Stress and Insufficient Rest Affects Your Health and Weight

With irregular sleeping patterns and a constant stream of new beds and sleeping environments, it’s easy to see how the business traveler might be lacking some shuteye. This creates a vicious circle of constant tiredness that leads to stress, and stress can contribute to lack of sleep. You drink coffee to stay awake but then the caffeine keeps you awake and dehydrates you! Yet, getting the best sleep possible can make a tremendous difference to your quest for a healthy lifestyle.

Scientists have been aware of a phenomenon known as First Night Effect for several years now. This is a common issue for all travelers – not being able to sleep well in a new and unfamiliar place. The name of this condition would suggest it is only the “first” night that a traveler may experience the lack of sleep, but some people never truly sleep well in new places.

A connected condition is called On-Call Effect, where stress keeps you so wound up that you are constantly breaking out of REM sleep. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that not getting enough rest will not only affect your stress levels, but also your health.

Of course one of the compounding issues is, once again, TIME. If you are on a crazy schedule, getting on and off planes at ungodly hours, you are not exactly keeping a regular sleep schedule. Some people can sleep on a plane, others cannot. We all know there is nowhere to rest comfortably in an airport! Backpackers may curl up in a corner on the floor but I doubt you will find a professional doing that.

With business travel, even within the boundaries of the United States itself, comes the crossing of time zones. A three hour time difference from East to West may not seem like a lot, but again, the constant disruption to sleeping patterns, and shifting of time zones can play havoc on your health – more so if you travel to outbound regions such as Hawaii or even Puerto Rico.

Other physiological repercussions must be considered. Your hormones are affected by inadequate sleep, particularly leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hormone that signals your brain it’s hungry. Leptin does the opposite and tells the brain the body is full, or satiated. When you are sleep deprived, leptin often decreases, and the ghrelin increases, leaving you to feel hungry and unsatiated when what you actually need is sleep. Thus, getting adequate sleep is also part of your battle against overeating. Overall, In other words, not getting enough rest can also have serious affects on your health.

Some Tips for a Better Sleep While on the Road:

* Find ways to bring home “with” you.
* Exercise
* Meditate

Dr Veronica Tomor – Author and Speaker
http://www.leantraveler.com/
Twitter: leantraveler
Fanpage: Author Veronica Tomor

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Be the first to comment - What do you think?  Posted by - June 18, 2011 at 10:11 pm

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Drinking Clean Water – How to Purify Water At Home

There are many ways to purify water in your own home and know that your water is the best it can be. The very best approach however is what is known as the “multi-barrier” approach. This approach to obtaining clean water assures high water quality from source to consumption. The multi-barrier approach to household water treatment and safe storage (known as HWTS) alleviates sources of contamination that we may not normally think of. If you question the purity of the water you are drinking, you may want to follow this process and not just rely on a single technology like filters. Household water treatment and storage includes steps to protect the source of the water you drink, clarification of the water (cloudiness) filtration of dangerous pathogens.

Water Source Protection

For the most part, our source of drinking water here in the United States, is our own water faucet. We have come to believe and rely upon our municipalities to serve up clean, healthy drinking water.

This may not always be the case, however. We do not usually experience biological contamination like they do in Mexico, Africa, or many other places in the world. We can, however, have chemical pollutants in our water like pesticides, arsenic and selenium, just to name a few.

For most biological contaminants, a filter that traps these undesirable creatures does so by excluding them. These types of filters use of small openings that the water can pass through but the pathogens get caught in.

Chemical filtering is best accomplished through the use of charcoal filters. Charcoal chemically bonds to the chemical impurities in our water and holds on to them so they don’t end up in our drinking glass. Charcoal filters become saturated at some point and must be changed periodically.

Sedimentation

Sometimes the water we get from the faucet is cloudy or may have some particle of sand or iron in it. We call this cloudiness “turbidity”. Sedimentation process used to reduce the turbidity of the water.

Turbidity in water presents surface area for pathogens to cling to, so turbid water may have more pathogens than clear water. So it is a good idea, if your water is turbid, to let those particles settle out before drinking.

Filtration

Filtration methods are probably the most familiar way that we use to clean water in our own homes. Filtration is a physical process which involves passing water through micro-openings in a filter media. Ceramic filters and, as mentioned above, carbon filters are probably the most common types of household filters. There are a myriad of filter manufacturers that are used by households in the U.S

Disinfection

The next step in household water treatment is less common in America than in other places, but in truth, it is very important. There is always a chance that some type of pathogen or chemical will make it through your city’s water treatment plant.

Municipalities anticipate this and add chlorine to the water supply to kill off whatever might be left over. Chlorine disinfection is very common, but did you know that just exposing water to sunlight for a period of time will kill almost everything in it?

When municipalities experience some kind of disaster that knocks out their water treatment plant, they often recommend boiling water. This is another effective disinfection method.

Safe Water Storage

Finally, American cities and households do a lot of work to collect, transport and treat their drinking water. Now that the water is safe to drink, it should be handled and stored properly to keep it safe. If it’s not stored safely, the treated water quality could become worse than the source water and may cause people to get sick.

Safe storage means keeping your treated water away from sources of contamination, and using a clean and covered container. It also means drinking water from the container in a way so that people don’t make each other sick.

The container should prevent hands and cups, and such, from touching the water that is now clean, so that the water doesn’t get contaminated again.

For more information on Household Water Treatment and Storage, both in America and abroad, see A Layman’s Guide to Clean Water at http://www.clean-water-for-laymen.com/

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Signs Of Low Blood Sugar: Five Tell-Tale Signs

Low blood sugar symptoms are not well-known or publicized. Nor is it well-known how these symptoms do develop into future more serious health problems.

The first warning sign is generally that of indecisiveness and mental confusion. Confirmation of these symptoms comes when after eating you feel way better and feel you can continue with your daily work and chores.

Usually these occurrences happen sporadically and people put them out of their mind as though there is no significance. But when low blood sugar causes extreme hunger and a craving for refined foods, sweets and chocolates people do begin to worry. Hopefully they begin to think it’s unnatural. Think about it. Are you putting it out of your mind that such cravings are just normal hunger pangs?

However, many people usually still put it down to “natural” feelings of hunger and if they are exercising regularly will not feel too bad, perhaps blaming it on the strenuous workouts. Real problems occur later, maybe as long as 5 years later, when a little older and they start to ignore exercise. Then other low blood sugar signs can come on thick and fast.

Chiefly among these are tremors. These develop, for example, in office surroundings where a person has coffee and donuts in lieu of breakfast. They notice their work is affected and they find difficulty in handwriting until coffee and refined foods around 10.00 or 11.00 a.m. are consumed.

Another sign is that of weakness. Some people need to sit down otherwise they feel they might fall down before quickly taking something to raise their blood sugar levels.

The point is that they eat something, feel better and so do not worry about their low blood sugar. If this mirrors what is happening in your life you should be aware that this is something that is piling up troubles for your future. You should take special note that you are prone to low blood sugar levels and that you should take action to not let this develop out of control. The anguish that ensues is a horrific experience.

The signs of hypoglycemia are in fact, signs of pre-diabetes before diabetes takes hold. Diabetes, of course, if left untreated leads to loss of sight, amongst other things. And if diabetes is diagnosed and treated, one is given a life sentence of insulin injections and a totally disrupted life.

Rather choose now to forestall any health problems by making the necessary changes to your lifestyle, gain information as to what can be done, and give yourself peace-of-mind that you will not be dependent on others in your old age.

If you would like to find out more about the signs of low blood sugar then make sure you visit our site and download our free guide ‘Six Things You Won’t Know About Hypoglycemia’. We have been helping people with hypoglycemia symptoms and having suffered hypoglycemia ourselves, we understand what they are going through.

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How to Get Perfect Skin for Men And Look Younger And So Much Healthier

When it comes to skin care, most men tend to have a rather general routine. One may not find the common cleansers, lotions and other skin care products in a man’s bathroom cabinet as compared to women’s equivalent. However, this is not to mean that skin care is not as important to men. Skin problems affect men just as they do women and having a proper skin care routine is the only way to ensure that you retain healthy skin. Here are some tips on how to achieve perfect skin for men.

You should regularly cleanse your skin so as to remove any dirt and oil that may have accumulated. While it may seem unlikely, oil and dirt tend to accumulate on one’s skin, and proceed to clog up the pores. The resultant effect is acne which could end up becoming a headache to solve. To avoid this problem, you should search for mild cleanser, preferably one that does not have a strong fragrance. These cleansers can be by researching natural products.

You should also ensure that you use a deep cleansing mask at least once every week so as to remove any dead cells that may be clogging up your pores or trapping dirt and oil under these cells. The ideal cleansing mask should Kaolin or Bentone gel which is specifically formulated to remove deep down dirt and excess oil from the skin.

Another tip to achieve perfect skin for men is through regularly applying natural moisturizer. These help to ensure that your skin is hydrated all day thus, avoiding the dry, tired feeling that you may get from skin that is dry.

Because men shave daily they have to deal with cuts and bruises caused from shaving. To protect your skin and keep it healthy using a facial lotion containing witch hazel. Witch Hazel helps to reduce irritation and inflammation. It is a natural antioxidant and astringent. Witch Hazel is known as a good first reaction to shaving cuts and bruises.

Achieving perfect skin for men requires that you check your skin regularly for any significant changes. Changes in your skin could include age spots, wrinkles and sagging. These are all apart of the aging process and you will begin to notice some of these changes as you age. It is important to include in a healthy diet and lifestyle in your daily regimen as this will help slow down the aging process and protect your cells. Some of the things you need to do are: drink plenty water, cut down or quit smoking, use proper sunscreen whenever you go out in the sun and eat healthy meals consisting of high antioxidant foods such as fish, nuts, vegetables and fruits.

Learn how to achieve younger looking skin that is close to perfect by visiting my website: http://healthy-body-and-skin.com/ today!! Learn about natural produts that will change the way you look forever.

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The C-T-P-M secret…

Do you want to know my secret for building a successful Web site? It’s something called C-T-P-M and it works like magic. Watch the video and connect!


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