If you have a habit of popping a chewing gum in your mouth after a meal or when you're bored, then you'll be glad to know that surprising health benefits of chewing gum are now being discovered. Read on to learn why chewing gum might actually be good for you.
1. Boosts Mental Power
Chewing gum boosts brain activity in several ways. For instance, psychologists have discovered that chewing gum can help you enhance your memory. An experiment was conducted where two groups of people took the same examination. One group was given gum to chew while the other was not. Results showed that the gum-chewing group got higher test scores.
This boost in memory might be linked to the chewing motion of the jaw. When you chew gum, your hippocampus becomes stimulated. The hippocampus is the part of the brain which plays a major role in memory. Aside from boosting your memory, chewing gum also encourages more blood flow to the brain. When you chew gum, your heart rate increases and more oxygen is delivered to your brain area.
2. Reduces Stress and Tension
Chewing gum can help you fight stress and anxiety. Research has shown that students who chew gum during exams tend to be more alert and focused. This is because gum helps you cope with the stress that is often associated with tests. Stress is not the only negative emotion that chewing gum can help you through. Whenever you feel irritated or frustrated, you might find that chewing gum can help you relax.
3. Contributes to Weight Loss
If you're currently trying to lose weight, chewing gum can also prove to be beneficial for you. The next time you crave a snack or a second helping of dessert, pop a stick of gum into your mouth instead. Since gum contains very few calories per serving, it makes an ideal snack that will not ruin your diet. The act of chewing and the flavor of the gum will help you fight your cravings for other snacks that are high in calories and fats.
4. Improves Oral Health
You were probably told when you were little that sweets and candy can rot your teeth. However, chewing gum might just do the opposite. If you tend to suffer from oral health problems like bad breath or gum infection, you might want to chew some gum to relieve these symptoms. When you chew gum, your saliva production is also stimulated. If you didn't know already, saliva is the most important factor when it comes to maintaining good oral health. Saliva has antibacterial properties and can help flush out food debris, remaining sugars and other harmful acids in your mouth. Sugarfree gum has also been found to be effective in protecting the enamel of your teeth. In fact, chewing on some sugar-free gum after meals can lessen your tooth cavities.
5. Improves Digestion
You might not be aware of it but chewing gum can also improve your digestion, as long as you chew your gum after meals. Notice how you frequently swallow while chewing your gum, because of excess saliva production? This helps keep digestive acids down in your stomach.
Source: 3fatchicks
If we fail to appropriately manage our time and health needs, mornings can be the most stressful part of our day. Many of us deal with the dizziness of an unpleasant, hectic rush every morning in preparation for work or school, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
With a little sensible time management your morning stress can be drastically abbreviated. Here are 11 simple steps you can follow to proactively reduce your level of morning stress.
Create an Evening Preparation Routine - An evening routine in preparation for the morning, that is. Iron your clothes, prepare your lunch, locate your keys, plan a nutritious breakfast, etc. These simple tasks will take you less than 30 minutes to complete each evening and will save you a huge headache every morning.
Plan a Realistic Day – Write a short “Must Do Today” list every evening for the following day. Never fill your mind with unnecessary worries in the excess of this list. Write down anything that cannot be pushed off to the following day. Avoid the tendency to overpopulate this list, and thus your schedule, with unrealistic goals.
Eliminate Known Aggravations - If your alarm clock makes a horribly annoying sound, the electric razor burns your skin, and your car’s windshield wipers are faulty… fix the problems and eliminate the stress factors permanently from your life. There is absolutely no reason to deal with habitual aggravations that can easily be resolved with a little time and money.
Get a Good Night’s Sleep – Make sure you start winding down for bed at a reasonable hour to allow enough time for a healthy night’s sleep. Most people require between 7 and 8 hours each night. If needed, set a bedtime reminder alarm on your alarm clock. Always keep the temperature in your bedroom comfortably cool. Studies from the National Sleep Foundation suggest the ideal temperature for sleeping is somewhere between 54 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, go easy on afternoon caffeine intake. When caffeine is consumed late in the day the quality of your sleep usually suffers.
Wake Up 30 Minutes Earlier – An extra 30 minutes in the morning is the difference between peaceful harmony and rapid-fire pandemonium. As long as you get to bed on time, waking up 30 minutes earlier should seem natural after just a few days. Use this time to think, stretch, shower, eat breakfast, and account for any unanticipated bumps in your morning routine.
Drink a Glass of Water First Thing – Water makes up between 60% - 70% of your body composition. It is absolutely vital to stay properly hydrated. Even mild dehydration can cause your blood to thicken. This forces your heart to work double-time in order to push the necessary blood to your organs, which will result in noticeable mental fatigue. Also, a hydrated body is more efficient at dispersing energy-building nutrients to all its extremities. Since the average human body becomes slightly dehydrated over the course of a long sleep, you should drink a tall glass of water first thing when you wake up.
Do a Light 10 Minute Stretching Workout – Do you feel a little groggy when you first wake up? This is completely normal. All you need to do is get your blood flowing, which will assist your body in transitioning between the sleeping and awake states. Once you do, you’ll feel great. Place a matt or towel on a carpeted floor. Lie on your back and stretch your arms as far as you can in one direction while stretching your toes out in the opposite direction. Then stand up and do some knee raises and toe touches. If you are feeling up to it, add in a few sit-ups and push-ups.
Do a Light 10 Minute Stretching Workout – Do you feel a little groggy when you first wake up? This is completely normal. All you need to do is get your blood flowing, which will assist your body in transitioning between the sleeping and awake states. Once you do, you’ll feel great. Place a matt or towel on a carpeted floor. Lie on your back and stretch your arms as far as you can in one direction while stretching your toes out in the opposite direction. Then stand up and do some knee raises and toe touches. If you are feeling up to it, add in a few sit-ups and push-ups.
Listen to Music and Take a Hot Shower – Music injects positive, motivational influence into your mind. You should listen to music that makes you happy every morning while you progress through your routine. Also, a hot shower can be one of the most soothing experiences early in the morning. The fresh, revitalized feeling you have stepping out of the shower will spill over as positivity into your first few tasks of the day.
Keep a Clean, Organized Living Space – Create order in your life and living space. Organize your home so that you always know exactly where your belongings are. Then, consciously put your belongings away in their proper place each time you use them. Doing so will eliminate the unproductive, stress filled moments of searching for something you’ve misplaced.
Never Drive Home with an Empty Gas Tank – Filling up a car’s gas tank is so darn easy, but it does take a few minutes of your time. Why then, do so many people procrastinate on filling up their cars with gas until the busy mornings when they can’t spare any time without being late? Never do this! Check your gas tank level on the way home. If it’s getting low, pull into a gas station and fill it up immediately.
There will always be exceptions, but faithfully following the steps above should help you conquer most of your mornings with reduced stress and a lot more grace.
Source: marcandangel
1. Manage diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease: In most of the cases, kidney disease is a secondary illness that results from a primary disease or condition such as diabetes, heart diseases or high blood pressure. Therefore, controlling sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure by following a healthy diet, exercise regimen and medication guidelines is essential to keep kidney diseases at bay.
2. Reduce the intake of salt: Salt increases the amount of sodium in diet. It not only increases blood pressure but also triggers the formation of kidney stones. Here are a few tips to actually cut down your salt intake.
3. Drink lots of water every day: Water keeps you hydrated and helps the kidneys to remove all the toxins from your body. It helps the body to maintain blood volume and concentration. It also helps in digestion and controls the body temperature. Atleast 8-10 glasses of water a day is a must.
4. Don’t resist the urge to urinate: Filtration of blood is a key function that your kidneys perform. When the process of filtration is done, extra amount of wastes and water is stored in the urinary bladder that needs to be excreted. Although the bladder can only hold a lot of urine, the urge to urinate is felt when the bladder is filled with 120-150 ml of urine.
So, if start ignoring the urge to go to the restroom, the urinary bladder stretches more than its capacity. This affects the filtration process of the kidney.
5. Eat right: Nearly all processes taking place inside your body are affected by what you choose to eat and how you eat. If you eat more of unhealthy, junk and fast food, then your organs have to face the consequences, including the kidneys. Here’s more information on the relation between unhealthy diet and kidney damage.
You should include right foods in your diet. Especially foods that can strengthen your kidneys like fish, asparagus, cereals, garlic and parsley. Fruits like watermelon, oranges and lemons are also good for kidney health.
6. Drink healthy beverages: Including fresh juices is another way of drinking more fluids and keeping your kidneys healthy. Juices help the digestive system to extract more water and flush out wastes from the body. Avoid drinking coffee and tea. They contain caffeine which reduces the amount of fluids in the body. So, the kidneys have to work harder to get rid of them. Read more about how soft drinks and sugars can affect the kidneys.
If you’re already suffering from kidney problems, you should avoid juices made from vegetables such as spinach and beets. These foods are rich in oxalic acid and they help in the formation of kidney stones. But you can definitely have coconut water. Here’s how coconut water can help in preventing kidney stones.
7. Avoid alcohol and smoking: Excess intake of alcohol can disturb the electrolyte balance of the body and hormonal control that influences the kidney function. Smoking is not directly related to kidney problems but it reduces kidney function significantly. It also has an adverse effect on heart health which can further worsen kidney problems.
8. Exercise daily: Researchers believe that obesity is closely linked to kidney related problems. Being overweight doubles the chances of developing kidney problems. Exercising, eating healthy and controlling portion size can surely help you to lose extra weight and enhance kidney health. Besides, you will always feel fresh and active. Here’s more about how obesity and kidney disease are linked.
9. Avoid self medication: All the medicines you take have to pass through the kidney for filtration. Increased dosage or taking medicines that you are not aware of can increase the toxin load on your kidneys. That’s why you should always follow dosage recommendations and avoid self medication. Read more about how drugs affect the kidneys.
10. Think before you take supplements and herbal medicine: If you’re on vitamin supplements or if you’re you’re taking some herbal supplements, you should reconsider your dosage requirement. Excessive amount of vitamins and certain plant extracts are liked to kidney damage. You should talk to your doctor about the risk of kidney disease before taking them.
Source: health.india
Headaches can cause many work delays and sometimes can affect our quality of live. Sometimes headaches are caused by medical conditions and sometime in can be caused by what we eat and even how we sit. These are the fifteen causes of headaches that often causes us headaches:
Emotional Tense
Too much work burden often triggers the sensation in the head. The fact is, all things which rise tension and stress will make us easier being attacked by headache or migraine.
Headache caused by the emotional tension is called functional headache or tension headache. The symptoms started with muscle tense at the neck muscle, shoulders and head because of emotional stress. The pain usually starts from the back of the head, travel to the front, then to the both sides of head. Light massage to those areas can lessen the headache, but after some time it will come back
Hormonal Change
Headache caused by hormonal changes usually come in the form of headache in one side of the head. Generally this headache is felt harder than tension headache. Migraine sufferers in female are three times more compared to male. The main cause is hormonal change.
Hot Air
Increased in air temperature often causes migraine or heavy headache. In a study it is known that 7.5 percents of respondents have headache during hot air or hot weather.
Too Strong Odor or Smell
Have you ever felt dizzy when you smell a perfume? Strong odour, even the good one, generally causes dizziness. It is still not known why this happens, but scientists guess that the strong aroma stimulate the nervous system. Beside perfumes, paint odors, flower aromas, or dust, often causes the throbbing sensation in your head.
Hair Accessories
The way we treat our hair can affect our head. Tying hair too tightly can make the skin tissues on the head to be in tense and invites headache. A too tight hat or hairpin could give the same effect.
Heavy Sports
Too heavy sport activities, including sexual intercourse, also can cause headache. Too much physical activities can make the blood vessels in the neck and head to swell and pressured. Headaches because of sex or sports are easier to attack peoples who suffer migraine.
Poor or Bad Body Posture
It is not just sports that can cause stress on the neck muscles and the head, body postures that forms from our daily routines also can rise headache. You can say it either sitting with bent shoulders, sitting without leaning, watching the computer monitor at a too high or too low position or cradling your phone between your ear and shoulder. If these cause you to get a headache, it is time to fix your daily body postures.
Trauma
This headache often emerges as an effect from an accident, even after only a small injury happened at the head. The sensation sometimes emerges after weeks, or months after injury and can last for a year after the traumatic incident.
Cheese
The trigger of half side of the head headache, alias migraine, are most often are cheese, including cheddar, blue cheese, mozzarella and parmesan. The cause is tyramine, which is formed from broken protein, which occurs in cheese. The longer a food or drink processing is, the more tyramine it will contain.
Red Wine
Tyramine also can be found in red wine and alcoholic drinks. Alcohol content inside the drink will also increase the blood flow to the brain, and causes dizziness.
Postponing Lunch
Empty stomach because of not having lunch at some people often causes headache. Beside dizziness, empty stomach also makes blood sugar to decrease, causing the body to feel weak. Always have your lunch with a balance diet. Avoid consuming sweet foods, such as chocolate or sweet to fill your empty stomach. Sugar from sweet foods will make the blood sugar level to spike for then to decline again even lower.
Allergy
This disturbance often comes with symptoms like runny nose, watery eyes and painful throat. The emergence can be raised by certain foods or whatever that can cause the allergy.
Smoking and Cigarette
Smoking is on the list of causes of headache, not only to the person that smoke the cigarette, but also the passive smokers around him or her. The nicotine content will causes the blood vessel to shrink, and the result is blood flow to the brain decreases.
Caffeine
People who often get headache are usually be friended with coffee. Caffeine can be a friend and also foe. The fact, some of headache medications contain caffeine inside them. On the other side, caffeine also can cause headache.
Sinus Problem
Sinus headache can be easily known from it symptoms. One or both blocked nostril and itchiness spreading to the cheek and brow. Those areas are so sensitive up until a touch will constantly feels itchy. Those are the fifteen causes of headache. Among them there are some that you may not be aware of and can cause extreme headache. Therefore, the most important thing is to constantly look after your body condition so it will always be fit by having a healthy lifestyle from now on. When headaches constantly happen and cannot be treated by your usual headache medication, it is good for you to get your doctor
Source: facmedicine
The ECG paper is mostly standardised
- Each large square on the paper represents 0.2 seconds
- Each small square represents 0.04 seconds
- 5 large squares therefore = 1 second
- 300 large squares = 1 minute
- To calculate heart rate – count large squares within an R-R interval & divide 300 by this number
P-waves
- P-waves represent atrial depolarisation
- There should be a P-wave preceding each QRS complex
QRS complex
- The QRS-complex represents depolarisation of the ventricles
- It is seen as 3 closely related waves on the ECG (Q,R & S wave);
- The first downward deflection is the Q-wave
- Any upward deflection is an R-wave
- Downward deflections after an R-wave is called an S-wave
- It should be between 0.06-0.10 seconds
T-wave
- The T-wave represents ventricular re-polarisation
- It is seen as a small wave after the QRS complex
Source: facmedicine
Thanks to smartphones, music marketplaces from iTunes and Amazon, and the popularity of apps such as Pandora and Spotify, it seems like everyone’s plugged into their headphones all day, every day – whether in their cubicles at work, at the coffee shop or even just walking down the street. Do you ever wonder how this constant stream of audio and music might impact our brains?
Listening to music – essentially, a combination of sounds and rhythms – is one of the most primitive activities of the human race. It’s woven into the fabric of cultures around the world and throughout time. The neurological responses triggered by music in the brain have been well documented. Earlier this year, researchers at McGill University in Montreal confirmed that music increases activity in the nucleus accumbens part of the brain, the same structure that releases dopamine, a neurochemical associated with pleasure and reward. Music also activates the amygdala, which is partially responsible for complex activities such as processing emotions.
“When we’re listening to music, the most advanced areas of the brain tie in to the most ancient,” said Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist who was part of the McGill research team, in a TIME article. Listeners get not only a feeling of pleasure from music, but emotional and intellectual stimulation, too.
Music may also have the ability to bring people together, thanks to similarities in how the brain processes it. A study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience in May 2013 found that study participants – all who had little or no musical training – exhibited similar, synchronized brain activity patterns when exposed to the same tune (symphonies by composer William Boyce) despite having different personal musical preferences. This suggests that music may have the power to create a shared common experience on a neurological level, no matter what personal biases may be present.
What’s more, areas of the brain that aren’t directly involved in processing sounds were also activated, including regions related to movement, attention, planning and memory. This suggests that listening to music may create a larger, more expansive and complex experience than just the experience of listening. It might also explain why we feel a connection to others through music and song, whether it’s around a campfire or at a concert with thousands of strangers.
Is there such thing as too much musical stimulation or too much of a good thing, especially now that we essentially have an unlimited supply of tunes in our pockets? That remains to be seen, but being plugged into headphones all the time certainly can have negative consequences. For one, you’re probably less aware of your surroundings, which can be a safety concern. It’s probably not a good idea to walk down the street late at night with your headphones turned up. Secondly, there is something inherently anti-social about wearing headphones or earbuds, particularly in situations (at work, for example) where it might prevent people from engaging in conversation with you. For me, it’s all about striking a balance between tuning in and tuning out.
Source: everydayhealth.com
A one-year-old girl has survived surgery to remove her unborn twin’s foetus from her swollen stomach.
Kang Mengru was abandoned at birth and was taken in by a childless couple in Luohe City, in the central Chinese province of Zhenzhou.
Within months, her stomach began to swell and superstitious neighbours began calling the little girl a 'monster' and gossiping that she was pregnant.
Medical scans revealed Kang was actually carrying the parasitic foetus of her unborn twin in her belly.
A doctor told Kang’s worried foster parents: ‘She will die unless she has the surgery immediately.’
After 10 hours of complex surgery to remove the foetus, Kang's family have been told she can return home at the end of the month having made a full recovery.
Chief surgeon Dr Zhang Xuedong told The Sun: 'She will be able to go home at the end of the month, with her mother Wang Guihua and father Kuang Xiqing.
'There was a very real risk of cardiac arrest. The pressure within the child's chest and belly was very great but now she is out of danger.'
But Kang’s foster family had to rely on donations to be made to a fund set up by local government in order to pay for the surgerty.
Source: Daily Mail
