Below Deck, Kara and Nate, Sister Act 1 and 2, maybe The Sound of Music - jury is out.

The gang's all here for episode two of the cough that will not quit.

Bit of a back story. But the point of this story I’m aiming to get to is about rest.

Four years ago almost to the day, I got a nasty bout of pneumonia and it was legit the sickest I have ever been in my whole life. Fortunately my doctor was able to load me up on all the drugs and I got better. The only souvenir was a hacky cough that didn’t go away for three years. The docs said it was an asthmatic cough, nothing to worry about, just annoying, yada yada.

Last year I got covid, and when I recovered, so did the cough. Amazing, right? This bullshit annoying cough I’d had for three years - goneburger.

Did covid kill the cough?

Unlikely.

Did the buckets of rest I took, in my attempts to not get long covid kill the cough?

Probably.

What’s my point and what does this have to do with the title of the story?

About four months ago, the cough came back with the exact same symptoms as the pneumonia I’d had four years ago. And almost to the day.

Spooky, huh.

A doctrine of doctors confirmed they couldn’t hear any fluid sloshing about in my lungs like they could the last time, but an x-ray showed a spot on my lungs, and a random elevated health marker in a blood test that was consistent with an infection of some sort.

Two lots of antibiotics, and two lots of steroids later, still coughing, still unwell, and still highly frustrated with it all.

This is why I’ve been MIA. Sick as a dog.

But pals, I had an epiphany.

I slept and rested like I was channeling the laziest of koalas when I had covid.

So I thought I would try it again.

Plain, simple, sometimes rather boring, rest.

And during this rest, I have smashed full seasons of Below Deck, Kara and Nate, and a bunch of old movies.

And.. I think I’m getting better.

This is not rocket science. We get sick, and we rest, and things usually resolve themselves. We know rest is important, yet I’m certain I’m not alone in having seriously muddled priorities when it comes down to it.

I seem to only take rest seriously when it feels like a serious situation - covid, pneumonia etc. But what about other times. What else is rest good for?

Those of you who’ve been reading my nonsense for a while now, can probably guess.

I went straight to the medical journals of peer reviewed research to see what studies had been done.

Maybe I can convince myself to rest more, even when I’m not coughing my lungs out, if there was a benefit to it.

Turns out, there is.

By allowing our bodies time to recover, rest helps prevent injuries and improve overall performance. It also aids in muscle repair, reduces inflammation, and supports a healthy immune system. Additionally, rest helps manage stress levels and lowers blood pressure, contributing to a healthier heart.

I read about six papers on this, I’ve cited some below but they are not easy studies to consume. The sum of them in my opinion basically concludes with:

• Too little rest isn’t great, too much rest also not great

• Routine resting better than random resting - catch up sleep causes more chaos for the next night’s sleep than good.

• Sleep and rest when you’re sick helps T cells (white blood cells) to grab on to infected cells and destroy them.

So what’s left to do?

Take a nap? Coughing on a consistently persistent basis is exhausting, so while I am in this state, rest is being prioritised heavily with my fluffy doggo as company, and a stack of old movies.

A couple of other things I wanted to update you on.

The big study I’m working on is about Bariatric Surgery. It’s deeply complex, so it’s taking me a while. If anyone has intel or lived experience or interest in bariatric surgery, please drop me a line about it.

Remember the Happy Mammoth experiment I ran? The results are in and it did absolutely nothing except flavour my smoothies with vanilla. For the $100 cost of the powder, that lasts approximately 30 days, you could buy a nice vanilla extract from Heilala or similar for a quarter of the price, and use that instead.

The other thing that utterly shits me about Happy Mammoth, is the Zoolander complex they have. The product I bought was once touting belly fat melting, has changed tack and is now a bloat minimiser! It’s the same product, the same look!

Here’s the entire range. If you can tell me the difference between all the products, I’d be so happy to learn about them.

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Thanks for reading this newsy. I really appreciate the time you give to me for this and I hope you get some value from it. If you have any questions you can reply directly to this email or if you’ve landed here from a link, email lou@sweatypals.nz. You can also follow me on Twitter here, and instagram here.

Please remember while I am a qualified fitness trainer, and I’ve done a couple of nutrition papers, I am not a registered dietitian or nutritionist. Information shared here is through my own lived experience, personal study or a peer reviewed study I have nerded out on reading and sharing with you.

Lou xx

Photo by Super Snapper on Unsplash