7 Basic rules of sleeping

How many times have you woken up more tired then you were the night before? Many people have the same issue and you must know that the main factors that cause this metabolism malfunction are the sleeping habits.

These habits are often causing more problems that they are solving. Still, this isn’t a lost cause, there are a couple of things that you could do to improve your sleeping style.

A good way to begin the change is to pay attention to a few rules and to prepare your sleep properly.

1. The pillow’s shape has a very important role for a proper resting during sleeping time, also the pillow’s filling matters a lot. You need to buy a good pillow with soft filling, and you have to position it correctly to avoid neck and back aches, chronicle fatigue and even insomnia.

2. The bed and the mattress must be comfortable. Chris Idzikowski, the manager of a research centre for sleeping problems has discovered that an uncomfortable bed can cause muscular aches and can shorten your sleep with an hour/night.

3. The clothing must be adequate, on our size, so it wouldn’t bother us during the sleep and it must be made from natural fibers, for example cotton, to allow the body to breathe.

4. Avoid eating, reading, watching television or studying in bed. You have to teach your body that the bed is for sleep and sexual activity only.

5. Choose wisely your sleeping position. You should avoid sleeping on your stomach or on your left side, because the liver, the lungs and the stomach are pressing the hearth with their weight. The most relaxing sleep can be achieved only if you sleep on your back, allowing yourself an excellent breathing process.

6. The ideal bed size is 1.80 m per 2.00 m, a smaller bed will cause an agitated sleep and you will be tired and in a bad mood all day long.

7. At last but not least, for ensuring yourselves a relaxing and peaceful sleep you must take care of your insomnia problems.

After reading and taking care of all these aspects, all you have to do is to … sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.

What rules do you follow before sleeping ? Do you have a recipe for a better good night sleep ? Tell us how the rules above helped you have a better goodnight sleep.

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• How to “cure” Insomnia (I)
• Insomnia and the problems caused by it
• Do you feel sleepy?
• 5 Benefits of a good night sleep
• Unleash the positive thoughts!

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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5 Benefits of a good night sleep

Even though we spend a third of our life sleeping, that doesn’t mean that we lose that part and we can’t get any benefits from it. That is entirely false, because if you manage to rest during your sleep, you will improve the results of your daily activities.

So here are some benefits that you can get by sleeping “by the book”:

1. The sleep is a primary need of your body so if don’t sleep you will die. That means that the most important benefit of sleeping is the advantage to be alive.

2. All the professional bodybuilders know that the muscular mass grows during the sleep, not when you are weight lifting. If you are used to party late and you don’t let your body relax, the entire workout routine will be in vane and you won’t spot any notable results.

3. The lack of sleep destabilizes the immunity system of your body making you more exposed to diseases. A nap during the day may also increase your health condition and it can even offer you an increased protection against heart diseases.

4. According to scientist, sleep is necessary because it helps the body to regenerate certain parts, especially the brain. After prolonged periods of deprivation of sleep, neurons are affected, which is manifested by behavior problems. Each stage of sleep is necessary for the regeneration of neurons in the cortex and to enhance the memory.

5. A recent study, published in Journal of the American Medical Association by Christopher King and his colleagues from the University of Chicago, had shown that the length of the sleep can influence your heart condition. The study results revealed that every additional hour of sleep reduce heart attack menace by 33 %.

In addition, a good night sleep can improve your social life, because it is easier to communicate when you feel and you look fresh and energized.

Therefore, I have only one thing left to say: ready, set, fall asleep !

Related posts:

• Do you feel sleepy?
• Relax, take it easy!
• Insomnia and the problems caused by it
• Think positive, act positive!

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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Useful Brain's team got Bigger

We are proud to announce that Useful Brain's team just got bigger. We have a new oficial member, who is a writter and brain-stormer here at Useful Brain. He's name is Liviu Moldovan, and I will let him introduce himself:

"My name is Liviu Moldovan, I am 23 years old and I am a future graduate of environmental engineering. I am a co-writer at Useful Brain, and I enjoy helping people in their daily life. I like to think that by writing articles here I can improve the reader’s way of living and their self esteem. I am a novice blogger, I started one year ago, but I think the enthusiasm can compensate the lack of experience. I am looking forward to see your opinion regarding to our blog, also I want to find out if you manage to make positive changes in your life by reading it."

Written by: Alexandru Hategan & Liviu Moldovan

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Do you feel sleepy?

Every person needs to sleep in average 8 hours every day to ensure itself a full capacity functioning of its body. Have you ever wondered if this is the best way to spend a third of your life, or it is just a waste of precious time? Is it really needed to sleep so much, or so less, if you are a sleepy person? Why is the sleep such an important aspect of our life?

These are common question that we all have asked ourselves at least a few times in our life, especially when we were affected by the lack of sleep or by the abundance of it.

Regular people aren’t so preoccupied by the sleep’s interference in our life but they are many scientists that had tried to find an answer for these question and they are trying even nowadays.

The scientists have studied every aspect of the sleep and there even have been created organization like The American Sleep Medicine Foundation (ASMF) that offers the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) Physician Sleep Scientist Training Awards to stimulate researches in this domain. So you could say that sleep costs a lot of money.

I think at this point you are asking yourselves how important sleep is as a part of a human being life. The scientist had provided us this answer, after making a series of experiments.

Quantitative research, the study groups have shown the same things: subjects who slept eight hours a night have given yield, both physically and intellectually, very good, however, if those who slept only five hours, the ability data storage has fallen significantly after only one week of deprivation of sleep, as psychological tone and physical skills.

If you want to avoid this sort of problems you should know at least the recommended average sleep length depending on age:

• New-born 20 hours / day
• under 1 year: 14 hours / day
• Children under 6 years: 12 hours / day
• Child and adolescent (up to 18 years): 10 hours / day
• Young adult (18-24/25 years): 9 hours / day
• Adults 25-35 years: 8 hours / day
• Adults 35-45 years: 7 hours / day
• Adults 45 - 60 years: 8 hours / day
• Adults> 60 years: 9 hours / day, increasing to 1h/day every 5-10 years

It is your choice, you can apply this recommendations or you can sleep as much as you feel like, the important thing is to keep your body and mind prepared to face the daily issues.

Or should we go to sleep again?

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• Insomnia and the problems caused by it
• Unleash the positive thoughts!
• How to work in stress, and under pressure
• How to relax when your boss is stressing you in 5 easy steps
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Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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5 ways to dodge the hiccup attack

As I wrote in my last post, I had a hiccup attack a few days ago. It made me think about my health condition, because there was posted on the web a vast list of diseases and health condition problems and I got scared and I have tried to get rid of the hiccup.

Theoretically, it sounded very well, but it got a bit tricky when I began to fight against this annoying, but still funny, at least for the others, sound. I tried numerous methods to stop the hiccup, some heard from my friends, some seen on the web, but there was at least one good thing I have learned, and that is that there aren’t any universal methods.

There are few people that react in the same manner to the same method of hiccup annihilation. Our bodies are different, and each person has a perfect way to stop a hiccup attack. It took me a while to find mine. Here is what I have tried:

1. Eat a slice of lemon. The lemon will create a strange sensation that the body can’t understand, and the acid from the lemon will make your stomach reduce its size, making the diaphragm relax. It should stop the hiccup in most of the cases, even for a short while.

2. Crouch and hold your breath as long as you can. Although it can cause dizziness and you can pass out if you push yourself to the limit, still it is a good way to relax the diaphragm and suppress the hiccups.

3. Drink water. This one has a lot of variables, because there are many techniques to drink. You can drink in repeatedly small sips, or drink when you feel like hiccup, or drink slowly but continuous.

4. Eat a spoon of sugar. This method has something to do with the action of sugar upon the stomach, and it also give a boost of energy to the body cells, helping them to carry away faster the surplus of carbon dioxide that causes the hiccup.

5. Apply to your both ear lobes pressure with your thumb and index together for approximately 40 seconds. This is the most surprising tip regarding the hiccup that I ever heard and it has nothing to do with breathing in a certain way or eating certain things, it is all about pressure points. With a background in acupuncture, I think this can be the most efficient advice.

Related posts:

• The hiccup terror
• Stop biting your nails by identifying and eliminating the stress factor
• How to work and live a healthy life
  

So how well did you do against the hiccups? Do you know others ways to lose the hiccups?

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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The hiccup terror

Today I had an attack of hiccup and I can say it was the worst experience I ever had. It lasted for almost 8 hours, with a few interruptions of course, and it was driving me crazy. I wasn’t able do work properly, I could not have a conversation without making everyone around me laugh, and I was starting to be worried about my health state.

So, the first thing that I have done when I got at home, it was to organize a brainstorming trough my friends for any advices about ways to get rid of the hiccup, and I even tried to find out the possible health issues that could have caused the hiccups.

For those of you that don’t know what hiccup really is, the hiccup is a sharp noise caused by a sudden spasm of the diaphragm, commonly cause by digestive disorder.
Whenever you experience an attack of hiccup, I advise you to stay away from medical explanation and try not to read about the problems that could have caused it.

If you ignore my advice, you will find a long and scary list with diseases and other factors that could have cause the hiccup, like this one: abdominal disease–gastric distension, GI hemorrhage, bowel obstruction, esophagospasm, or inflammation including hepatitis, peritonitis, gastritis, enteritis, appendicitis, pancreatitis, abrupt temperature change, alcohol, inferior wall MI, irritation of tympanic membrane, metabolic derangements–azotemia, hyponatremia, uremia, diaphragmatic irritants, diseases of chest wall, lung, and heart–mediastinitis, tumors, aortic aneurysms, subphrenic abcesses, pericarditis, foreign bodies, excess smoking, excitement or stress, toxins, drugs–general anesthesia, barbiturates, diazepam, α-methyldopa, tumors, pneumonia, herpes zoster, central and peripheral nervous system disease–encephalitis, tumors, meningitis, brainstem infarcts, phrenic nerve compression, cervical cord lesions.

When you hiccup the next time, you will surely panic and think that you are having an heart attack if you are taking that list as granted. I don’t say you should not, but actually, the hiccup means that there is a slight increase of carbon dioxide in the blood, and your body is trying to get more oxygen. So there is no need to panic, in most of the times, at least.

I want that people who read this post will share with us their worst hiccup experience, and I promise that I will soon make a list of ways to get rid of the hiccup terror. At the moment I am testing some of them, and maybe I will find one that work.

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• 5 ways to dodge the hiccup attack
• Stop biting your nails by identifying and eliminating the stress factor
• How to work and live a healthy life

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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The ultimate fattening factor - Stress

You can gain weight by exposing yourself to a stressful situation, or by working, studying or living in a stressful environment. As shocking as it sounds, this is a certain fact. I’m sorry to shatter your illusion, but you aren’t going to lose any weight by pushing yourself to the limit and letting the stress to take over your life.

Beside the fact that stress is ruining your social life by making you gloomy and tempestuous, and that is interfering with your thinking capacity, unfortunately, the stress is also messing with your body like an one-eyed painter.

It has been proven by a series of lab research that a stressful situation triggers the release of cortisol, which is a stress hormone. This hormone can slow the metabolism, causing you to gain more weight than you would normally do. It will also mess with your current diet, if you are trying to lose weight.

Prolonged stress affects your blood sugar level, causing fatigue or even hyperglycemia. On a long term bases, it can cause heart diseases or diabetes. It also affects the location of the fat storage, because if you are a stressed person, you will surely start to develop a fluffy tummy, and beside the unaesthetic look, it can also cause serious sanity problems.

A stressful way of life can also influence the quantity and the quality of your meals. Although food can unleash chemical reactions, for a short period, that make you feel calm and confident, stress eating will trigger the guilt feelings and you will request for more food. That can be the disastrous start of a long road of weight gaining and you must avoid it.

Another problem of the stress eating is the fact that you eat even though you are not really hungry, just to compensate other things that you should to, like taking a walk in a park, or going to swim, because you get stressed at work, and you can’t run away from there to the park, so, you reach for a cookie, or a box of cookies, depending of the gravity of the situation.

The quality of the food is actually related to an old modern people problem – fast-foods. Most of the people are too stressed and busy to choose a healthy dinner in their family, then they refuge themselves in a shack with a big sign that says McD’s, to eat a big bowl of grease and drink a 3.5 pH coke. Then they will wine all night of stomach aches.

The last but not least of the problems is the lack of exercise, because many people state that they are too busy to work out, they work from 9 to 5 and spend another one or two hours on the way to and from work, so, by the time they get home, they are too exhausted.

In conclusion, if you are living a stressful life, and you are too busy (in translation too lazy), you will develop an oversized tummy (like me).

Related posts:

• Unleash the positive thoughts!
• Do we use water and it’s benefits the proper way ?
• Relax, take it easy!
• Think positive, act positive!

Did you encounter stress as a fattering factor ? Tell us your story, and ask us questions, so we can clear things that you are not clear with !

Written by: Liviu Moldovan

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