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Showing posts from July, 2011

30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol Challenge - Result: Inconclusive

No Coffee For Me! Well, I don't know what I learned on this issue.  No, that's not true, I learned a lot about N=1 tests. One of the problems with N=1 testing of any kind is that it's hard to isolate all the variables one needs to have a conclusive outcome or result, and that's most certainly the case with my 30-Day Caffeine and Cortisol challenge. I was doing well with the removal of caffeine from my diet on all fronts until last week, when I did my first shift of a week of monitoring our nightly processes for my employer.  While this wasn't supposed to be a stressful situation, it was for a couple of reasons, one of which was a change in the amount of sleep I got. I normally get to bed around 10:00 and wake up around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, making my normal sleep time about 7 hours.  But as one of the processes I had to monitor finished at 10:20 PM, that meant staying up later than normal.  And not only that, it necessitated sitting in front of the computer a