Sleep Deprivation And What It Could Do To You

Getting adequate good night sleep is one of the most important thing you need to have in life. Nothing that you do in life such as exercise, taking balance nutrition diet or even popping multivitamin pills would help if you don't get to achieve adequate quality sleep in life.

Forget about what Donald Trump says when he mentioned that sleep is a waste of time. Apparently successful people like him have too much going chasing after big bucks and it seems to these folks life is less important than wealth. As for the rest of us, getting adequate sleep is critical to our overall wellbeing. Michael Jackson died due to the powerful and dangerous sedative combination of drugs that he took to help cope with stress and sleeping disorder.

Some people pop pills such Ecstasy or take caffeine laden drinks such as thick coffee to race and beat time. You can't have your ways to deal with lack of sleep by relying on drugs. Many life are at risks as a result of such irresponsible actions on the part of coach and cab drivers, truck drivers and other critical job positions that requires mental focus and alertness.

You will have to work twice as hard and earn twice as much if you fall ill due to lack of sleep. Surprise and you think that is nonsense? Unless you are living under the rock, you would probably knows that medical expenses in some countries could be quite terribly expensive. Unless you kick the bucket quickly or you recover quickly or you have comprehensive health insurance coverage, prolong medical treatments can drain and empty you off all your life savings.

Millions of people around the world suffers from sleeping disorder. You may or may not feel the immediate side effects of lack of sleep. Some people could go on for days or even weeks or months sleeping on average 5 hours or left without experiencing or showing symptoms associated with lack of sleep. Some people are less tolerant to lack of sleep and show signs such as fatigue, inability to control emotion or temper, inability to focus, decreased work productivity when they don't sleep well for just couple of days.

Those who has greater tolerance for lack of sleep potentially risk long term health problems if they don't address sleep disorder at the soonest opportunity. Sleep depth accumulates and once it reach the threshold, triggers uncontrolled avalanche of health problems such as hormone imbalance, high blood pressure, depression, heart attack and to certain extreme cases, sudden death.

Sleep deprivation is equally as dangerous as alcohol abuse. Sleep deprivation increase stress and this in turn causes hormone imbalance which in turn further aggravate your sleep disorder problem.

So do yourself a favor, don't take sleep deprivation lightly and assume everything will be fine. You are just kidding yourself because somewhere down the road, your body will give away and leave you beyond repair.

Positive Affirmation

Successful MLM businesses usually adopt various techniques to boost up the moral of its affiliates. Most of the MLM companies engage either internal or external motivational speakers to encourage staffs, affiliates or distributors to believe in the power of positive mindset so as to achieve success and happiness in life.

MLM business relies mostly on direct marketing and recruitment drive by its staffs to get more people to join the company to sign up as marketers to further promote the products or services and recruit more people.

Over 95% of those involved with MLM marketing eventually give up. There are some people who eventually make it to become top earners in MLM marketing and these are usually the people who continue to have positive mindset despite challenges.

One of the methods used by most MLM management to drum up and encourage its down lines or members to be motivated is by embracing positive mindset via programming one’s self-thoughts aka positive affirmation. Members are encouraged to listen to motivational tapes and read books that affirms their perception of self worth and values.

What is positive affirmation? Positive affirmation involves speaking or thinking to one-self with repeating words of encouragement and positive statements. Positive affirmation statements such as ‘My mind is calm’,’I have lots of energy’ and etc can transform your life and helps you to relax, restore your energy and achieve your goals in life.

Positive affirmation works on the basis that we can recondition our brain and thoughts, both our conscious and subconscious side so as to change our emotional perception and feeling about any situation. It is important to note that positive affirmation is not the panacea and solution to all of our stress in life.

There are some people who are not suited to embrace positive affirmation though, in particular those who has extreme low self-esteem and experiencing chronic stress. Reaffirming your self worth and reciting or chanting that you feel good while you are really depressed may make thing worst.

Positive affirmations without follow up concrete action and commitment or determination to do what you say you will do in your affirmation is useless. The last thing that you would want is deceive yourself that everything is okay when in reality it is not.

In general, positive affirmation raises your self-esteem and makes you feel more confident, vibrant and cheerful in the face of challenges in life. This method helps you to become more optimistic with life and replace your negative thoughts with positive one. You will be able to cope and deal with stress in life through the power of positive affirmation.

Suggested links to other side that has good information on positive affirmation:
http://www.vitalaffirmations.com/
http://bmindful.com/

Positive Mindset

One of the suggested effective ways to deal with stress is by having a positive mindset. As a matter of fact, stress is quite often a result of our perception of inadequacy in dealing with circumstances. Many people believed positive thinking or positive mindset which can be attain via positive affirmation can improve health, reduce stress and success in life.

Doctors treating cancer patients know the importance of positive mindset on part of the patients. Patients who believe they will be cured, having a positive mindset and optimistic were reported to have higher survival chance compare to those who are pessimistic and have lost the will to live.

Medical experts attribute the placebo effects to positive thinking. What is 'placebo effects'? The placebo effects refers to the beneficial effects experience by a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patients mental state and expectations rather than the treatment itself.

It is really amazing how our emotions, feelings and thoughts could so strongly influence our entire well being. Some medical experts believe a cheerful heart and positive mindset helps the body to reduce stress and therefore reduce inflammation, maintain hormone balance, boost up immune system and keep us healthy and motivated to achieve our goals.

Science barely scratch the tip of the ice berg with regards to understanding thoroughly the interconnection between human emotional & mental state to the rest of human biological and physiological condition. It is an establish fact that our mind can help the body to get better.

People who are successful in life usually share specific common traits, one of which is having a positive mindset and optimism in the face of challenges and trial times. You may have heard of the saying that 'You are your biggest enemy'. You have lost the war even before it begin if you are mentally defeated. Half the battle is won if you are able to strike fear into your enemies heart even before the battle begins.

Having a positive mindset is only half the story though. Apart from being optimistic, we must take appropriate actions to enable us to get closer to achieve our goals and aspirations. We may chance upon difficulties and challenges ahead while pursuing our goals and thus having a positive mindset enable us to continue to persevere.

Why wait for the doctor to fix you up? Take your health safety into your own hands and control your own health destiny!

Baoding City- Icon Of Low Carbon Living In China

Attached courtesy of photo that I took from flickr.

China is one of the world worst environmental polluted nations in the world. Prior to the 2008 Olympic, Beijing the capital is an extremely terrible environmental polluted city to live in. Some people even joke that the US most advance spy satellite may have problem taking photos of Beijing due to the dust clouds hovering across the city skyline.

As a matter of fact, 16 out of 20 of the world's most polluted cities are located in China. It is a heavy price that China is paying dearly in pursuit of economic expansion at the expense of its environment.

The situation may improve as China disembark on an ambitious plan that will see the nation spending its huge budget surplus to clean up its heavy industry factories that pollutes and contaminates air and water.

One of the medium cities earmark for staging new technology such as the next generation mobile communication technology deployment and other environmental friendly clean technology is Baoding city.

Baoding city is located some 200 kilometers away from the capital and is home to many of the pharmaceutical industries and health research centers. The average life spans of Baoding city residents is at least 5 years longer those of the rest of the cities.

It is interesting to note that more than 90 percent of the city traffic lights are solar powered. Baoding is a nice city to live in and enjoy when you have time to spend in China. It ‘s standard of living is not as high as Beijing, things such as clothing are dirt cheap and by the way there are quite a number of historical sites and beautiful ponds and lakes which you will enjoy visiting.

Recent posting on Baoding City Clean Energy
Baoding Clean Energy Living

Avoid The Internet Before Bed Time

Ever wonder why you can't sleep at night? One of the biggest distraction to getting fast asleep is the Internet. The widespread adoption of wireless broadband wifi and inreasingly affortable mobile netbook, notebook and even smart phones facilitate the surfing of web in the bedroom, bathroom and even the toilet. We are so preoccupied with surfing the web so much so our brain betawaves is fully charge up right up to the point when we get into bed.

Stay away from the smart phone or that mobile notebook to surf the web, access your email or any cyber activity at least two to three hours before you sleep. Read your favorite novel or do anything that is boring so that your brain neurotransmitter know its time for you to call if off day for the night!


Other related topics

http://stargaterich.blogspot.com/2009/06/relax-before-bedtime.html
http://stargaterich.blogspot.com/2009/06/relationship-between-stress-and.html

Personality Link To Stress

Some people seems to have higher tolerance for stress. Apart from biological factors such as hormone balance, genetic and other health factors, ongoing medical and psychological research indicates personality,traits, characters and habits determines and affects to a large extend our ability to handle stress.

Ambitious, impatience, time conscious and those who strive to be perfectionist may tend to perceive a situation more stressful compare to those who are more relax and less time conscious or less goal oriented. Some people are more temperamental and predispose to lower level of tolerance to stress.

Individual response to stress could be influence by life experiences and upbringing. Those who feel lack of control of daily aspects of their life may become frustrated and cause the stress hormone 'cortisol' to increase. Prolong increase of this stress hormone will wreak havoc to hormone balance, increase blood pressure, disrupt sleep and trigger other diseases.

A pessimistic person is more prone to stress as compare to an optimistic person. It is not unheard of that a positive mindset is very important in dealing with stressful situations. How we perceive a situation depends very much on our sub conscious as well as our conscious mind.

Extroverts seems able to handle stress better then introverts. Those who are more outgoing, having wide social support networks and interacts frequently with friends and loved ones seems to respond better to stress compare to those who likes to keep things to themselves.

Some people has the usual habit of pondering over the 'what if' scenario. Our inner thoughts may determine and affect our feelings. We may imagine worst case scenario and negative outcomes that cause heightened stress unnecessary.

Even though it may not be possible for a person to change his or her personality over night in order to cope with behavioral and character related induced stress,nevertheless, understanding such a problem is important and a first step to addressing such issue.

Foremost , you must admit and acknowledge that your personality and habits contribute to the stress that you experienced. Next you must be willing to change and take necessary actions to alleviate the unnecessary stress. Seek help from a councilor, church members or loved ones if necessary.

Mouth Ulcer

Things have not been going that well for me the past few days. I have been suffering from mouth ulcer and migraine the past couple of days. Thankfully the ulcers are healing and the migraine is gone.

I have no idea what causes the migraine and why it stops though. Except for two or three fast acting painkiller that I took to alleviate the pain it seems that lack of sleep, stress and over consumption of soda soft drink contributes to the headache.

Mouth ulcers are usually none contagious unlike cold sores but whatever the case, it is always advisable to avoid sharing food or contacts with others just in case.

The ulcers, two of them located somewhere near the roof of the mouth was so irritating and painful so much so that it makes eating or drinking warm water a challenge.

On top of that, coughing or even breathing deeply would cause severe headache or migraine at the right side of the temple. For once I thought I might be suffering from kind of stroke.

Consulted the doctor over the weekend and was told my throat was inflamed. The doctor prescribed normal painkillers, anti inflammation drug ‘Serratiopeptidase’ and normal cough syrup since I told him I was experiencing some slight cough occasionally. After the consultation, he wrote an MC chit and told me to rest for 2 days.JJ

Mouth ulcer usually heals on its own without any treatment. I only took two or three anti inflammation tablets before deciding to stop it as I feel its not really effective and worsening the migraine that’s plaguing me.

Always rinse and clean your mouth after taking food. Gargle with slight warm salt-water solution after having your food to keep the affected area free from food scraps. Eat well balance nutritious diet. Drink plenty of water. Avoid taking spicy oily fried foodstuffs and practice safe sex and oral hygiene.

It is important for you to visit the doctor if the ulcer condition worsen and persists longer than 3 weeks. Who knows, some ulcers may turn out to be something much more serious than initially thought so it is beter to be safe than sorry.

Neurotransmitter Impact On Mood Swings

Neurons, better known as nerves are unique cells found in the brain and other parts of the body. Neurotransmitters are nerve signaling chemicals released by the neurons and it carries electrical information which allows cells to communicate. Neurotransmitter affects various aspects of the human body such as sleep regulation, memory, emotions and motivations .

Our behavior, emotions and ability to learn are regulated by various neurotransmitters. Different neurons located at different parts of the brain is known to switch on and off signals that keep us healthy.

'Norepinephrine' & 'Dopamine'
These neurotransmitters makes you feel good, it affects 'motivation,interest,energy and focus. They are associated with positive stress states such as listening to music, relaxing, exercising and affection. They have stimulating effect causing improved cognition, motivation, increased movement and awareness. When your body lack these chemicals, you will experience lack of motivation, drive, interest, focus and difficulty completing the goals you set up to do.

'Serotonin'
Serotonin regulates emotions, moods, sleep and memory. Low serotonin level may cause mood swings, depression, sleep disorder, migraines,anxiety, low energy and panic attacks. Stress can reduce serotonin level.

'Adenosine'
Research also suggests that a chemical called 'adenosine' builds up in our blood while we are awake and causes drowsiness. Adenosine gradually breaks down while we sleep. The accumulation of adenosine in the brain is known to decrease the activity of dopamine and this causes fatigue which thereafter cause you to seek sleep or rest. The adenosine in the body gradually breaks down and cleared during sleep thereby restoring dopamine activity to health level to cause the brain to wake up.

Any imbalance of neurotransmitter levels therefore has tremendous impact to your health. Your overall health and well being is dependent on the complex interaction of the neurotransmitters,hormone and brain chemicals. Low level of these neurotransmitters can cause all sort of illness and disease.

There are various factors that contributes to low level of these neurotransmitters. Poor diet, prolong stress, genetic factors, hormone changes, toxic substances and certain drugs may affect the level of neurotransmitter.

Our body needs adequate proteins, vitamins and minerals to made and maintain healthy level of neurotransmitters. Toxic substances such as pesticides and heavy chemicals such as mercury and lead can damage the nerve cells that produce the neurotransmitters. Antidepressants, alcohol and artificial sweetener may interfere with the nerve cells ability to produce neurotransmitters.

The more we discover and understand how the amazing complex human body works, the more important and opportunity it is for us to maintain good health by adopting healthy life style.

Hot Drink Link To Throat Cancer

Here’s a simple precaution when you take a drink. Apparently there are confirmed reports of the link between taking hot drink and increase risk of throat cancer. Wait for a couple of minutes for the hot drink to cool down or at least become warm instead of hot before you take that first gulp.

Well, the finding may not be a hundred percent conclusive but hey, you’ve got nothing to lose anyway and what’s the hurry to finish your hot drink? Those living in cold winter are likely to prefer to taking really hot drinks to warm up so be aware of the risk as per recent medical findings.

Check out the following report on hot drink link to throat cancer.