming back to cold showers I will admit that they're not always 100% cold in my case, as in winter there is enough cold outside to wake me up and the water is also pretty poor in degrees Celsius when it comes on the pipe, but the temperature of the water in my showers is in that season also pretty low. In the summer though taking a cold shower in the morning is my perfect booster and the best "coffee" I can get.
I don't remember exactly the details about what cold water does with our bodies and brains, but it wakes me up like nothing else and it's not a just one hour booster like coffee.It is though almost as addictive as coffee. I usually shower for about three minutes every morning and using cold water I don't see "the point" anymore to sing in the shower and spend there like half an hour. But after these three minutes I really feel more alive, full of energy and confidence and I wouldn't go back to coffee ever. Or RedBull which I even can't stand the scent anymore.
If you are like myself, a snail in the morning, feel free to try a cold shower every morning. It doesn't has to be 100% cold water from day one as you can gradually decrease waters temperature as you get used with such showers and I wouldn't advise you either to do that when having a flu or a cold, but it might keep you away from them once you made these cold showers a daily habit. They say that you also develop a strong immune system when you shower with cold water.
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Quite many also does a morning bath ... others a morning sauna. My granddad-in-law, our only remaining granddad, he has always been very healthy compared to his age, he always (at least in the summer time, probably not in the winter) started the day by jogging to the local river, having a bath and then jogging back again. He visited us in the northern Norway once, it was one of the warmest summers but still ... every morning he went jogging to a lake, I hadn't even thought the possibility of going there and swim there, for one thing it was too far away! And swimming in the northern Norway? Naah ... that's too cold.
I stopped drinking caffeine around two months ago.
Our family has always been very slow in the mornings, but for me it seems to have helped to get (several) children and to move south to Oslo, I'm much more of a morning person now than what I used to be ... and I tend to collapse in the late evenings. My biggest problem after stopping with coffee is the post-lunch-period, where I sometimes feel very drowsy. Office work by the computer, it's not much healthy.
Such an example like your granddad-in-law I have also from my grandmas village where we had a neighbor that lived up to 90 years old and worked his entire life in agriculture. From the end of May when the temperatures were starting to rise until September you would only saw him in the evening wearing a cotton shirt. Otherwise he would be on the fields wearing no shirt and working from sunrise to sunset. I never ate with him, but I am sure he only ate healthy food in that time as all the villagers used to. No chemicals, no coffee, no RedBulls. It was physical effort, zero stress involved and natural food that helped him live nine decades. Nowadays there's a lot of obesity, diabetes and many other diseases that eat us alive and the only ones guilty for that are ourselves. I am amazed by myself how many health conditions I have faced in three decades. Don't even imaging living 90 year, but as long as I can I will manage my health and discovered that very often the best treatments and health maintenance ways are too accessible, easy to have and cheap to even notice them. Take the example of water. Only drinking an enough amount of water in the morning and it's like you don't need coffee. I never had a sedentary work place, like in an office, but when I'm at my laptop at home for hours I feel its side effects.
I've never been fond of cold showers, but then I've always been more of a morning person if anything. Lately, I'm not sure what I am. :)
So, drinking coffee to help me wake up hasn't been something I've felt compelled to do, and from the sounds of it, it's just as well.
I've never tried Red Bull or the other energy drinks, either.
I do find that I have lower energy levels during the mid-afternoon (mostly, though it can happen earlier).
I do try to get between 7-8 hours of sleep every night, which I think helps, but I probably need to eat better, at least the afternoon meal, so I don't start to drag so soon after it.
I might try the cold shower idea, though, anyway, just to see if it pushes me through the day any better. :)
Give it a try gradually, or at least try using colder water than usual. Regarding energy drinks I've had my share also and I even had a colleague that had a heart attack after too much coffee, cigarettes and energy drinks. Food though can give you that sleepiness feeling in high amounts. I guess it's more important what you eat and how nutritious the food is.