Coffee Break? + Oura Ring Early Review

I'm super Goop-y - if that statement doesn't make sense to you, you need to CLICK HERE NOW! No but seriously, I do love Gwyneth Paltrow and the business she has built at Goop - valued at $250 million USD. Goop was one of the first holistic feeling wellness brands that actually had a platform aligned with a lot of my values and interests. Longevity is important to me, I think it's quite possible for my generation to be centenarians so I fully plan to live into my 100s. This is a great motivation to live a healthy lifestyle. I've had my new Oura Ring for three nights now, and I'm really into it! The features, data and UX are all pretty fantastic. I love the Readiness feature - Readiness is an overall measure of your recovery that signals your capacity to perform at your mental, emotional, and physical best. Oura monitors signals from your body and picks up on daily habits to determine how well rested you are and whether or not you're ready for a challenge. The sleep metrics are very specific and enlightening! 

One of the books we are reading in our book club is This Is Your Mind On Plants by Michael Pollan . He has an entire third of the book covering coffee and caffeine including it's imperialistic and capitalistic backgrounds. He tells one story of a tie manufacturing company in the U.S. that needed to up employee productivity, so took on an employee suggested 'coffee break' policy. This new 2 a day 30 minute coffee break concept did increase employee productivity dramatically. And the Modern American regular old coffee break was born! There's even a Federal court case backing up coffee breaks are paid working hours. But what's this productivity boost doing to our health? Well, coffee really really messes with your sleep. Your internal system that tries to tell you to go to sleep gradually throughout your day, is highjacked by caffeine and causes crashes and dramatic swings in energy. But, the half life of coffee is around 12 hours so just try to drink your coffee at least 12 hours before you want to go back to sleep. We have a Breville coffee maker in our house and it makes delicious coffee, however it's been 8 days since I've had a cup! Giving it a little break, we'll see how that experiment goes. Still off the alcohol too!

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