Those of you that know me know that I view most (ok, all) things as Information Systems.  I chalk that up to my nature, but also to actual nature, since if you come right down to it, that's really what things are.  The work of scientists and futurists like Claude Shannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon) and Ray Kurzweil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil) has bolstered that viewpoint.  Building on their work and adding their own have been the biohackers, people like Tim Ferriss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ferriss ; http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/) and most recently, Dave Asprey (http://www.bulletproofexec.com/) who have taken the idea of biology as an information system that much further.

One of the things that has been bothering me lately is that I am mostly tired all the time.  Since I work a full-time job and take three classes a week in grad school, people think I'm over-working myself.  While that may be true to a certain extent, it's not the cause - I have worked much more in the past (there was one month at my previous job I worked 333 hours) and I know of other people who have a similar schedule and who aren't completely exhausted.  So when I came across Dave Asprey's post here: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/top-6-biohacks/ I decided I'd at least start with some of the top biohacks.

The first and easiest was the sleep hacking (http://www.bulletproofexec.com/category/sleephacks/).  Most of it made immediate sense, since I know that if I get around six hours of sleep, then I'm usually pretty good - the trick is getting up after six hours.  (Actually, I'm usually my best in multiples of three, but getting up is always the issue.)  I can usually get up after nine.  However, that's often impractical since sleeping nine hours a day doesn't really leave enough time for everything else.  Additionally, that sleep still wasn't restorative - I was often tired.  So I did what anyone would do and went to a doctor.

The doctor (aside from charging a ridiculous amount of money) spent most of the time asking me about my job.  He didn't actually do very much - I saw him for about 15 minutes.  I had blood and urine taken, and after a few days they called me to tell me nothing was wrong with me - the levels of everything they checked for were all fine.  Well, that's great - except it didn't address at all the problem that I had asked about.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.  From Dave's blog I learned about the Zeo (http://myzeo.tellapal.com/a/clk/10CPhN - that's a referral link) which is an alarm clock-like device that measures your brainwaves at night to see how you've been sleeping.  You have to wear a headband (the toughest part of the whole thing) but it sends the information from the wireless headband to the alarm clock.  This has two immediate benefits.  The first is the obvious - it tracks your sleep patterns.  The second is that it has a "smart wake" feature which wakes you up at the best time closest to when you want to wake up (say, 0830) based on your sleep patterns.  (It woke me at 0829 this morning, and it's soft alarm was all I needed!)  You can upload your sleep data to your online Zeo account and keep track of it to see the patterns over time and adjust your habits accordingly.

As it turns out, my first night was interesting - apparently the headband fell off at about 0425 this morning, so as you can see my "ZQ" (the score they assign to your night's sleep) is only 18.  However, the data that I got even before that is quite interesting!  Apparently, in the two and a half hours the headband was on and recording, I already know it took me 23 minutes to fall asleep (part of which was due to the headband) but that I woke up twice without knowing it in that short time!  I only got 13 minutes of REM sleep and 19 minutes of deep sleep.  A fairly obvious pattern emerged - I'm waking up often and not getting enough restorative sleep!

Having the data will allow me to get a much better idea of what's going on, and now I'll be able to take steps to adjust accordingly.  The Zeo cost $250 (with replacement sensors - you can get the system itself for about $200) and so far, it's worth it.  Considering that the doctor charged about twice that (though my out-of-pocket costs were lower) with no meaningful results, I've already gotten significant value from both the Zeo and my first attempts at real biohacking.

The picture that's attached to this post is Table 8 on page 133 of the Dodd-Frank audit of the Federal Reserve.  (See this link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/  -  it shows up as page 144 of 266 in the Scribd version at the bottom.)  It shows that the Fed lent $16 TRILLION to various banks, ten of which are outside the United States.  People are squabbling over a debt ceiling while the Federal Reserve lends TRILLIONS of dollars, much of it outside the country!  The entire US GDP is only $14.5 TRILLION (which we all know thanks to the ridiculous squabbling over the debt ceiling, even if we didn't before) and the Fed lent out more than that in the short space of three years. 

The politicians are fighting over billions here and billions there while the Fed hands out TRILLIONS like candy.  People are suggesting that we tax the rich more so that the US doesn't collapse, as if that could solve anything!  (Taxing the rich would result in miniscule amounts as compared to $16 TRILLION, and those same people that would be taxed are the ones handing out all the money in the first place - after the first use it (and thereby getting the benefit of using it before its inflationary effects are felt) - they would never let those taxes happen!)  The dollar's value is plummeting, and the world is now awash with them... politicians are squabbling over billions here and billions there  while the Fed has had them beat by several orders of magnitude even before this current debt ceiling became an issue.

In 1961, the price of an ounce of gold was $35.  Today, the price of an ounce of gold is $1613.  If you divide 35 by 1613, you get .0216986, which as a percentage, is 2.2%.  That means that the dollar today (as judged by the price of gold) is worth about 2.2% of what it was worth just fifty years ago, meaning that the dollar has LOST 97.8% of its value in fifty years.  Think about that - for every $100 in purchasing power you had in 1961, you now have the purchasing power of about $2.20.  Your $100 from 1961 couldn't buy you a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas!  That's just today - we may not know the full effects of flooding the world economy with so many TRILLIONS of dollars for some time to come.