Loud Thinking

Archive for the ‘My Views’ Category

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

—Roald Dahl (1916-1990)
British Novelist

Strange health tricks that work

By UMNIA SHAHIDPublished: January 24, 2015
Share this articlePrint this page Email

STOCK IMAGE

Most methods to improve your health are pretty clear-cut: to lose weight, eat less and exercise more; to boost energy, get more sleep; to prevent dehydration, drink more water. Others, however, are completely counterintuitive. As compiled by Reader’s Digest, Health, Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health and Shape magazine, the following tips really do work — but they may leave you scratching your head.
For healthy teeth, don’t brush after eating
We all love to freshen our mouths immediately post meals, but you might want to reconsider. Don’t brush your teeth right after meals and drinks, especially if you indulged in acidic goodies. Acidic foods, like citrus fruits, juices, tomatoes, soda (both diet and regular), can soften tooth enamel “like wet sandstone,” says Howard R. Gamble, president of the Academy of General Dentistry. Brushing your teeth at this stage can speed up the acid’s effect on your enamel and erode the layer underneath. Gamble suggests waiting at least an hour before brushing.
Sleep in a cold room
A fairly chilly bedroom could improve both your sleep and metabolism. An article in Obesity Reviews noted that the average indoor temperature has ticked upward during the past few decades. Researchers found that sleeping in a warm room stops the body from experiencing as many dips in temperature and thus thwarting from having to stoke its own calorie-burning furnace. Subjects automatically lost 10 pounds in a year, by sleeping in a chilly room.”Sleeping in a chillier room is a great way to force your body to heat itself up for hours,” says Louis J. Aronne, director of the Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York City. “You will burn calories just by keeping yourself warm which increases metabolism, improving overall health.”
Light a vanilla-scented candle after dinner
The Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York found that people exposed to the particular aroma reported 63 per cent less anxiety and claustrophobia than those who were not exposed to the fragrance. A study at Tubingen University in Germany also revealed that vanilla reduced the startle reflex in humans. Because of its soothing properties, vanilla scents help promote restful sleep. The vanilla aroma has also been shown to dampen dessert cravings so you don’t feel like noshing on empty calories. One group of 160 volunteers actually lost an average of 4.5 pounds each in a month by wearing vanilla-scented patches.
Drink a hot beverage to cool off
Do you assume that an iced coffee or cold glasses of soft drinks will cool you off? Think again. Researchers at the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics found that drinking a hot beverage on a hot, dry day, can help your body stay cool and stabilise a healthy body temperature. Cultures where drinking hot tea in warm weather is the norm, like in Pakistan would have to agree. When you sip a hot drink, your body senses the change in temperature and increases your sweat production. Then, as the sweat evaporates from your skin, you cool off naturally. Next time you’re sizzling in the heat, grab a chai to cool down.
Surround yourself with blue
There’s a good reason you won’t see fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: the colour functions as an appetite suppressant and contributes to mindful eating. Researchers have found that people eat 33 per cent less in a blue room; the bluish light that results evidently makes food look less appealing and you eat just to satisfy hunger. So eat on blue plates, dress in blue while eating out or use a blue tablecloth at home to prevent yourself from overeating and falling prey to gastric influx and heaviness. Avoid red, yellow, and orange; studies find they encourage overeating.
Exercise when you’re tired
After a long, exhausting workday, exercising sounds like the last thing you’d want to get done, but getting a sweat session will in fact actually rejuvenate you. Fatigue along with moodiness and depression improved after a single 30-minute moderate intensity exercise session, according to a study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. “Everything we do uses oxygen, so when you exercise it helps you work more efficiently and you don’t tire as easily and thereby feel better on the inside,” says Mark Nutting, fitness director of SACO Sport & Fitness in Saco, Maine. “You also function better mentally, giving rise to a healthy and alert mind.”
Ditch antibacterial soap to prevent illness
Reaching for the soap bottle labelled “antibacterial” won’t necessarily reduce your risk of getting sick or passing illness to others. In fact, there is no evidence that antibacterial soaps are more effective than regular ones. What’s shocking is that long-term exposure to some ingredients in these products, such as triclosan, may pose major health risks like bacterial resistance or hormonal effects, according to a 2014 FDA statement. The state of Minnesota, US, has banned triclosan-containing antibacterial soaps altogether, which goes into full effect in 2017.
Eat cake for breakfast
Eating cake first thing in the morning may sound like the worst diet advice ever, but researchers found that “obese participants who ate a breakfast high in protein and carbohydrates that included a dessert were better able to stick to their diet and keep the pounds off longer than participants who ate a low-carb, low-calorie breakfast that did not include sweets.” Keri Gans, R.D., a registered dietician and author of The Small Change Diet says that allowing yourself a treat in the a.m. helps curb your cravings for sweets later in the day and promotes overall wellness while reducing your risk of diabetes. Morning is the best time of the day to indulge in sweets because your metabolism is working at its fastest and your body burns it off by the end of the day.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2015.

Set a Bedtime and Stick to It for Better Productivity

Many of us don’t get enough sleep. And this isn’t just an inconvenience – it worsens our mood, weakens our memory, scatters our focus, and makes us more susceptible to anxiety. To perform at our best, we need rest. Enough said. Since most of us can’t sleep in later, the only option is to get to bed earlier. And yet we don’t. We stay up late because it’s our only downtime. Start tracking how you spend your time after work. Think about what you can cut back on (mindless Facebook scanning), so you can do the activities you enjoy (watching TV) earlier. Identify an exact time when you want to be in bed. Then give yourself 30 minutes to wind down before attempting sleep. Create a relaxing pre-sleep ritual. Read something that makes you happy, lower the temperature, and avoid blue light (the kind emanating from your smartphone and computer screen).

Adapted from “How to Spend the Last 10 Minutes of Your Day” by Ron Friedman.

“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”

— Richard L. Evans

The 75% rule for everyone..!

The day man dies, his money will still be in the bank or locker

When man is alive, he thinks he doesn’t have enough money to spend.

When man passes away, there is still a lot of money in his bank account not spent.

A British tycoon passed away.
He left for his widow 1 Billion Pounds in the bank.
The widow remarried one of her husband’s young employees.
The employee said,
“All this while I thought I was working for my boss.
I now realize that my boss was all the time working for me!”

Moral of the Story

It is more important to live longer than to have more wealth.
• Strive to have a strong and healthy body.
• In an expensive cell phone, 75% of the functions are useless.
• In an expensive car, 75% of the speed is not needed.
• In a big luxurious house, 75% of the space remains unoccupied or unutilized.
• In a whole wardrobe of clothes, 75% of them are rarely worn.
• Out of whole life’s earnings, 75% stays behind for other people to use.
• In every human being, 75% of the talent is not utilized

So, how to make full use of our 25%?
• Go for medical check-up even when you feel fit.
• Drink more water even if you’re not thirsty.
• Let go your ego, whenever you can.
• Give in even if you are right.
• Be humble even if you are very powerful.
• Be contented even if you are not rich.

Have a Great Life ! 🙂

Great American favour to Pakistan..!

Council on Foreign Relations has discovered a Gem of an information that since 2001 Pakistan has received USD 25 billion in US aid and direct military reimbursements.

My take on the above CFR news is as below:

$25 billion US money for Pak since 2001 is nothing more than peanuts, if seen in the comparison for what Pakistan did for the USA, in making it a sole super power, besides sacrificing many lives of Pakistani soldiers to save US troops in Mogadishu, saving US nationals from its burning embassy in Islamabad; and last but not the least, fighting US imposed WOT in Afghanistan (when not a single Pakistani was involved in the 9/11) by NOT charging a single penny for the overflights in 15 years (don’t forget Turkey was offered $20 billion for the overflights for just few weeks during the gulf war which it refused; and if calculated for 15 years for Pakistan, the same amount would have fetched $130 billion), which practically reduced it to the Stone Age.

Hence, in my opinion if the entire material wealth of the US is transferred to Pak, the US can’t repay its debt for the priceless services of Pakistan.

The least US can do for this (always) friend made enemy benefactor nation, is to allow it to purchase gas from Iran, as also allowed to India and so many other nations, if US still refuses to itself SELL its LNG to Pak and allows the same to India.

The moral of the story is that a nation can survive very easily not being a friend and not being a major non-NATO ally but it can’t if the case is otherwise.

Large parts of the country under power break down..!

It is a very strange news that the results of Saeed Ajmal’s bowling tests held at an Indian Academy will be released after 7-14 days.

So much delay in release of the results are creating serious doubts about the intentions of the all concerned.

It is requested that anyone having knowledge of this issue may help us in explaining this mystery, to remove any doubts that there is more to that problem than meets the eye.

Already in the KPK PA, there are 5-6 MPA’s, out of the 35 members of the PTI, belonging to just one family.

It is hoped that PTI board deciding the senate tickets this time, will be more democratic and prudent, in its award of tickets to the candidates for the election of Senators.

“If my mind can conceive it, my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it!”
—Jesse Jackson (born 1941)
Politician, Civil Rights Activist