Greetings, dear friends -
I have been spending a lot of time with a four-legged friend named Tess. A mountain-born mutt, about 50 pounds (~23 kg), just past puberty, and lean like a race horse, she loves to be outside and moving. When Tess and I go walking, she looks around, listens around, and sniffs around, often going into anteater mode, scanning the ground with her nose as she walks.
If she’s leashed, one of us is pulling. Either she’s pulling away from me to observe a caterpillar, chase a bird, or most often, to check or leave ‘peemail’, or I’m pulling her along to stay on track.
In many places, the human is the boss, the one with control, taking extra steps to manage her encounters with vehicles, small children, aggressive dachsunds, and dried fish vendors. Perhaps by now she has the instinct and discipline to not charge at or take from these entities, but as a matter of risk management and liability the human takes control instead of chance.
Control – walk walk tug tug walk tug look out walk walk tug tug, no, other side, no back to this side, stop, ok go now – feels exhausting.
If I let go of control, will we still stay on track?
Higher up in the residential hills and unleashed, we’ll walk together at a steady pace.
Her steady pace goes like this – walk walk stop sniff walk sniff walk sniff chase, walk sniff walk sniff pee walk walk walk sniff turn around walk sniff sniff nibble walk walk prance prance walk walk walk walk wait… walk walk.
Mine is like this– walk walk walk walk ‘Tess’ walk walk walk walk ‘come Tess’ walk walk ‘good girl, Tess’ walk walk walk walk ‘no Tess, leave that alone’ walk walk ‘good girl’ walk walk ‘go home now, yes, go up the stairs’, walk walk, ‘good girl’.
She’s usually ahead of me or behind me. When she gets ahead of me, I usually find her paused at the next fork in the road. If I’m ahead of her, I’ll take the intended fork and call her as I walk. Within a minute she’ll have caught up and dashed ahead of me.
You’ll find us at different locations at different times, yet we’re both on track.
When I can manage her loosely and don’t have to control her attached to a rope, I arrive feeling less exhausted. I believe she’s happier too.
This month I found myself loosening the rope on what it means to be on track.
I set some goals, scheduled some work, booked meetings, and most of the time they did not happen as written on the calendar. Here and there, other things arrived. Opportunities, urgent matters, closing a bank account because they doubled their fee threshold (reach out to me for details, I will tell you), health matters, just needing a break.
Is it all happening though? For the most part, yes, even if sometimes I am ‘behind’ and other times ‘ahead’.
Does it feel good? If I can accept this pace, yes. If I want to leash it up and dictate, not so much.
Over to you – four questions:
What is an aspiration in your life right now you’re trying to achieve?
What structure is helping you do that?
When is it necessary?
When might it help you to loosen up with that structure?
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Positive change is a long road. Hang in there, and thank you for your consistent support!
What’s happening in business?
New course with Nature Masterclasses! “Getting an Academic Research Position”
Nature Masterclasses is a part of Springer Nature, which publishes the scientific journal Nature, and provides professional development training for researchers.
This course helps researchers look outward and inward - outward at the options, inward to really know our values, skills, interests, and life priorities. Being a researcher is a way of life, full of challenge, commitment, and reward. This ~8 hour course provides knowledge, exercises, case studies, and more to help you develop your own framework for finding the next academic research position, if that’s right for you.
We are so pleased to have worked together with the course development team to advise on expert content, share reflection and career-building activities, and to convey insights through video interviews!
Accessing the full course (8 hours) requires a subscription - if you’re at an academic institution, it’s possible that you may be able to access it already. Anyone can engage with a free sample (1 hour) of the course.
New directory listing - We are now listed with the Hong Kong International Coaching Community (HKICC). Click on ‘Find a Coach’
Hong Kong’s medical professionals - In an ongoing collaboration, we are highlighting perspectives and contributions of researchers at one of Hong Kong’s most established medical schools.
Still dancing - Join us any Monday (except for public holidays) for Conscious Dance Mondays, highlighted in RoundUp #083, now on Instagram AND Facebook.
This week’s science post, online April 27, 2023
How Covid Shapes Our Sleep and Vice Versa
The International COVID Sleep Study (ICOSS) collaboration aims to study how the Covid-19 pandemic and infection have influenced sleep, circadian rhythms, fatigue, and mental functioning in adults. Likewise, the study has examined how regularly sleeping much less or much more than average influences our risk for severe Covid or long Covid.
The collaboration includes researchers and participants from Hong Kong, the United States, Italy, France, and a dozen other countries. Since 2021, they have published over 15 studies using survey data from thousands of adults across the 16 locations surveyed.
Yesterday, we launched a 5-week series summarizing research on specific topics from the ICOSS. Check in each week to learn about Covid and sleep topics such as the risks of shorter sleep, findings from shift workers, dreams and long covid, and "social jetlag" during the pandemic.
This week, we summarize the first study identifying sleep disorders as one of the major symptoms of long-Covid, Sleep Symptoms are essential features of long-COVID - Comparing healthy controls with COVID-19 cases of different severity in the international COVID sleep study (ICOSS II) published in the Journal of Sleep Research in October 2022.
This study used survey data from 13628 adults (age 18-99) in all 16 countries involved in the ICOSS. The researchers compared the prevalence of 21 different long-Covid symptoms lasting three (3) months or longer and compared the experiences between people who had never had Covid and people who had been infected at four (4) different degrees of severity.
In total, data from five (5) groups were compared:
Non-Covid-19 Controls - People who had never experienced Covid symptoms and never tested positive. 10923 people surveyed were in this category;
Asymptomatic - no marked symptoms during the acute Covid infection according to positive tests - 250 people;
Mild - symptoms of Covid disappeared without specific medications - 1497 people;
Moderate - medications used, no severe pneumonia, no extra oxygen needed - 683 people;
Severe or life-threatening - hospitalized with IV-lines or admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) - 230 people surveyed were in this category.
The three (3) most common long-Covid symptoms among severe cases were fatigue - with 61.3% of the recovered patients experiencing fatigue three months later, post-exertional malaise (49.6%), and insomnia (47.4%). Among both moderate and mild cases, insomnia was the second (2nd) most common long-Covid symptom after fatigue. Note, however, that insomnia was almost equally common among respondents in the non-Cov-19 control, asymptomatic, and mild category.
Daytime sleepiness ranked sixth (6th) most common long-Covid symptom for severe cases, fourth (4th) most common for moderate cases, and fifth (5th) most common among mild cases.
Bigger differences between mild-to-severe post-Covid cases and non-Covid controls were found for fatigue, brain fog, memory problems, and daytime sleepiness.
The one symptom with the biggest difference among people who had a Covid infection of any severity and the non-Covid controls was the loss of smell. Among the 21 long-Covid symptoms surveyed, loss of smell ranked the 14th most common among severe cases.
Around 7% of patients recovered from severe illness reported hallucinations as a long-Covid symptom, whereas this symptom was reported 2% or fewer patients in all other categories.
In conclusion, the ICOSS collaboration found long-lasting sleep disturbances among people who have recovered from Covid at least 3-months before the survey. These disturbances include insomina - difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and excessive sleepiness.
The authors note that 70% of the non-Covid participants had received at least two vaccinations, compared with less than 40% for participants who experienced an infection.
This study is the first to show that sleep issues are part of long-Covid, as the term most commonly implied fatigue, shortness of breath, and brain fog, and raises awareness of how complex and long-lasting long-Covid can be.
The full study is available open access:
Peruse other topics of the ICOSS
#longcovid #sleep #insomnia #pandemic #covid19
Human Resources – the most important resource in any enterprise
Elsa Law - Lawyer and solicitor with over 25 years of practice in Hong Kong, exceptionally warm, curious, and rational. Elsa was born and raised in Hong Kong and was at Guildford College of Law, Surrey, United Kingdom prior to being qualified. In her early career, she was an in-house legal counsel for the Kowloon Canton Railway company (KCRC), which is now merged with the MTR Corporation, and Ryoden (Holdings) Limited (now Mitsubishi Electric) handling the settlement of the Garley Building fire cases. She now leads Elsa Law & Co. Solicitors, a team who provides client-focused support for corporate transactions, employment, disputes, divorce, succession planning and more for business and families. Her firm is special - they are ranked 3rd of the Top 6 Employment Lawyers in Hong Kong by the Happy HongKonger, who applauded the team’s “very humane approach to legal matters.” Furthermore, they are local AND they provide worldwide legal services support. Ask her about the advantages of settling out of court (vs the massive costs of going through court), how she matured her business and the benefits of being a member of Business Network International (BNI), being a board member of the Women Entrepreneurs Network, and her latest seminars on communication among couples and families, she has a lot to share.
Interesting Listen
Understanding and Conquering Depression - In this podcast, neuroscience professor Andrew Huberman (Stanford University) explains in easy-to-follow terms the brain chemistry behind depression, signature symptoms - like "anti-self confabulation", and commonly overlooked symptoms of depression - like unusual sleep patterns. He then discusses the three main chemical systems - norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine - how they're normally regulated, how they get dysregulated in depression, and the effects of behaviors - e.g. cold showers, exercise, diet and nutrition -carbohydrates, fish oils, ketogenic diet, treatments - antidepressants, and experimental drugs - ketamines, psychedelics. Long, but you don't have to hear the whole thing to enjoy it.
Interesting Watches
What leads a person to white supremacy: here is one man’s story - Christian Picciolini details his path through the neo-Nazi movement starting from age 14. He explores his background and how the movement became a lifeline, the consequences, and the eventual path out to helping hundreds of men disengage from the movement.
He emphasizes that these individuals are rarely motivated by ideology. Belonging, empowerment, and blame - finding someone accountable for the challenges and unfairness they experience - these are the most common reasons. He closes by challenging us to give compassion to someone who seems undeserving of it.
Still Standing- The winning speech of the 2018 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking, by Ramona J. Smith.
Thank you for reading!
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About
The Clear Water RoundUp is Clear Water Science Consulting’s regular newsletter – a collection of sharable business updates and insights, news from select locales, and features of interesting people and media.
Clear Water Science Consulting lowers barriers to understanding and collaboration. Our main activities are science communication (content creation, editing, technical review, manuscript projects), communication coaching, and life & career coaching. Whether it is describing the latest DNA sequencing project or supporting a young professional in their career development, we bring clarity to complex and often confusing situations.
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