Thursday, December 15, 2005

Back in PA and building up my tolerance to sleeping in rubber. The main trouble I am having is sticking to the plan of a gradual build up to sleeping in total enclosure. Because in the period before sleep I am just chilling out, I just don’t feel right in anything less than TE – so often end up feeling odd about taking off the hood before going to sleep – so don’t (sometime finding it too much of a wrench to take my goggles and mask off!). This results in some reasonable sleep now – but interrupted regularly with restricted airways (the fit of my hood causing my jaw to sometimes move go a position that causes problems. This is all very stimulating of course, but does leave you with a sleep deficit the next day…

As for temperature / perspiration control – this is still not nearly as good as while awake, but is a lot better than it was. I usually find the inside of my suit is damp in the mornings – but now it’s usually just a covering in moisture and not free fluid sloshing about. I think I can do better if I modify my eating and drinking habits and diet.

I feel confident about cracking the problem of being totally comfortable /dry while sleeping in TE – particularly in a room with thermostatic heat control! From my experience working in rubber, I agree with Rubanix’s post about adapting to rubber so you perspire less freely and are more comfortable – although I take his point about being too dry being a problem – I occasionally find some irritation like joggers nipple can occur. He has been relating his experience over the years, via private correspondence - which I found very encouraging and inspiring.

As for Darks question on how the adaptation to wearing rubber and not overheating works, I think it is a combination of things. I do think you change your behavior before / during wearing rubber to compensate – becoming less tense, fidgety and over-active. I think this happens on both a conscious and sub-conscious level. Also, I think that diet has an effect – and know rubber can alter how I feel about drinking and eating. Also the physiological (& psychological) response to actually donning the rubber has changed for me – from excitement / stimulation to a calming / comfortable / relaxing experience. Being less excited and calmer naturally reduced perspiration.

In addition to all these thing though, I think there are more basic body adjustments going on as well. I think my body associates the feeling of being in rubber to be a signal to back off on generating heat and using perspiration as the main way to control temperature. For me I think of it as like when a I go to visit hot countries – it seems I spend days / weeks adjusting – during this period I perspire freely, can easily get heat exhaustion. Mean time the ex – pats in these communities seem to shrug off the heat almost as easily as the locals. The same occurs with altitude, diet etc. The point being that your body is capable of amazing degree of adaptation, as long as you give it enough time to adjust.

Last weekend was my birthday so decided to treat myself to 60+ hours in total enclosure. It didn’t go exactly to plan. First I found that I couldn’t do more than one night in a row in full TE. And then disaster struck 40 odd hours in, and my suit developed a wardrobe malfunction! It was only a quarter inch slit – but that was enough to ruin it for me. I did manage go patch it during the week but am going shopping on Saturday as my suit is showing signs of wear now.

On that subject, I just spent a very pleasant evening with a fetish couple who live nearby, who I found on IAR. I forgot to ask if they minded my posting their online names here, so will respect their privacy and not name them yet. Anyway it was great to talk to a couple who were both very much into similarly extreme rubber enclosure etc. We are meeting up again on Saturday to go shopping at the nearest fetish suppliers. So kind of them to look after a rubberist who finds himself so far from home.

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