Healthy Life Journal

Once considered a taboo subject, now we are constantly analyzing our sex life. Science has given us the opportunity to evaluate the exact befits of sex, and it is amazing how great sex is for your overall health. The moral? More time in the bedroom equals a longer, healthier life!

1. To the delight of most males, one of the benefits of a habitual sex life is reduced chance of impotence. Interestingly enough, heart problems and impotence are linked together. Although daily exercise is recommended, if a man has sex more than three times a week, he reduces his chance for a heart attack by fifty percent.
2. Another benefit of having a habitual sex life is overall fitness. The more you exercise, the more in shape you become. It can even promote motivation to do more exercises outside of bed. An average session of lovemaking raises the heartbeat to about 150 beats per minute, which can burn approximately 200 calories. You get to exercise and strengthen various parts your body. Plus, men get a chance to increase their testosterone level.
3. The third benefit of a habitual sex life is heightened senses, or that “feeling alive” feeling. The release of endorphins is the reason why sex is a sought after experience. If you are feeling depressed, habitual sex can help change that drastically.
4. Adults who enjoy the benefits of habitual sex will tell you that they tend to get sick less often. Medically, it has been proven that sex releases antibodies called immunoglobulin. These antibodies will lessen the frequency of flu, colds and cough.
5. For us men, a huge benefit of a habitual sex life is prevention of prostate cancer as long as you do not practice habitual sex with multiple partners. (Having several sex partners increases your risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease which makes it something you should avoid at all costs.)
6. Intimacy is a feeling craved by most females, and one benefit of habitual sex life is increased intimacy with your partner. The moments after can be your most memorable moments with your partner.
7. Did you know you can actually lower cholesterol with sex? This is a great benefit of habitual sex for people with high levels of bad cholesterol.
8. Not only do you get to exercise and enjoy it, you also get to relieve some of the stress in your life. With the endorphin release, you forget any emotional and mental stress you have, at least for the time being.
9. Finally, a great benefit of habitual sex for women is being able to produce hormones naturally. With habitual sex, a woman can increase her estrogen levels which in turn protects her heart, and promotes a healthy weight.
10. (Bonus!) It’s just plain fun!

Learning to improve your focus throughout the day can be a little difficult, only because we are talking about 18 to 24 hours, depending on the number of hours you sleep. However, if we break down your day into manageable time frames, it would make it much more easier to learn to improve your focus.

Focus, or concentration, is a skill that can be taught, so there are some exercises you can do to improve your focus. Start with easy exercises like staring at a picture on the wall for a few minutes without moving or talking to anyone. Once you learn how to block out your surroundings, your focus will improve.

Many athletes require intense focus in their training and games. It isn’t enough to just practice your shots because when game time comes, the stress and tension can make on miss a shot. This is when focus comes into play.

Other mind exercises you can do is internalizing. This is when you picture yourself in a desired situation, and then you work around your picture. Actors do this a lot to block out laughter, noise, or other distractions. An example of this would be to imagine yourself in a potentially stressful situation, like a singer in a concert. Try to play out the scene in your mind what you would do if different scenarios were to happen. This can actually be a lot of fun, and you learn how to improve your focus by concentrating on one thing only.

If this sounds a little strange to you, you could try another strategy. Why not make lists. Make a list for the things you need to accomplish for the morning, another for the afternoon, and finally, another list for the evening. Study your lists carefully and see where you can move things around.

For instance, if you have a dinner to arrange that evening, don’t bunch up everything in the afternoon, right before the guests arrive. Divide your chores and errands between morning and afternoon, and give yourself an hour or two to relax before the guests arrive. Planning helps you focus. It will also not stress you out.

Another way to improve your focus is to take breaks. If children have recess and lunch as their breaks, adults should also allow themselves the privilege of stopping for a drink or a 30 minute sitcom on TV. Of course, if you are working in an office, you are allowed coffee breaks. Use this time wisely. Don’t spend it with your co-workers beside the coffee machine talking about problems in the office. Doing this would actually stress you and get you to lose focus on the things that need to be done. Your breaks should be as quiet as possible. Read a book, take a walk, or visit a daycare. Go and do anything that will give your brain a rest.

The reason why we lose focus so easily is because we have too much on our minds. Of course, it could also be because you are bored with nothing to do. An good balance between a too relaxed brain and an overly active brain are both undesirable situations to be in. Find your capacity to work, and try not to veer away to far from it on a daily basis. Improving your focus also mean knowing what you can do and being confident about doing it well.

Sleep is an essential part of our daily lives because it allows us to rejuvenate for the following day’s activities. Getting enough sleep at night allows us to keep our heart health. You will have a healthier heart if you can get at least 7 hours of sleep every night.

Getting enough sleep at night reduces stress and lessens the chance of depression. It energizes you to face another day of activities. If you get enough sleep at night, your memory will improve because you are resting your brain. Quality sleep time is one of the best ways to give your brain a needed boost for the next day.

If you get enough sleep at night, your body is being given a chance to heal because when you are sleeping, your body produces more protein which in turn allows your cells to repair any damages.

How can you get enough sleep at night?

1. Avoid eating sugar or food that contain sugar before retiring. What happens is that in the middle of your sleep, your blood sugar might suddenly drop and wake you up, because you feel hungry.
2. Avoid caffeine, alcohol, and food that you know you are sensitive to. Although alcohol has been known to get you sleepy, it will not give you a good night’s sleep. You could wake up at the middle of the night, or worst yet, wake up in the morning with a terrible headache. If for any reason you cannot avoid drinking alcohol, drink water soon after or dilute your alcoholic drink with ice or water.
3. Try not to drink anything two hours before sleeping because if you have a tendency to urinate often, you could wake up in the middle of the night because of nature’s call. On the other hand, if you do not tend to urinate often, you will definitely be forced to get out of bed early in the morning.
4. A hot bath is a good precursor to a good night’s sleep. Getting enough sleep at night will definitely be more possible if you have a chance to relax under a hot shower. Just try not to sleep with your hair wet because that would not be good for your hair at all.
5. Getting enough sleep at night would be a lot easier if your room is set up properly. Why not leave the TV outside, have a choice of bright and dim lights, and set up your room in a way that you know will relax you.
6. You could also get enough sleep at night by dressing appropriately. If you know that your room temperature has a tendency to drop, make sure you are wearing the right clothes and have enough warm blankets at arm’s reach Socks are also a good idea because we tend to get cold feet faster than any other part of our body.
7. If reading or writing relaxes you, then have a good, easy reading, non-violent book by your bedside. You could also place your journal beside your bed to jot down any last minute thoughts running through your mind.

Getting enough sleep at night is possible only if you allow your body and brain to relax before going to bed. An active mind will just keep you up at night. An extremely tired body, on the other hand, will need some time to settle down. Plan you sleeping time and the hours before you go to sleep well, and you will get enough sleep for the night.

Calcium is a mineral that our body needs to keep our teeth and bones strong. It serves many other purposes and is vital to our health. Knowing the importance of calcium can help us manage our health better.

If you do not have enough calcium in your body, you risk getting blood clots which could lead to other serious medical problems. Thrombosis or blood clots in the arteries or veins will cause partial to total blockage which could results in heart, muscle or nerve problems. What makes it more complicated is the fact that it is not so easy to detect when you have a blood clot or not. It usually is looked for when certain surgical operations are done, or symptoms of heart ailments occur.

This is why the importance of calcium in the body cannot be overemphasized. In national surveys, results reveal that many females lack calcium in their system. Their daily intake is less than half of the required amount of calcium daily.  Unfortunately, we reduce our levels of calcium through our urine and feces and to some extent, through our perspiration. Thus, if we do not take the daily recommended amount of calcium, and continue to expel calcium daily, eventually we are depriving our body of proper nutrition.

The importance of calcium is not immediately recognized especially by the youth because it take time for the problems to develop. In addition, our daily requirements for calcium changes as we age.

At a young age, we are encouraged to drink milk regularly and take in daily doses of multivitamins which contain Vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential to normal mineralization of bone and promotes bone growth. As we grow older, we tend to disregard milk in favor of sugary drinks and alcohol. Except as young adults, we still need calcium in our body to prevent blood clots, and keep our bones and teeth strong.

The importance of calcium in an adult is for good cardiovascular health. An average healthy adult requires about 700 to 1000 mg of calcium daily. This of course changes, if you are an adult with bone problems like osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a crippling disease that usually happens to seniors. After the age of fifty, your bones start to become more porous, It starts to thin and soften. This causes the person to decrease in height, and can be quite painful.

Osteoporosis affects more women than men, mainly because of the lack of oestregen when a woman starts menopause. That is why it is important for calcium to be replaced through Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

In women’s diet, calcium and iron are recognized as the two most neglected minerals. When pregnant, women could suffer from pre-eclampsia, or high blood. Calcium can help control this, and help with the health of the unborn child up to the first year after birth, if the mother intends to nurse her baby.

The importance of calcium is not just in the areas of teeth and bone strength, or while pregnant. You need calcium to help control your cholesterol and cell environment. It helps contract muscles and prevents cramps.

Milk is not the only way to getting calcium, you can take vitamins, Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids found in fish oil and evening primrose oil. Look for food like juices and dairy products that have calcium in them.

By understanding the importance of calcium in your body, you can take the necessary steps to including it in your daily diet. This is one way to ensure that you grow old gracefully and with as little medical problems as possible.

Carbohydrates is one of the basic nutrients your body needs to function properly. Today, it is now differentiated as either good or bad carbohydrate. The difference between bad and good carbohydrate is that the bad carbohydrate is also known as the simple carbohydrate, and  the good carbohydrate is known as the complex carbohydrate.

The other difference between bad and good carbohydrate is that the bad carbohydrate is the refined, simple sugar. The reason this is not the more desirable carbohydrate to eat is because eating it gives you a surge in your blood sugar and causes you to gain weight. It can also promote the development of diabetes.

The good carbohydrate does not cause you to have sudden surges in your blood sugar. It is also the recommended kind of carbohydrate for those on low carb diets.

To illustrate the difference between bad and good carbohydrate, let’s look at a simple scenario of eating desert. If you use a good substitute for sugar in your cake like brown sugar, you are going to be able to enjoy your desert better because of the switch to a less refined carbohydrate.   You don’t expose your body to plain sugar, which can leave you feeling lethargic after the sugar rush. Neither do you gain excessive weight from all the simple white sugar you consumed.

Some good carbohydrates come in the most natural form as possible like fruits and vegetables that contain natural sugar.  This is good because our body needs it to keep us going. Aside from giving us the energy to do physical activities, good carbohydrates help us in our normal body functions like breathing and digestion.

Meanwhile, the problem with bad carbohydrates is the weight gain and the sudden crash from the sugar high. Do you ever get that feeling when you suddenly loose energy? After a whole day of stocking up on carbohydrates, at one point in the afternoon, you suddenly feel a heavy weight come down upon you. Your eyes feel tired, your body feels heavy, you can hardly function much more engage in any strenuous activity. You have been eating the wrong kind of carbohydrates. What you have been feeding your body was sugar, plain and simple.

If you plan on having an active day, instead of eating candy and chocolate to keep you going, why not try some whole grain cereal, or pasta? Not only will you be able to stock up on reserve energy to get you through your day, you do not get hungry. This is one of the obvious difference in bad and good carbohydrates that you can personally experience.

Bad carbohydrates are also easy to digest which will explain why we can get hungry and tired after a while. If we eat good carbohydrates, the nutrients are not as easily digested, and are usually packed with fiber.

Easily the difference between bad and good carbohydrates is that one is refined, and the other is more natural. The problem with refined carbohydrates is that when the process of refining happens, nutrients are lost. Since the concentration is on the sugar content, you can bombard your pancreas with too much glucose. Glucose is the blood sugar that is made when we consume carbohydrates. It is glucose that is used to give us the energy to function.

Refined carbohydrates is also not good because the fiber is removed from the carbohydrates which is needed to slow down the sugar release into our body. We need to lessen the amount of bad carbohydrates in our body, especially if we want to lose a few pounds. The increase in intake of good carbohydrates will more than compensate for the need for sugar by our bodies. Clearly, there is a big difference between bad and good carbohydrates.