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More Important than Water - Sleep Quality - How to get it - Audio program

Description

This is an audio program detailing the dangers of inadequate sleep, and talking about how to insure that you get a great nights sleep so you can be alert, rested, and safe. Podcast. Details based on a blog on Sleep concerns. Check it out here http://wildernessinnovation.com/2011/10/13/sleeping-for-survival/

Tags: sleep depvrivation,dangers of lack of sleep,sleep comfort,audio program,camping,hiking,hunting,outdoors,survival training,vlog

Video Transcription

well this is perry peacock with wilderness innovation with our podcast series here and and this week's subjective skills and skill building and in particular tonight the skills were who are talking about is sleep quality now you may not think of sleep quality as a skill but you know how many people have trouble sleeping especially to consider when you're out camping or when you're out away from your from your bed from your normal sleeping environment how well can you sleep and you know it's a particular point important in in survival situations or you know where any kind of a stressful situation or when you're away from home what sort of thing can really be quite a factor and it's actually a very important thing that's not talked about that often in in survival circles and that is that's the quality of sleep one of many of my favorite mentors in the having to do a survival as Moore's kahan ski and I've got a collection of handwritten notes but you know some some things that he jotted down and one of the things he wrote that I really like is this and i quote a person survival skills can can best be rated by how well they're able to sleep in any condition and when you really think when you think about that that's that's pretty profound when you talk about you know everybody talks about fire you know or making cordage or you know hunting or gathering food or whatever all these sorts of skills that are the you know by far the most popular things out there you know how many people ever talk about sleep but it's it's extremely important and as he says that that's his way of being able to rate how

how good somebody is you know how good their skills aren't survival is how well how soundly how long can they sleep that's that's a quite an important thing and I in light of that I wanted to start off the podcast here with I mean I did a blog back in October of 2011 and it was called sleeping for survival that's on our website back in the archive in the archives on the blog and I went through a few things in our I wanted to highlight a couple of things here before we get into the end of the sleep quality and and just kind of hit on the importance of sleep I'm sure everybody's heard of the rule of threes that's a common thing that's talked about and one of the there's some there more detail than others but one of the common ones is is you can go three minutes without air three days without water three weeks without food three months about social contact and you know these course are all very general but kind of a you know roughly accepted in the throughout the world is as far as so far as kind of a general guideline I guess you could say but you know one of the things that one of the things we need to consider is how long can you go that sleep all of us can probably look to some various times in in their lives when when perhaps you've not gotten the sleep you need and got very very tired and then try to do something you know if you think back on any of those times you know sometimes some of the most miserable things I can ever remember is you know times of one that extent of time is a very little sleep can be can be very can be very rough thing in fact you know we know that sleep deprivation is one of the very effective means of interrogation as far as kind of a kind of a you know torture type situation sleep deprivation so let's let's talk just a little bit about sleep so we we fully understand what we're what we're doing here and in that way we get into the to the sleep quality we kind of have a basis to understand everything by you know to me the way I like to put it is you know let's let's imagine that you know you've been out on some activity hiking or something way back in somewhere and it's better just a grueling exhausting day fun day whatever and then something happens and you're not going to be able to get back to either back home or back to your base camp or whatever and and perhaps it might be a few days in fact and now now you start looking at okay now you're already exhausted you've got to set up a camp you've got to try to make yourself come from comfortable for the night you know all those sorts of things and and you've got to try to get some rest and try to recover from the from being exhausted already now if you can't sleep you're really going to be in a rough mind in you know in short order so let's just let's just look at a couple of a couple of things here one of them is sleep deprivation as a killer I'm even in our normal civilized lives and everything like that you know car accidents various accidents in the workplace different things like that a lot of those are tied to you know a person's lack of sleep and we don't talk about it as much as we talk about perhaps the impaired driving you know due to drunkenness or drugs or something like that but sleep impaired situations can be every bit as deadly and they don't carry the same connotation with them as some of these other things so let's just look at let's just look at a number of the effects of sleep deprivation and as I go through the list I kind of briefly talk about each one of them and you know what not too much but just a little bit just a few comments as I go through this list I want you to do think about think about three things and that is the sleep deprivation and the symptoms or the results of it look at at how many of those are similar to what you've read our experienced with hypothermia with drunkenness or drug use and so let's just kind of go through there the first one I want to mention is slurred speech stuttering or slow speech you know everybody everybody knows you know that as far as especially hypothermia that's that's very very common but that results in sleep from sleep deprivation as well another one is reduced speed and efficiency and performing tasks so it takes a little longer to do things it's a little harder to cut it to get the body to do the things that normally just click right out with no problem lack of coordination now you can have things that you normally do all the time without hardly a thought and all of a sudden it's like you're struggling to do them your brain can't seem to focus in well enough to make everything happen it's just not all coming together and this this next one is a very important one and I am I read about about it i think it was in in gonzales book on on survival where he kind of goes into a lot of a lot of what the lot of what the how the brain works and functions and that sort of thing but with with a getting very little sleep the body doesn't regenerate as it should and and one of the things most important of all that doesn't regenerate and everything like it should as the brain sleep sleeps needed for the brain to regenerate proteins for new rep for new runs it's it's it's important in the brain to have rest and sleep to form new memories and to generate new synaptic connections and so all these all these sorts of things as you as you become more and more exhausting your body gets less sleep all these sorts of things in your brain are starting to break down come on you and that you know that contributes to all kinds of problems as you may well imagine you know poor decision-making and things like that can result from from that another another thing is trouble thinking and imaginative way like being creative and you know that's got to be very important when you're when you're out there in some kind of difficult situation in a survival situation or whatever you know if you're having a few if you if you're really in a spot you got to thinking you know my gosh i need i need something i need to construct something there i need to get you know across somewhere i got to think of some way to do some certain task that's okay you know out of the ordinary if you don't have that creative thinking ability you know you can you can really get into trouble another thing that's closely related here is difficulty making quick logical decisions and you know granted maybe not all the time in a situation do you have to make a really quick decision but but you know it does happen and and you want to be able to make it clear when where you you're able to kind of perceive the plum the pluses and minuses of of what you're doing or what you what you need to get done and be able to weigh those things out and decide hate it's better if I you know it's better if I make camp over here it's you know you know all those other sorts of things or you're trying to evaluate you know what to do you need to use logic if you can't do that then you can get into serious trouble and then here's another one kind of the multitasking type thing your ability to to simultaneously focus on on several different related tasks is greatly impaired so we're not even talking about things that are kind of you know quite a bit different than each other at the same time we're talking about things closely related that you can't do you know for example maybe you need to start a fire with a with a bow drill or a or a flint and steel or something that maybe you know normally you're quite good at and now all of a sudden it's like you just can't seem to get your mind to focus on it right can't get your body to do what it's supposed to do and what it normally is always done so that's very important another one is hallucinations I think I've ever gotten to that point myself but but that's one of the things that is mentioned in the sleep deprivation studies and knows I mean we're not talking necessarily about like an LSD type trip or something like that you know it can be just just that you think something's happening happening around you that's really not and I could play into such thing to say fears you know maybe you think here you know there's a bear out there or maybe you know there may well be you know that does happen but but you know most most the time where there isn't there isn't anything perhaps to concern about out there but but you know if that's running through your mind and you're seeing things thinking things or hearing things that's not really going on you know that can be that can be big trouble as well another item here is though is a limited amount of new information that the brain can retain so you know you're out there in this in this difficult situation and you're you're dealing with new different kind of things and you can't remember those things you know and you can't then you can't process it and think about it and evaluate you know that's a problem obviously being tired is is another result of that and I'm you know I meaning like physically the body tired not not just a brain function but just your body in general just you just don't have the energy you just you're just like you're just fighting to try to move you know so that's that sort of thing is is quite obvious and we're all pretty used to that part of it you also can forget things easily and especially details another another item is depression and lack of motivation kind of goes back to tired but we're kind of talking about this is back and little bit on the mental side of things and you know you notice how many of these things are actually brain kind of things rather than actually the physical your body itself the muscles and stuff like that and one fact that I that I when I was researching this is I found that in the studies they found that if you sleep just like an hour and a half less than you normally sleep it actually can can decrease your alertness when you're awake by thirty three percent so that's incredible that's huge that's that's really that's really a big you know it's really a big thing right there if you can't if you if you're you lose that alertness you know where you need to notice something and you don't so that's that's critical also lack of sleep induces stress to your nervous system your brain actually starts to shut down I mean it just becomes overloaded and you know it's just get to a point it just can't function it just starts to close down another thing and this is probably something a little more you know over an extended period of time but weakened immunity could immune system can also result so those are some of the reasons why we're talking about sleep quality and why Moore's kahan ski made his statement that you know a person survival skills can best be rated by how well they're able to sleep in any condition so we see how critical that really is and and honestly we don't we don't give the kind of thought to to the to sleep as we ought to how many times do we you know we pull into a camp we you know we hike or whatever tell-tell the last moment of light or whatever and we say well camp right here so you know we throw some together you know we get a fire or start a stove get some some kind of a meal Dennis and then it's like sleep is just the last thing we ever thinking it's like okay time to go to sleep then we've made almost no preparation for it so you know in that situation that gets us into that danger area just from the fact that we spend no time or very little time preparing for a good night's rest and I think myself if we'd spend as much time working on how to how to set ourselves up for a great night's sleep as we do from for starting a fire or cooking our food or whatever we'd probably all get a lot better sleep in the outdoors and in fact there's ways that you can sleep very comfortable most all the time in the outdoors in virtually any situation and you know we just need to practice those things and that's why I say that's why sleep quality is is part of the skills podcast tonight is because you know being able to get quality sleep is actually a skill it doesn't just doesn't just automatically happen it's something we have to learn to do it's something we have to think about and we have to kind of develop a habit to make that effective in our lives now what I did just to kind of help things along now will kind of get into some of the some of the things here that prevent us from having a good night's sleep and i just made a list of about twelve items here and and and those are kind of you know kind of 12 things that i think are probably take care of most all the things that people would would deal with that would you know keep them from sleeping like they should so let's just kind of go through this list and i won't bother to read through the list itself or anything like that first we'll just kind of dive into them and these aren't in any you no particular order anything like that they're they're just just items in a list and the order basically or the priority is really depends on your situation your circumstances you know something that I've got listed it at number 11 or 12 might not you know might be number one sometime you know pending on your circumstances so I think if we kind of go through these and then you know you might you might want to make your own list and just kind of think about and really it's probably pretty zai kind of took some of things that I've noticed and tried to think of things that would probably bother other people or when I've talked to other people but you know you yourself you know in your experience to your life when you go out and you just get a horrible night's rest you can probably think back and pinpoint well what was it the cause that so you know make a list of some of those things to personalize it and and the way we overcome problems and difficulties is to think about what what they are evaluate what caused that problem and then figure out how can i correct that and when we're dealing with the outdoors why we have a lot of varied circumstances so you may not be able to make like one concrete thing that they this solves the problem because you know that might work that might work well out on the desert up up in the mountain somewhere but but you know it doesn't work very well in the wintertime or maybe it doesn't work very well when it's really hot and you're in an area that's a void of trees you know so you know there's a lot of different factors so when you think about those things that you know in your life and have experienced it that caused you to have a poor night's rest you know try to think of some of the different conditions that you might be in and try to try to resolve how you're going to get a deal with that and I'm pretty I'm pretty big on I'm not so much concerned about you know how I how I do am a jungle in Costa Rica or whatever in the Amazon rainforest or something because probably I might ever go in there you know I mean if something like that you know ever came up or something I'd have to you know try to do a quick study on it but I'm just kind of looking at you know the common places that I'm going to be the common place you're going to be and take care of those things so let's let's start off um one of the first ones and I do quite a bit of winter camping I probably camp about as much in the winter as I do in the summer and the snow and all that sort of thing so let's start off with warmth that's a big factor in there if you're you know you try to go to sleep and you laid out at first you feel all right and then you know by 30 minutes in your nose seeing some cold coming in and in an hour you're noticing a little more some cold spots and you know that keeps progressing through the night pretty soon unless you make some changes you know you're you're not sleeping very well through the night and you know it's not necessarily in the winter time you know anytime you get temperatures that are below 70 degrees or 60 degrees or whatever there is the potential for you to feel uncomfortable and everybody's everybody's metabolism and embody and all that sort of thing kind of varies with that some people can have a quiet wide range of comfort for warmth and and others have very little so you know you just base it on yourself you know your life history you kind of know how you how you stand there but not being you know being too cold as a huge reason that a lot of times of people don't sleep well but it's it's actually pretty easily solved most of the time number one number one way would be the you know shelter which which would be not necessarily a tent but it could be your clothing you have with you sleeping bag if you have it a blanket it could be a shelter or it could be a lean-to now that sort of thing so it could be you know a debris Hut a pile of you know burrowing and a pile of leaves you know it could be a lot of different things that could help to provide you enough warmth to be comfortable another way and the colder the colder it is the more this can be important is is a fire if you use like a parallel log fire which basically you're lying parallel with the fire the fire is is made up of logs that are about as about as long as you are tall and you know you put three or four logs at a time on there your back about 33 feet or four feet at the most probably

from the fire and the sheathing action of the flames there gives you a lot of radiant heat to warm your body from head to toe so that's you know that's that's one method there you know along with fire you can do things like heat rocks and and put them in the ground come with some dirt you know sleep on top of that you can build a fire then move the fire somewhere else and then sleep on the area that the fire is warmed up so there's a ton of different ways just just a couple of thoughts there really and so that's that's kind of it just kind of in general staying warm and so that's so that's that's that item many times that's all it may take and you're comfortable and good for you to go for the duration another item is is keeping out the wind a lot of times wind is just a huge factor you know you might not even be in anything that's all that cold but when you add the wind but can it can be just enough to to either be dangerous or just enough to be uncomfortable and typically if you're not comfortable you're not sleeping and so this can go back to sheltering and that sort of thing where you're trying to keep the wind off of you trying to keep the effects of the wind from chillin you and that sort of thing and that can be done with the things that I just mentioned with with warmth and so you know clothing layers of clothing some kind of shield many times you may not even a lot of times people don't even need anything overhead necessarily or summin close things a lot of times all you need is just a windbreak I remember one time way up in the top of the mountains when I was in my early 20s we went up and and got caught in a storm up high we couldn't get back down to our base camp and we're kind of trapped up in this high-altitude bowl in a storm and wasn't all that wasn't all that cold you know but was enough it could have been dangerous if we could have if we stayed exposed but we just got see brushin and we we just that's mainly what there wasn't that's what we use but there was three of us so we just we gathered out we gathered sagebrush till he's sick of gathering that we piled it up and a big old ring high and thick and everything you know several feet thick packed it down really good and we we all crawled inside the middle of that ring and we had us just two small fires all we needed but the main thing that that that all that brush around us did was it it kept the wind from driving in on us so so that's so that's a good deal there many times a poncho or a tarp or something like that can be used to you notice to keep the wind from driving at it driving at you a cave an igloo a hut some kind of you know a tree well adrift you know all those sorts of things can be things that will keep us from being exposed to the wind another factor is staying dry and of course in cooler weather that's more important typically than in warmer weather and it's it's so easy to get wet you know you've been a hiking or you're building shelter or you doing whatever and you know usually you know you just slip up just a little bit for an hour half hour first thing you know you've got wet inside and now you now you want to lay down and go to sleep well you let that moisture is going to conduct heat away from your body that water does water does 20 times faster than air so you know that moisture in there can really be a dangerous thing and it can also if even if it's not dangerous it can cause you to lose sleep because the moisture makes you cold in there so so there you know that deal right there is preventative as a lot of it trying to prevent yourself from getting what and if you do try to dry yourself off if you can before you go to sleep if you have a fire or something you know those those kind of things that you can do to try to dry out a lot of times i found i did some testing a few years ago where i had some different gear and i purposely you know just kind of stood out late around in the in a forest during during a rainstorm that was forecast to change till change to snow during the night and you know kind of measuring the effects of doing doing that sort of thing a number of times i found that stripping down to my underwear even though snowing and just in a little just in a little light blanket I found that I was considerably warmer doing that than I was you know having my damp clothes or what my wet clothes on me so you know you think about some of those kind of things you got to do whatever you've got to do to to make yourself comfortable another item here number for that I've got on my list is feeling safe and secure now this kind of a mental thing and you know can be a variety of things can happen sometimes people are concerned just you know worried about you know creatures you know animals or insects or whatever or can be just just some kind of fear if the winds blowing a little bit maybe worried about a tree falling on you or something or or you know sometimes sometimes your your mind kind of plays tricks on you maybe it get kind of concerned where there really isn't anything but it's it's bothering you and that can prevent you from sleeping it doesn't matter what it is that stops you from sleeping you know if you don't sleep when you wake up in the morning you're going to be dead tired so it doesn't matter what it is we got to deal with it and alleviate that so so to deal with that since that's kind of in a way that's kind of a mental thing sometimes a lot of that can be solved by a shelter even though even though sometimes the particular shelter you're in really does nothing to put you know to really to literally take care of the problem you're worried about sometimes just be an end there takes care of it some lot of times and this goes back to fire what fire very comforting and it gives you confidence a lot of times little fire then maybe you don't need it for heat or anything sometimes just just something just for comfort if you need to you can lay by the fire pipe I Epsom some sticks or firewood during the night when you feel up kind of go down just throw another couple on there just to keep it going if you need to you know that sort of thing the real I mean if you're out there this is happening to you yeah you have to do the best you can to alleviate that just tell yourself you don't have to worry about it think about something else think about something good that's happened or or whatever one thing about about this item number for feeling safe and secure a lot of that I think is preparation because the more that you're the more that you're out in the in these environments and other sort of thing the better your experience basically gives you confidence you've been out there you've experienced the number of things this isn't something new to you you know you've been there done that sort of sort of thing that gives you confidence and security as far no feeling in your mind and that that can help prevent it now we went with with my sons and some my son and some friends what was it last year and one of the guys that came with us was in his 30s and this is the first time in his life he'd ever been camping and and this this guy was was up waste he had his a little kind of a bivy tent that he was in and this guy the next morning he said he didn't sleep a wink all night he's worried about every little thing there this we had actually pretty darn good storm came up lightning most of the night and thunder and everything but but he is worried about animals he's worried about this and that and I was I was tired I'd kind of helped set up some of some people's shelters and stuff like that and I just I just laid my my willingness innovation my little PSS my poncho I just laid it on a ground on the ground on him between some pine

he's on you know bed of pine needles and I threw a through a small tarp over the top of man I just slept like that and I would you know I was fine but this other guy you know he was just worried worried all night long said he finally got to sleep when he realized I was out there with you know just kind of laid out there with nothing and I was alright so he'd probably be all right he finally got a little bit of respite but anyway so you know I think some of that is really as far as security goes and feeling safe some of that is just really related to experience now comfort this is item five on my list and and basically what that is is is you know when you lay down how many times you've done this you lay down on a spot okay here's where I know sleep you're on the ground or whatever you feel a little something and is that I'm not worried about that that will be fine well you know by about one o'clock in the morning you know somebody might as well be sticking a tent stake up your back you know so some of those kind of things when you when you set up your camp try your bed out if everything isn't just right fix it right then it's a lot easier to fix it right then when you're making up your bed all that sort of thing than it is in the morning because a lot of times if you're like me I don't really feel like getting out and fixing something so you lay there and you suffer with it through the night so so that's one thing there are some things that help you as far as comfort wise if you have an air mattress or a foam pad or something that can help you know try to select a good spot that when you lay down on there it feels natural and comfortable to you if it doesn't move around make some adjustments and make it comfortable because if you're not comfortable you're not going to sleep very well and you're going to wake up in the morning tired and if you're in a survival situation you know here you are having to deal with another day and you start out just tired you know so it's very important it's really more important to get a good sleep in that situation man at home when you really have nothing else to worry about so you know take care of those sorts of things i like to use if i'm sleeping on the ground i used i like to make a i call it a wilderness match but it's either it's either bowels or bark or or like pine boughs juniper boughs whatever you can that soft and all that sort of thing you know pilot stuff up you know 6 8 12 inches thick whatever and lay on top of that is kind of a mattress you can also you know it's hard to describe here you know I think we've got some pictures I don't think we've shot a video this but you can you know you can make it if you have some logs you can make a Brett a bad kind of a mattress frame that you use logs as the main structure in you and you put willow kind of will we type material in between not to lay on it give you kind of some springiness throw a few bowels and stuff like that on top of that you can be really coat really cozy and comfortable so you know just kind of think about some of those things one of the things I like to do if i have a small tarp i say i'm out on the west desert out here where i live in a great basin you know pile up some juniper boughs on the ground about a 8 or 10 inches thick take your take your tarp and take half of it and just stake it down over top of this pile of boughs and then take the other half of the tarp and pull back kind of at a 45 degree angle to make kind of a kind of a lean-to type deal and what that will do by staking down half of it it contains all those boughs into one spot and then you have a you know some kind of a roof over your wind block or whatever so you know it works really well another thing that I really love is a hammock and I've never been a hanok sleeper much in my life but since we made our PSS or poncho that makes into a tarp or an decor it or a swinging chair or whatever I love sleeping in that thing it's you know five minutes your setup doesn't matter if the grounds rough or rugged or whatever pile into that thing comfort is there the only thing you got ad is warmth and you're good to go so that's very very simple very easy to do and that sort of thing and I already talked about you know a windbreak and everything to make sure you're not so make sure you not have a driving wind that's something to irritate you to bother you to kind of keep you awake item number six that I've got down here is noise levels and most of time in the outdoors that's not a huge problem mostly like if you have a storm or something that sort of thing or you know sometimes you can get some odd sounds out there some creaking sounds cracking sounds sometimes sometimes too much of that can kind of keep you a little more alert and perky to where to where you just don't you know get down and sleep like you should that's not a big issue but just something to think about item number 7 i've got here is wellness or that's like well-being as far as illness it's also injury that sort of thing so you know if if the cause of your problem is an injury like you broke it a leg or an arm or crack something sprained something you're probably not going to sleep baby well and there's not a not a real lot you can sometimes or not a real lot you can do as much of that and depending on your exact situation but still try to figure out some kind of way that you can make yourself as comfortable as possible so that you know even in the event that you don't you know sleep your your ideal night least maybe you know maybe sleep a half hour at a time or some try to get something at least everything kind of slows down a little bit you just do the best you can with that you know another thing along that same line is you know when you're out be careful a lot of times we do stupid little things or whatever and we become injured you know they could happen you know in the best of circumstances but you know sometimes they do happen but just try to be careful when you're out especially if you had alone so anything another thing along with the wellness thing is people get out and and a okay I'm stranded here and you don't know you know a lot of times some people think the best some people think the worst you know so some people would think nobody's going to find me for a week here you know and other people's like no somebody find me by eight in the morning but but here's what happens sometimes we're we're conditioned to work and I'll talk about this a little more later but but we're conditioned to think we got to eat our meals regularly and all the sort of thing and so sometimes you know people you get out strategy you know maybe maybe you maybe you lost your pack maybe you got away from base camp and didn't bring anything really with you like you should you know and you get stranded you can't make it back now you think well I need to eat something so you try to eat some plants or some various things you know if you don't know if you don't know you're eating yeah tried that sort of thing before now is not a good time to learn you know you can make yourself sick and you can be up all night or even several days trying to recover from some of these things so you know it's better not to even mess with any of that stuff all right now item number eight this is if you're in a situation where there's a group of people you know you're with it you know in a group that you got out stranded somewhere broke down whatever sometimes stress and strain arguments various you know inter-relationships in a group sometimes that kind of stuff going on can prevent everybody from sleeping in and everybody's going to be pretty miserable by morning so you know part of this is um sometimes you might have to take some leadership there and calm things down get things resolved so everybody can can lay down and go to sleep you know one of the things that that I that I would you know mention would be hate you know guys you know we're in this tough situation there's not a thing we can do about it right now but we'll all feel a lot better if we get us a good night's sleep and let everything rest in the morning will kind of get together and talk about things and you know figure out what we're doing from there so a lot of times if you can just kind of procrastination you know procrastinate your way into it you know but you know main is something like that you know if it's possible can be a good thing to do another item here number nine is is mental state and that's kind of it kind of can reflect back to the worry thing that we talked about a few items ago but but confidence and all that sort of thing is kind of where you're at and making yourself comfortable will go a huge way to make you to making your mental state positive and as I mentioned before your your experience the more things you've tried the more you've been out that sort of thing I mean you can watch videos or you can listen with my podcasts or everybody else's tell you tell you you know tell you're 85 or whatever but you go there's nothing as substitutes for getting out there and trying some things experiencing different things all that kind of thing builds your body of experience and the more experience you have the more confidence you'll have now I'm number 10 is hunger pains you know you get out an extended situation most of us we go one day without food we're going to be feelin the hunger pain because we're conditioned to three meals a day or in my case typically two meals but whatever you go a day you're feelin the hunger pains and the way we try to alleviate that and here again if you don't know certain things that you can eat you know don't go trying don't go trying to just learn what's good on the flight that it's not a good thing another thing especially on your first day of some experience don't think I got to go out and kill some animals or whatever I got to go hunting some kind of deal you know really you need to take care of your basic needs first food you can go you can go like in a rule of threes three weeks left food and I got I got stories of people one woman and plane crash and a Yukon up there they went they went over 40 days in the wintertime without anything but enough snack for day one and they were actually other than playing the injured injuries from the crash they they recovered in a short order and were out of the hospital they they did very well so don't worry about the food thing right off for for alleviating the hunger pains you know you can do things such as you know drink plenty of water to kind of keep your stomach full which will help alleviate some of that there are things you know if you're in a pine forest you can take some of the new growth pine needles and stuff like that you can make you a little pine needle tea or something you know there's various little things that you can do or just drink plenty of water that sort of thing can't help you with that and typically I'm not I'm not experience of this I want to try it sometime I haven't yet I think I'm too addicted to food but but you know everything I've studied over the years typically after about three days or four days hunger pains can start to alleviate and kind of kind of go away it's a lot of it I think is probably psychological from our habit of eating that sort of thing but regardless I mean you just do the best you can with that to alleviate it item number 11 and we're getting close to winding down here but item number 11 as a smoky fire a lot of times people build a lean-to you build a fire in front of it and the wind comes up and it blows the smoke into you all night long and you're sitting there choking and gagging on I long and the way to come take care of that is sometimes it's a little it's not as predictable but a lot of places where you can kind of see how the wind flows normally you know morning and night that sort of thing if you if you pitch your shelter like so you're going to lean to for example pitch that shelter so that it's parallel with the the way the direction the wind flows that will have more of a tendency to carry the smoke away from you you know towards your foot or your head you know kind of going in that direction away from you rather than if you are perpendicular to the wind what happens is the wind currents as they pass over you a your shelter as they start to curl and I'll curl down into you and you wind up with a ton of a ton of smoke in there and you'll have some real problems so try to alleviate that the best you can try not to have a smoky fire in the first place is helpful but I'll you here again you do the best you can item number 12 the last item cold feet and this is a big one for me and I there's some other people i know you know i could have every part of my body laying in there ready to sleep and i am like I am like cozy as I can be everything is just beautiful and if my feet start getting cold I'm done I am NOT sleeping and and I die you know everybody has their little difficulties for me my feet get cold easily so so I can really be a factor one of the things that you know what that I can do and anybody else good is you know have you know change your socks when you go to bed have some nice thick wool socks even even a couple pair especially for you don't want to constrict him so that because you're laying down now and so your blood flows nut is not as active as standing and walking around but you know kind of go by the feel of it but but that can be helpful nice dry socks on you can have X carry some extra insulation with you or do some extra things if you have a if you have extra jacket or vest or something with you that you don't need for sleeping you can fashion that it's kind of a booty around both of your feet together to help people warm you know if you're laying on the ground or whatever you can pile leaves or whatever like that kind of fashion that is something you slide your feet in to kind of give some extra insulation you know that can help one other thing if you do have a fire you can also always heat up some fist sized stones or whatever and wrap them up in in some clothing or whatever after you kind of dust them off out of the fire so they're not you know like really hot against you and put those down around your feet those you know a fist-sized are a little bit larger stone can be that can be warm for hours on end so that can be helpful sometimes I've taken I like to use stainless steel single wall water bottles that you know that I can put in the fire I'm sometimes I take a hot drink or even hot water you know heat that up in there screw the lid on throw that down around the feet and I've found that you know a 24 ounce bottle or there abouts you know that thing will stay that thing will stay pretty nice and toasty for good part of the night so so those are some things right there that time will help you to get a good night's rest and that's about the end of the the podcast tonight on skills sleep quality and I hope this has been helpful to you basically just take the ideas I've presented and just kind of think about those things and personalized if you think back over your life on your experience camping out and you're sleeping and all that just make it right down at its best though you know write down a list of those things that have bothered you and stopped you from having a good night's sleep and then next time you go out you make sure that you try to do things that overcome those things and I think if people would make a goal of trying to of trying to do what Moore's talked about and gauge your survival abilities by how well you sleep how comfortable you are start making that a goal to see how comfortable can I be when I sleep and you know can I can I get I sleep so I did go to sleeps I sleep the whole night through that getting up you know try to make that a goal that you work towards and you'll find you find that training and that exercise will will make your camp outs and your survival situations and all that much more comfortable you have more energy you'll be safer because your mind will be sharp and alert your body will be rested and strong and and you'll have the energy you need that sort of thing so anyway thank you very much for for listening to this podcast tonight and look forward to to getting another one coming in about a week or so and just this is perry peacock with wilderness innovation for simplify survival you take care enjoy your time out be safe and practice practice practice getting quality sleep when you're out so take care and have a have a good day

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Wilderness Innovation

Wilderness Innovation

"How to" for outdoor camping, hiking activities and survival. Some unique equipment and ideas. "Simplifying Survival" is our motto. Follow us on Twitter - WISurvival

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