Festival of Lights

Today in India, Diwali (aka Deepavali), the festival of lights, will be celebrated all over the country. Because of major construction work in my parents' kitchen here in Quincy, we are planning to observe the festival on Sunday. They will probably invite some friends over for a big lunch.


Setting up lights (through oil lamps) seems to be done more elaborately in northern India.


Everyone does firecrackers, of course.


People play with firecrackers on their own. There isn't that much of a fire hazard since most houses in cities are built in concrete and brick (unlike here in the US where a lot of wood is involved). Any mishaps I remember from my childhood had to do with light burns on my hands from handling firecrackers.


The Rangolis become more elaborate on such "auspicious" days.

I've been calling up friends and family in India this morning and wishing everyone a good time!

ZMA = Deep Sleep

Ok. No one is paying me to write this stuff. So here goes...



I have been using ZMA for about a year now. The serving size is 2 to 3 caps a day. But I've been taking more like 2 to 3 caps a week. I was slacking off and, sure enough, I didn't see any noticeable effect in my sleep or recovery from training. I thought that since I was already sleeping in a pitch black room with the air purifier on (to provide white noise), the quality of my sleep cannot get any better. And I was recovering fine from training. Boy, was I wrong? Well, at least when it came to the sleep component, I was wrong.

In the last two weeks, I've been taking 2 to 3 caps of ZMA before bedtime. And I have gone into deeper sleep than I had thought possible. This happens on all nights except Monday nights (which is when my 130 lb neighbor has pretty vocal sex with her 350 lb boyfriend). So...I go to sleep and wake up the next morning completely awake. No grogginess. Nothing. Nada. Its like my Nikon D70. You turn it on and its ready to shoot instantly. To re-iterate: One moment I am asleep. Next moment I am fully awake. Like I had just been pursued by a bear that grudgingly decided I was too fleet-footed and hobbled back to where it crawled out of.

Apparently most people (which, I know, is a rather broad term) are deficient in Zinc and more so in Magnesium. While Zinc levels can be brought back up relatively quickly, things don't happen as quickly with Magnesium.

Charles Poliquin explains this a little better in this article:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459745

He explains it again in this one:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1257805 (then scroll down to the section "Age, Training, and Dwindling Hormones")

Dave Barr mentions ZMA in his outstanding article on developing a solid sleep routine:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1221529

You get the idea.

At 9 bucks, ZMA is a steal:

http://www.t-nation.com/onlineStore.jsp

Try it out.