by Richard Taylor : 2024-11-07
A few months after Part 1 and I have some data. The results are not very positive. But at least things don't seem to be getting any worse. Plus I have an idea for something to try next.
I tried to avoid long periods of concentration, breaking everything up into chunks. The idea was to do mentally what had worked for me physically and gradually build up from "small efforts" into something more testing over a few months.
To assess my progress, on days that I felt up to it I recorded an average of 5 3x3x3 solves straight from cold (n1) and then another average of 5 after a short interval (n2). These are the results from 2 months. Bear in mind that my personal best at home is an average of 22.62 seconds (done in October 2023).
As you can see, there are periods of several days when I didn't manage to record any solves, because I just felt mentally tired all day.
The average of n1 is 29.31 and the average of n2 is 29.62 seconds.
On 14 out of 27 days the n2 was worse than the n1. Which surprised me as the n2 nearly always felt worse. I think, looking at the individual times, a lot of the n2 started off well but finished badly, so the average for n2 often felt "flattering". As the ao5 discards the best and worse times, the last solve can be really bad and not affect the average.
There was a spell at the start of October when things felt a bit better, but by the end of October every day felt pretty bad again.
I think this data objectively backs up what my subjective assessment of my condition would be: no change. So it doesn't look like Plan A has succeeded. Hey, it didn't make it worse either, so nothing lost.
With winter approaching I was bracing myself for the usual onslaught of colds and possibly getting COVID again. Then I saw this programme with Dr Michael Mosley discussing the health benefits of cold showers (and cold water immersion in general).
Apparently a study found that a 30 second cold shower every morning for 60 days reduced the number of sick days taken by 30%.
As well as boosting the immune system, there are other possible benefits for the brain and heart.
So this is my next direction. A 30 second cold shower every day. I've done nearly a week now... it's tough, but I do feel subjectively better afterwards. I'll keep collecting data and see if that yields any objective evidence for this helping with brain fog.
Plan A appears to have been unsuccessful. On to Plan B...