Periodically battling insomnia has deepened my empathy for clients facing similar struggles. Interplay with personal experience, I am always on the lookout for new strategies to help my clients sleep better and have good nights.

Sleep is a luxury in the fast world we are living in. For many people, the time before drifting off to sleep becomes a mental arena of racing thoughts and worry. Overthinking at bedtime not only delays sleep but can also lead to long-term insomnia. However, a simple and innovative method called cognitive shuffling may be the solution you’re looking for. Let’s explore how this technique works and how it can transform your bedtime routine.

Nightly Battle With Overthinking

One of the common problems that people with stress, anxiety, or depression experience is overthinking before bed. As the day winds down, the distractions that kept our worries at bay fade, leaving room for intrusive thoughts to take over. According to experts, this mental chatter often exacerbates insomnia and makes restful sleep seem unattainable.

Other distractions resorted to are social media scrolling or binge-watching TV series, which might interrupt the sleeping cycle of the body. Cognitive shuffling, therefore, is a better and more structured way to quiet the mind in preparation for sleep. It prevents your brain from following the upsetting trains of thought that build up to anxiety and guides it toward relaxing and getting to sleep.

What Is Cognitive Shuffling?

Cognitive shuffling is a mental exercise that keeps your brain lightly engaged with random, unrelated thoughts. The idea is to keep your mind occupied enough to distract it from racing thoughts without overstimulating it. Unlike problem-solving or planning, this technique disrupts the processes that fuel overthinking, such as memory recall and evaluation.

It quickly came to attention within social media pages such as TikTok, whose users claimed to have an uncanny ability to make thoughts "scramble" so much so that it's nearly impossible to concentrate on your mind's worries. The activity supports randomness and creativity but in return, disallows your thoughts to fall deeper into anxiety and stress.

Why Cognitive Shuffling Works

The science of cognitive shuffling is explained through the fact that it creates a light cognitive load. Focus on simple, unrelated words or images guides the brain into relaxing in a relaxed manner. This method does not allow the brain to get deeper into complicated emotional thought patterns that hinder sleep.

For example, as you mentally shuffle through random words, the brain's tendency to connect ideas is interrupted. This shift moves you away from high alertness and closer to a dreamy, drowsy state where sleep comes more naturally.

How to Practice Cognitive Shuffling

Implementing cognitive shuffling is straightforward and requires no special tools. Here's a step-by-step guide to get started:

1. Select a Word: Use a neutral word, such as "bedtime." This will be your anchor for the exercise.

2. Disassemble the Word: Focus on the first letter of your selected word, such as "B" in "bedtime." Think of a word beginning with that letter, like "broom." Imagine it clearly in your mind.

3. Repeat With Other Letters: Go to the next letter ("E") and think of another word, such as "elephant." Continue this process for each letter in your chosen word.

4. Visualize and Breathe: As you think of each word, pair it with your breathing. Inhale while choosing the word, and exhale as you visualize it. This added focus on breathing helps calm your body.

5. Recognize Distractions: If thoughts interrupt, acknowledge them without judgment and refocus the mind back on the exercise.

6. Repeat Until Sleep Sets In: Continue to shuffle through words and letters as you please until you fall asleep.

Expert Tips for A Good Night's Sleep

Cognitive shuffling is easy; however, it requires some practice to master. A few tips that can make it even better:

• Avoid logical sequences or related words. The more random, the better.
• Select simple, nonstiming words and images
• It may take a few nights before you notice the difference, so do not get discouraged.
• Try cognitive shuffling, even on nights when you do not feel particularly anxious.

This will help the technique to feel more natural when you need it most.

Regular practice of cognitive shuffling doesn't just help you fall asleep faster; it can also improve the overall quality of your sleep. Nighttime anxiety that ranges from mild to full-scale racing thoughts is reduced through effective cognitive shuffling, which may bring a wake-up time down.

This technique may also be a useful tool in managing stress and intrusive thoughts during the day. Incorporating cognitive shuffling into your mental health toolkit can help build resilience against the daily stressors that often disrupt sleep.

It doesn't have to be a nightly nightmare. Cognitive shuffling is simple, effective and drug-free to calm your racing mind and create a peaceful pathway to sleep. Eliminate the noise and enjoy a quieter, restful night's sleep as you swap the constant stream of thoughts to random words that don't seem related in any way.

If you are ready to reclaim your sleep, try cognitive shuffling tonight. With practice, you may discover that this somewhat unorthodox but very powerful approach is the magic bullet that stops your thoughts from running amok and lets your body and mind get the rest they need.

We have all have experienced fevers, there are many different beliefs about it in different cultures and multiple ways to treat it, ranging from modern medicine to ancient practices. When one has a fever, their body feels warm and weak, they also do not have energy to do extended movements. As fevers are a range, some being slight to others being signs of dangerous conditions, dealing with them can be tricky. Things like fever dreams, conversations and thoughts are often incoherent. There are things called fever hallucinations as well, but why does this happen?

Fever means your body temperature has gone above what's normal. But what's "normal" can be a bit different for everyone and can change based on how active you are and the time of day. Generally, a fever is when your temperature is higher than 99 degrees Fahrenheit in the early morning or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit at any other time.

Do Fevers Make Us More Irritable?

In a 2013 review published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, the researchers found that not only do fevers cause people to feel cold, weak and other bodily sensations, but the participants also expressed emotional changes, vivid dreams/hallucinations.

In one of the interview with a participant from the study, researches noted them experiencing feelings of anxiousness, crabby, angry and frustrated, “Like I said, I think fever is really tied in to how you feel emotionally. Because I know every time I have a fever, I just get snotty, for lack of a better term, because I'm just really agitated.”

“I feel tired. I feel irritable”

How Is Body Heat And Brain Health Connected?

Harvard Heath explains a part of your brain called the hypothalamus acts like a thermostat for your body. When you're healthy, it keeps your body at its usual temperature. A fever happens when the hypothalamus gets set to a higher temperature than normal. This change in the brain's thermostat is usually caused by tiny things in your blood called pyrogens.

According to a 2023 review by Yale School of Medicine heat can change things in the environment, it can also change how our brains work. In a study, researchers found that even small increases in temperature while the brain is active can really change what the brain does, and sometimes these changes can be negative.

Experts from Yale explain that changes in temperature in the brain also affect how our nerve cells (neurons) fire signals. These cells have tiny pumps that give them electrical energy, which they release when the brain is active. The researchers found that if brain cells get heated up too fast, faster than these pumps can adjust, the cells might become more active or less active than usual.

Even tiny temperature changes from brain stimulation can lead to big changes in neuron activity. As neurons get warmer, they can even stop working, and when they cool down again, they can become very easily excited.

Fever Hallucinations and other Psychological Affects

According to an Infections & Chemotherapy 2022 review, fevers can cause febrile convulsions, which is a seizure caused by a fever in young kids. It can also cause confusion, like not understanding where you are, not recognizing your surroundings. It can also cause unstable emotions, conscious and cognitive disturbances like illusions on hallucinations.

These can also be symptoms for things like influenza infections or encephalitis. Like the Yale experts explained even small temperature changes can have such a big impact on brain activity, we need to start paying attention to these small changes. He points out that it's a basic rule of physics that when you send electricity through wires to stimulate the brain, you will create heat, both in the wires and in the brain tissue itself.

Researching more on these matters can help us find better treatments and help doctors change the course of several procedures to help their patients.

Turkey has banned elective caesarean surgeries for childbirth at private hospitals and healthcare centres. "Planned Caesarean sections cannot be performed in a medical centre," said a gazette entry outlining new regulations governing private healthcare institutions in Turkey. It came as the country's president, Tyyip Recep Erdogan, has been pushing hard to have women give natural births, asserting that C Section surgeries promoted Western culture.

The move has triggered massive criticism from the opposition and right-wing organisations. "As if the country had no other problems, male football players are telling women how to give birth," Gokce Gokcen, deputy chair of the main opposition CHP, on X. Meanwhile, many human rights and women's rights organisations have also raised their voices against this new law, calling it out for restricting women's rights and liberty.

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What Is A C-Section Birth?

C-section or caesarean birth is a surgical procedure wherein a baby is delivered through incisions made in mother's abdomen and uterus. The name caesarean comes from the Latin word "caedare" which means "to cut." Interestingly, there are rumours that link the name to Roman emperor Julius Caesar, stating that he was the first person to be born via this procedure. However, there are no records of this.

However, there are many cases where a caesarean section surgery becomes almost necessary. A doctor may order a C-section if:

• Your baby is breech, or the lower part of the body is in the birth canal instead of the head.
• Your baby is in a transverse position, or lying sideways in the birth canal.
• Your baby’s head is unusually large.
• Your baby’s heartbeat is slowing down, or there is a problem with oxygen delivery to your baby.
• You are giving birth to more than one baby. Sometimes one baby will be in an abnormal position, so all of the babies are then born via C-section.
• Your baby has a birth defect that makes vaginal delivery unsafe.
• You have umbilical cord issues.
• You have health conditions that make vaginal delivery unsafe. These include high blood pressure, HIV, open herpes lesions, or heart problems.

What Are The Complications Of Having a C-Section Surgery?

There are many complications that come with this method of delivering a child. They include:

• Reactions to the medicines used during surgery
• Bleeding
• Abnormal separation of the placenta, especially in women with previous cesarean delivery
• Injury to the bladder or bowel
• Infection in the uterus
• Wound infection
• Trouble urinating or a urinary tract infection
• Delayed return of bowel function
• Blood clots

Bottom Line

Despite the potential risks and complications, C-sections are much safer than they once were. With evolution in medical science, doctors are now taking great care to make incisions that will reduce the risk of nicks to the baby and infections to the mother. Meanwhile, the use of anaesthesia, also reduces the pain of the childbirth.

ALSO READ: Dishonesty Is 'More Than A Vice', It Could Make You Sick With

Being dishonest doesn’t come naturally to people, it is a learned virtue, whether out of necessity or pleasure. When kids lie, a lot of it stems from them not wanting to get in trouble, for example, breaking a household item or doing something they were told not to do like running around inside the house. However, when people do learn to tell lies, it can become like a go to tendency for many. It is easier to make something up rather than explaining complex truths.

According to a study published in the Psychological Science 2015, kids start lying around the age of two to three years old. Their habit then progresses rapidly, till the age of 3 and 7.

Not all lies are the same, some are really small and don't hurt anyone, like saying you like someone's new haircut even though you don't. These little white lies often just help keep things smooth and make people feel good. Then there are much bigger lies, like saying someone else did something wrong when they didn't, or lying to people about money. These kinds of lies can cause a lot of damage and have bad consequences for people's lives.

Stress Response of Lying

When we know that being dishonest could really hurt how others see us, the act of lying itself makes our bodies feel stressed. When we tell a lie, things start to happen without us even thinking about it. A 2015 review published in the Current Opinion in Psychology explains that our heart might beat faster, we might start to sweat a little and our mouth can feel really dry. These physical changes are what those old-fashioned lie-detector tests used to try and pick up on.

Some people don't feel as much empathy as others, and they might not have the usual stressed reaction when they lie. The American Psychological Association explains that some people can learn to control their bodies really well and might be able to lie and still pass a lie-detector test. On the other hand, someone who is telling the truth but is just really nervous about being tested might look like they are lying.

Gut-Brain Connection and Extreme Reactions

While it's not common, some people might have a really strong physical reaction to lying, like feeling sick to their stomach or even throwing up a lot. This shows how connected our gut and our brain are. When we feel really anxious, like when we are worried about getting caught in a lie, it can actually make our stomach feel bad. So, for someone who is constantly lying and worried about it, this anxiety could potentially lead to physical sickness.

Living a life where you are often not telling the truth can actually take a toll on your health over time, not just in the moment. Research has suggested that people who lie a lot might have problems like high blood pressure, their heart might beat faster more often, their blood vessels could get tighter, and they might have more stress hormones in their bodies on a regular basis.