From: Jim Meissner (jpmeissner_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 2002-02-28 16:47:04
Dear BP:
I once had the same problems that you mention and have built a sleep monitor and control system that solved my severe health conditions. My temperature would vary 15 degrees F during the night ( that is skin, not core temperature ). Once I had the data logger built, I tested my wife who was a goodsleeper and her temperature varied less than 0.1 degree F. Having this data in hand, I launched a project of several years in length and I believe that I have come up with the "answer". The "proper" body temperature is 98.6 deg F plus or minus 0.1 deg. F. I have tons of information if you are interested.
I bought a $600 Metrabyte data logging board that plugged into my PC and I wrote the software in Quick Basic. The output feeds a graphic printer thatdisplays the multichannel data like a strip chart recorder. There are several points that I monitor.
1) The back of the neck. This is as close as you can get to the body's thermostat ( the hypothalamus).
2) The finger tip of my left hand. This tells you the degree of vascular constriction or stress that will adversely affect the body's ability to regulate temperature.
3) The big toe. This site integrates your temperature history. Usually people with cold feet are not healthy. As you monitor this site, you will find that you cannot fall asleep until the feet warm up.
4) Skin resistance of the left hand fingertip. This tells you the state of arousal of the sympathetic nervous system or the degree of stress. This is my most important data site, much more important than EEG for biofeedback!
5) The ankle is a good location from a mechanical point of view to hang a sleep sensor. At this point I measure temperature and skin resistance. Bymeasuring the skin resistance you can anticipate a "sweating session" coming on before you actually begin to sweat. I fed this information into my analog computer that would reduce the heat from the DC powered electric blankets. If the skin resistance decreased further the system would shut down the blankets completely and turn on 4 small muffin fans that would blow proportional cool air over my head to cool the body and inhibit the sweating. This is actually a biofeedback circuit and the body soon learns how to control and eliminate this problem.
I have this system set up in my house in Virginia and you are welcome to come look at it. I probably would not be alive and healthy today if it were not for this research.
I see no reason why this system could not be incorporated with the buildcheepeeg project as another input module.
Juergen P. (Jim) Meissner
Check out my Website at www.MeissnerResearch.com
Read about the benefits of the Brain State Synchronizer sounds for improving your life and health.
----- Original Message -----
From: bp
To: buildcheapeeg
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 12:04 AM
Subject: [buildcheapeeg] Body Temperature
To all:
What exactly is supposed to happen to body temp while you are sleeping?
When I sleep, my body temp soars, and I usually sweat profusely, regardless
of type or amount of bedclothing.
I usually don't get sick except here lately. I've been hit with flu once
and a cold currently. My wife has noted, also, that I haven't been as warm
at night. Could this somehow be related? From my understanding, Delta
sleep is where the body undergoes most major rejuvenation. Perhaps my Delta
was "more" efficient than the average person, leading to the temp rise?
I would like to use a thermistor and some sort of logging device to
monitor my temp at night by sampling every minute or every 15 secs or so.
Perhaps this could yield results.
Thanks
Bill
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : 2002-07-27 12:28:39 BST