Health and Happyness

There are a few things that you can do besides eating well and exercising that will expedite your physical transformation:

1. Stay positive
Believe that transformation is possible even when you haven’t seen the changes that you want yet. I am sure that you can site many examples in your life where you didn’t expect something to happen and then whoa, there it was. If you don’t have enough evidence of your own, look around you. Do you know someone who thought they’d never get the job, meet that special person, or lose the weight, and then they did? Haven’t you read amazing stories about people overcoming obstacles and creating tremendous transformation in their lives, many against great odds? These are just people too, like you and me; anyone can overcome.

There is one thing that you can be sure of in life, and that is change. Make sure yours happens quickly, and in the way you want, by staying positive and then taking the steps that you know you should take.

2. Stay in the moment
If you think about your end results, the work becomes overwhelming. Just do what you know you can do today, and when tomorrow becomes today, you’ll deal with that.

3. Keep your expectations low
Don’t expect too much too soon, you’ll only get discouraged. Aiming high is nice to say but truly it is easier to stay positive if you set your sites on realistic, smaller goals.

4. Eliminate temptation
Remove distractions like foods that you don’t want to eat and people who have habits that you are trying to break. Surround yourself with people and materials that mirror the changes that you want for yourself. Hang out with happy, healthy people, read inspiring books, and listen to some great music that motivates you to get moving and take action.

5. Stop using excuses
There are always excuses; I am sure you have heard, or used, them all. When your desire to change becomes greater than your fear of changing, the excuses will go away — nothing will stop you from becoming the new you. Even though you may not be able to change the underlying reasons why you
haven’t yet accomplished your goals, you can start by removing some of the actions and thought processes that encourage you to stay stuck. Enough with the excuses!

Source:http://health.yahoo.com/experts/rockertraining/12023/how-to-find-the-motivation-to-exercise/

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Some breakfast cereals marketed to U.S. children are more than half sugar by weight and many get only fair scores on nutritional value, Consumer Reports said on Wednesday.

A serving of 11 popular cereals, including Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, carries as much sugar as a glazed doughnut, the consumer group found.

And some brands have more sugar and sodium when formulated for the U.S. market than the same brands have when sold in other countries.

Post Golden Crisp made by Kraft Foods Inc and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks are more than 50 percent sugar by weight, the group said, while nine brands are at least 40 percent sugar.

The most healthful brands are Cheerios with three grams of fiber per serving and one gram of sugar, Kix and Honey Nut Cheerios, all made by General Mills, and Life, made by Pepsico Inc’s Quaker Oats unit.

The most healthful brands are Cheerios with three grams of fiber per serving and one gram of sugar, Kix and Honey Nut Cheerios, all made by General Mills, and Life, made by Pepsico Inc’s Quaker Oats unit.

“Be sure to read the product labels, and choose cereals that are high in fiber and low in sugar and sodium,” Gayle Williams, deputy editor of Consumer Reports Health, said in a statement.

Honey Smacks has 15 grams of sugar and just one gram of fiber per serving while Kellogg’s Corn Pops has 12 grams of sugar and no fiber.

Consumer Reports studied how 91 children aged 6 to 16 poured their cereal and found they served themselves about 50 to 65 percent more on average than the suggested serving size for three of the four tested cereals.

Consumers International, which publishes Consumer Reports, said it would ask the World Health Organization to develop international guidelines restricting advertising and marketing of foods high in sugar, fat or sodium to children.

However, the group noted that breakfast cereal can be a healthful meal and said adults and children alike who eat breakfast have better overall nutrition, fewer weight problems, and better cognitive performance throughout the day.

Kellogg said it was working to make its food more nutritious.

“Kellogg recently reformulated a number of our cereals including Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Rice Krispies, Cocoa Krispies and Apple Jacks in the U.S. with improved nutritional profiles,” a company spokeswoman said by e-mail.

“To put Consumer Reports’ information in perspective, yogurt contains more sugar and sodium than a serving of Honey Smacks cereal (25 grams of sugar vs. 15 grams of sugar in Honey Smacks).”

Consumer Reports, like other groups, compares the sugar content of food with its fiber, mineral and vitamin content. Many cereals are fortified with vitamins and minerals.

Source: http://health.yahoo.com/news/reuters/us_cereal_sugar.html

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Simplicity - The route to happiness isn’t difficult. Happiness is not dependent on amassing a certain amount of fame or wealth; happiness is not dependent on reaching a certain social pecking order. If we are always striving after something bigger and better, happiness will remain elusive. Happiness is found in the present moment, not some dreamed of golden future. We need to learn the art of being content with our current situation.

Live in the Heart - If we only live in the mind we look at every situation with our critical judgmental mind, as a consequence, we will inevitably find innumerable faults with the world and with other people. When we are constantly criticising others we can find neither peace nor happiness. However, if we live more in the heart we have a more tolerant, accepting attitude towards others. The heart’s qualities are acceptance and oneness. Children find it is easy to see happiness in the most ordinary situation because they are more in the heart. At times we need to distance the critical mind and take a simpler, childlike view of life.

Control Over Your Thoughts - Avoiding negative thoughts requires practice. Meditation and concentration exercises can help us control our thoughts. But sometimes the best way to prevent negative thoughts is to concentrate on something positive. It’s your own thoughts that take you to heaven or hell, so be very careful with what is allowed into your mind.

Gratitude - Gratitude has tremendous power; if it is sincere and heartfelt it makes a big difference to our outlook on life. Gratitude helps bring to the fore a sincerely positive attitude to life.

Active - Happiness is easily found in usefully serving others. Activity doesn’t mean filling up our lives with as many activities as possible — this only leads to a sense of self-importance and stress as we struggle to do several things at once. But, if we are calmly active we find a sense of purpose in life; this sense of purpose and satisfaction helps cultivate an inner sense of satisfaction.

Physical Exercise - When you take regular physical exercise you will feel many benefits. Firstly, when we look after our body we are less prone to lethargy and illness. Through developing our fitness we gain an increased sense of self esteem; this is because we are taking active steps for our self improvement.

Source: http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/the-6-components-of-a-happy-life/

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Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word,
a listening ear, and honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

A smile is so simple, yet so powerful. Some noticeable effects of externalizing your internal joy are:

People will be attracted to you - I don’t mean sexually (well, maybe that too), but people will feel drawn to your energy. When you smile more, you will carry an aura and poise that will draw people to you. People will look forward to being around you, knowing only that they feel great around you. People on the street, at work, your friends etc. We all like and want to be around happy and cheerful people, right?

Optimistic - You’ll feel more positive about yourself and the world.

Happiness & Joy - A smile is an expression of happiness and joy in you. Like an upward spiral, a smile will boost the happiness you feel.

Healthy - A smile can affect your internal state, which can have physiological impact on your physical and mental health.

Approachable - A smile is so welcoming and will make people feel more at ease.

Making Other People Happy - A smile has the power to make other people feel good about themselves. It’s heart-warming and has the power to cheer up others instantly.

Smiles Are Contagious - Others can quickly and easily catch it and will experience the above ‘side effects’.

Source: http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/the-art-of-smiling/

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Someone has said, “Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.” That is so very true! Indeed, sleep is bliss.

A night’s sleep is a break from the stress of daily life. Sleep may sometimes even act as a solution to some of the problems by helping your brain think in peace and solve serious problems.

Naps are definite stress busters. It is during your sleep that you dream, you dream of wonderful things that may not come into reality; but your dreams show them to you.

It is during sleep, that you get an opportunity to be with yourself, far away from the real world. You get to meet your subconscious as your sleep takes you away from your conscious self.

Sleep is a natural phenomenon of the state of rest and regular sleep is essential for survival. Interestingly, its true purpose is still being researched.

Researchers have not yet obtained conclusive results about the exact purposes of sleep. Moreover, it is interesting to observe, that our sleep undergoes a series of stages.
Yes, we sleep in stages. Sometimes we do realize the different forms of sleep in the various stages of sleep, while at other times, the distinction is unclear.

Stages of Sleep

According to the basic classification of the various stages of sleep, sleep is grouped into two distinct stages, namely, REM and NREM.

REM sleep is characterized by a rapid movement of the eyes, as also a very low muscle tone that is typically seen in mammals.

Most of the dreams that you remember after awakening from sleep, are those occurring in the REM stage of sleep

The NREM, which is known as the non-REM sleep, is composed of four different stages. A comparatively lesser amount of dreaming occurs during this stage of sleep.

Movements of limbs or even sleepwalking are observed during the non-REM stage of sleep. The four stages of the NREM sleep are simply named as N1, N2, N3 and N4.

Let us look at each stage of the non-REM sleep in detail.

Stage N1: This stage of sleep can be called as the phase of drowsy sleep, during which you may experience hallucinations and sudden twitches.

It is during this stage that you may lose your muscle tone and your conscious awareness. This stage of sleep is characterized by the brain transitions from alpha waves to theta waves and is primarily the stage when sleep starts laying her hands on you!

Stage N2: During this stage of sleep, muscular activity further reduces and the awareness of the external environment vanishes. Sleep spindles, the bursts of brain activity during which the brain tries to stop processing, characterize the N2 stage. Briefly, this stage of sleep is when the brain succumbs to the sleep that had begun to lay her hands on you.

Stage N3: Walking in sleep or sudden feelings of terror when asleep, commonly occur during this stage of sleep. Bed-wetting may also take place during this stage. The stage N3 is mostly only the transition to the fourth stage. It is one of the phases of a very deep sleep. This is the stage wherein the sleep begins to engulf your brain.

Stage N4: It is a stage of an even deeper form of sleep as compared to the third stage. According to some researchers, the third and the forth stages of sleep can be combined and together called as delta sleep. This is when you are fast asleep, far away in the world of sleep.

For me, sleep opens doors to the world of dreams, to the world of meeting yourself, the world that is away from the bitter truths of life. A sound sleep is cloud nine!

Source:http://www.buzzle.com

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A woman wrecked her car, killing an innocent bystander. Now the bystander’s widow is suing the woman’s doctors, arguing that they should have warned her not to drive while taking the pain medicines they prescribed. The Boston Globe has the story. The driver, Jane Berghold, crashed her car through a hospital entrance last year, killing two people. She has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and settled a civil lawsuit. At the time of the crash, she told police she was undergoing chemotherapy but that her treatment didn’t affect her driving. But a lawyer representing the family of one of the people killed in the wreck says that Berghold, who is 77, had complained to doctors repeatedly about being light-headed and dizzy from the medication. “Mrs. Berghold should have been told not to drive,” the lawyer said. “And if she was advised, according to her, she would not have driven. And she wouldn’t have driven to Brockton Hospital, through the front doors, hitting my client and leaving a widow behind.” This case follows a ruling that came down last year from the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing a similar lawsuit to proceed. Docs in the state don’t like it. “It’s reasonable to hold the doctor liable for those things that confine within the patient, doctor relationship, but anything beyond that is inappropriate and excessive,” the president of the Massachusetts Medical Society told the Globe.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/

Tags: Painkillers
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