STRESS.

Haiz... it's Reading Week... the most stressed time of the sem for me...

Woke up AGAIN at 3:30 am to piss. It's been 4 nights now, since Saturday, Sunday, Monday and today. Ever since i and nuan had our "last outing together before we really sit down and study". I think it must have been the stress.

Wasn't even this stressed to start with in sem 2 or sem 3, for one.

Subjective evidence:
GI: burping, feel "full of gas", "full".
has seen dramatic reduction in BM (details, i will save for the doc)
CNS: insomnia, 4/7 - usually wakes up nocturnally around 3-4am to pass motion, then finds that he cannot go back to sleep.
has been eating at whim.
CV: experienced sensation of "heart beating very fast" when watching "action movies" 3/7 ago.
Glands: dry mouth ---> drinks more water --> urges goes to toilet more often.

Hmm. dunno whether to visit doctor or not. i think he will just say the same thing (although i would welcome the physical checkup). and give me drugs like Activated Charcoal for constipation (i wanna try docusate or Fybogel). Ask me to drink more water, eat more fruits, exercise more and relax a bit (yeah, right).

One interesting cure for insomnia is the L-amino acid tryptophan (Trp). yeah.

Trp can be converted to serotonin (neurotransmitter) in the following fashion:

Trp --> 5-OH Trp --> 5HT (serotonin)

And this is from wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan#Physiology

Tryptophan and turkey

According to popular belief, eating tryptophan in turkey meat causes drowsiness. Turkey does contain tryptophan, which does have a documented sleep-inducing effect as it is readily converted into serotonin by the body. However, ingestion of turkey alone has not been proven to have this effect. An additional hypothetical mechanism is as follows: A large quantity of any food,^{[original research?]} such as a Thanksgiving feast, introduces large quantities of both carbohydrates and branched-chain amino acids releasing insulin. Insulin stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (and not tryptophan) by muscle cells through the myocyte membranes. The result is an increase in the ratio of tryptophan to large neutral amino acids in the blood. This reduces competition with other amino acids for the Large Neutral Amino Acid Transporter protein for uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system. Once inside the central nervous system, tryptophan is converted into serotonin by the raphe nuclei, and serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.

Alcoholic beverage consumption at holiday feasts is likely to compound the effect.^{[original research?]}

On average, a full grown male must consume some 45 pounds of turkey to have any narcoleptic effect.^{[citation needed]}

Hmm. well according to the doc Trp is found in milk powder, which explains why babies sleep after they finish their milk. So it ain't true.

Sigh.. the only way to stop the constipation and the insomnia, as taught by David Woo, is regularity. Water, fibre and exercise helps too (so there's practically nothing u can do about it).

SIgh.