Sleep, Drink and Gossip Your Way to Health

Posted on Mar 22nd 2011 1:00PM by Blisstree

Filed Under: Fitness

In a world where it seems like almost everything has the potential to be bad for us, staying healthy can feel like a full-time job. Luckily, a lot of lazy things you already do during a normal day may have some surprisingly awesome health benefits. Here are five pleasant surprises:

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7:30 a.m.: Sleep Through Your Alarm
So you didn't hear your alarm and woke up a full 47 minutes after it went off? Here's some good news: You'll be more refreshed than someone who pressed the snooze button. In fact, whoever came up with the old "you snooze, you lose" saying must have been a reformed snooze-button addict, because it is scarily spot-on. When you hit "snooze," you lose out on quality sleep, which, according to sleep researchers, is just as important as quantity. Hitting "snooze" every seven to nine minutes means that the sleep you're getting isn't providing much benefit, because it's not enough time to get in and out of recharging REM sleep. So staying in bed for that extra hour doesn't help refresh you. At all.

"You waste hours and hours a week by hitting the snooze button," said Dr. Edward Stepanski, a sleep specialist and COO of Acorn Research. "Instead, set your alarm for 20 minutes later -- that's how much usable sleep you actually get when you abuse the snooze button for an entire hour."

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9 a.m.: Caffeinate
Most of us love coffee for its revered wake-up benefits. But new research has shown that coffee may have other good-for-your-health tricks up its tasty caffeinated sleeve. One study of more than 90,000 people found that those who drank coffee daily -- from one to four cups -- had half the liver cancer risk of those who didn't drink any coffee at all. And another study found that the more coffee participants drank -- we're talking four cups and beyond here, caffeinated or not -- the lower their risk of Type 2 diabetes.

"Coffee contains chlorogenic acid, which may play a role in the prevention of diabetes and Parkinson's disease," said Sari Greaves, registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. Just don't order a venti Frappuccino with a mountain of whipped cream or the coffee's benefits will be washed out with fat and sugar. "Stick to one or two 8-ounce cups of brewed coffee with skim milk or soy milk and just one teaspoon of sugar or a zero-calorie sweetener to satisfy your sugar craving," Greaves said.

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11 a.m.: Laugh Out Loud
You know that one way-too-funny site you like to sneak peeks at during work -- the one that makes you snort the aforementioned coffee out your nose? Yuk it up! Laughter just might help your heart. A study at the University of Maryland measured the blood flow of participants who'd watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Kingpin." You can probably guess at least some of the results here (do you know anyone who laughed during "Saving Private Ryan"?). After watching the jokes-aplenty "Kingpin," blood flow increased by 22 percent, which is about equal to a 15-minute, 50 calorie-burning workout. (Duh alert, but it must be said: Don't think you can skip workouts and just sit around streaming Netflix's entire comedy section instead.) Studies have also pointed to laughter helping lower blood sugar, improve sleep and relaxation levels, and boost immunity.

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2 p.m.: Gossip
You head to the water cooler for a refreshing cup of ice-cold, well, gossip. But don't feel too badly about the dishing session: Studies have found that sharing stories with others can actually be therapeutic. After all, we're social creatures: Chitchat helps cement our social bonds. According to a study in the Review of General Psychology, it also helps us let off steam, feel supported and get feedback from others. Just make sure your gossip stays low key without veering into the dangerous land of rumor-spreading. If you're purposely ruining someone's rep, no one's really going to care that you were doing it only for the good of your health.

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8 p.m.: Cocktail Time
You already know that the antioxidants in red wine might help ward off heart disease and improve the levels of "good" cholesterol in your body. But here's another way that having a drink tonight might help your health: It could ward off food poisoning. A 2002 study on a salmonella outbreak found that people who'd had beer, wine or cocktails while eating contaminated meals were less likely to get sick, because alcohol may stimulate gastric acids in the stomach, which help protect against food-borne illnesses. And wine might be even more helpful, because its grape-y ingredients have antibacterial properties that could knock out sickness even more quickly. But remember, more drinks don't translate to more benefits. When it comes to alcohol, it's pretty much the opposite. Cheers.

More From Blisstree.com:
Nutrition: 26 Ways to Lower Your Bad Cholesterol -- Including Alcohol!
Smoking, Overeating, Not Sleeping or Exercising? 4 Health Do-Over Solutions
Fitness for Lazy People: 10 Workouts You Can Do in Bed

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Tags: easy healthy tips, EasyHealthyTips, health + quick tips, Health+QuickTips, healthy living tips, HealthyLivingTips, quick health tips, QuickHealthTips

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gina 3-23-2011 @ 10:19AM

Wow, another excuse to behave badly....just what we need.

jm 3-23-2011 @ 11:17AM

I'm sorry that gossip improves health as it ruins lives and careers. I was a special ed teacher with an MA and taught young emotionally disturbed/mentally ill children who could become violent, a career that typically lasts from a few hours to a few years, and I was a happy camper with my happy camper kids for 8 years, meanwhile my assistant with no college education gossiped to my prinicipals every day. I know this because the first principal was there for 6 of those 8 years and because he was a male and most of the teachers were women and he didn't want anyone to alledge anything, so he kept the door open so the line outside of the door could hear and even if it was mostly closed the first one or two people could still hear, and being nice and professional crowd, and knowing me to be a very well educated, but a shy, but very nice and kind, they would (thankfully) come and tell me what today's gossip was. Now, at the least, the principal should have been concerned that she was spending between a half hour to an hour in his office every day getting paid to gossip on me, and also at the least he should have been concerned that she was such a gossip and she was gossipping about whom she was working with every day, and that was not fair to me. And then she told him that I wasn't doing enough arts and crafts, so he gave her an hour of every day to do arts and crafts, you believe this!!! And then when teaching the Holocaust became a state mandate, and I was a district Multi Cultural Liason and got the mandate, I created 2 units, one for primary, K-2, and one for intermediate, 3-5. And then I tried out my unit for primary as a whole language teacher, beginning with a book that gave them some idea of the topic, and the book was very sensitive, never mentioned death, about a barracks of little girls with a "grandma" in a concentration camp and the only thing that suggested anything was the building that they could see through the only window they had, in the back, where the people went in, but never came out, and that's all that was said, and of course the little girls conjectured where they went, was there a door in the back? was there a tunnel? But there was never a mention of death in the little book, the only thing that suggested war was that the people at the camp when they were outside and they saw a German plane fly overhead it made them feel scared, but when an American plane flew overhead they were happy and talked about chocolate and other candy. And after I read the book and always showed the pictures, oh, by the way, in the end, the American soldiers came with chocolate bars and there was singing and dancing all the way out to the American trucks to take them away from the camp, so after the book we talked about how they felt about the cold, watery gruel they would get twice a day, and about being so cold, and being stuck in the camp with the only adult, their "Grandma". And after we finished that first lesson my assistant went to the Principal and told him if she were a parent of a student in that class and knew what I was teaching them she would go right to the Superintendent, who had sent me a letter of commendation for letters from parents and my professional collaboration with social workers, nurses, counselors, psychiatrists, etc. as he had gotten letters in the several years and the principal was also copied on my presentation of the Professionally Recognized Special Educator from the National Council for Exceptonal Children and he wanted to let me know that my professionalism and success, most especially with the families, was very important to him, and he wanted to commend me for an excellent job well done. So what does the principal do but call me up to his office, and I knew what it was about, so I take my unit and the book with me so he can read it, which he does and says, lovely book, very sensative, and I say, well you know how careful I am about my library as I did my thesis on biliotherapy, and he acknowledged that, and he said the unit was great but never teach it again. And I told him that it WAS a state mandate, and he said he also got a copy of the mandate so he knew, and I asked hm why, then, if it was a state mandate and he thought it was very well done, should I pack it up and stash it, and he told me that my assistant had told him that if she had a kid in my classroom during that lesson she would go to the superintendent and have her student ripped from the school immediately, so we didn't want her to publicize that, and she was told it would not be taught again, so she would not make a big deal about it. What incredible power one person can have and you think that he would have gotten rid of her so that she wasn't there to push him around anymore, but, he retired instead, so there she was with the new principal. And of course she approached her with the gossip slowly and that first year with the new principal she was very happy with me. I had done a presentation at a conference which she sent the VP to and the VP told her that many superintendents were very interested in my research and put down their email addresses on a piece of paper for more information than was on the handouts. And I got calls at school from some superintendent, and that was the first time in the history of the 75 year old school that anyone had made a presentation in any conference so she was very proud, and that was nice. And I wrote a play for African American History Month and had it announced that any student interested in being in the play to come to my classroom right after school with their teacher's permission, of course. Well, there were 3 regular kids and all the rest were either emotionally disturbed or Intellectually challenged Grades 3+. And some of my really good friends told me, it wasn't that they weren't interested in having their sudents in drama, they thought that was great, but this was the first year that the FCAT (Florida test of achievement) was going to affect their salary, and I knew this, but I didn't think teachers were going to take it all that seriously because we were already 49th in teacher salary, and how low could Florida go??? Anyway, we rehearsed hard, had to with a cast practically all challenged and the regular kids came to maybe half the rehearsals or less as they learned their lines fast, and when the day came, the District Supervisor of Multi Cultural Affairs Dr. Randolph Lightfoot, made an ending Speech about the play which covered 3,000 years of important Africans to African Americans, and I had had him in a class on African American History, for which paper in the end I asked if I could write up an elementary curriculum, and he said that would be great, and when he got the two copies of it in their 4" binders plus a set of all the books used in the curriculum and two sets of the game based on the curriculum as an assessment instrument rather than a test or something that would be intimidating and the students would obviously rather study for a game than a test, well, the first thing he did was congratulate the cast of mixed races students, because that's who applied to be in the play so that what we had for a cast, and he congratulated them really nicely especially for their impromptu costumes they created on their own, as the school had no budget for drama, and then he wanted to complement all the activites that the Multi Cultural Club had accomplished so far that year, that was my club, especially the Peace Day celebration and program that had been highlighted on the tv news, and the Spanish/English Holiday program at the local nursing home, my class, I taught Spanish to my class from my first year, they were the only class learning Spanish, which made them REALLY special and proud they were of it. Then he told the school that they were among the most active Multi Cultural schools in the district and congratulated the Principal for a fantastic achievement and asked her to come up on the stage, and then a kid came up on stage and gave her a bouquet of roses and she was really happy about that with a certificate about being a leading school to be making a mark in our district toward making peace. So you know she was very happy, and then he called me up on stage and I got a big bouquet of mixed flowers which I distributed to all the cast with a few left over and thanked Dr. Lightfoot and told him it was a great school with the best students that we could have such a great performance and with his guidance and the guidance of our principal we were sure to find our way to making peace here at our school and into the community. So she was a happy camper, until my assistant began her gossipping again, toward the end of the school year, nothing big, just a taste of what was to come the next year, and oh what a year that was.

By October she got into her nasty gossiping, but this year she got viscious. One morning when she got into the cafeteria where she was supposed to stay with the students she said she had to check the mail, and I said I had already, but up to the office she went anyway, and when she came back she said the principal wanted to see me, and so I went to see the principal, and the principal said some personnel said that I smelled of alcohol, and I was completely shocked, so she asked me to come to her so she could smell my breath and her head was practically in my mouth and she sniffed several times and she said yes she smelled it, and then she asked the school secretary to smell my breath and she did and she said she couldn't smell anything, and so she told the secretary to smell again, and she took a deep sniff, and she said that she could smell something but she wasn't sure what it was so the principal told her to smell again, and this time she asked me if I used Listerine, and I said yes, and she said she thought so, and I explained that I had some bad teeth, but my son was at Boston College and he did not get a total scholarship which meant that I and his dad (we were divorced) had to put in about as much as we could including loans to pay for it, so for me it was tuition or teeth, and it was going to be tuition, and the Listerine killed the pain, and the Principal said she wasn't buying it, she smelled alcohol and told me to go home and come back sober tomorrow, and I asked, couldn't the campus cop breathalyze me and then we would have proof one way or the other, and she said she wasn't going to do that with all the parents around dropping their kids off, and I didn't get what she meant, were these parents going to be in her office while the cop breathalyzed me...but no, she was not going to do that, just go home and come back sober, and I knew it was my assistant who had in those few minutes when she came in and went right up to the office to cause this. Well, I took it but when next day she had me sign the paper she worked up on it, I wrote underneath my signature, the school secretary recognized the smell as Listerine, which it was and the principal would not allow me to be breathalyzed, and initialized and dated that note. Well things were calm until late January when my assistant did it again, but this time the principal told me to get my purse she was driving me home, and I said, I got myself here and I will get myself home, and she said that she would not allow me to drive home and it would be considered insubordination if I refused, and that was a firing offence, so I got my purse, and when we got to my apartment complex entrance, I said this was fine, and she said she would drop me off at my apartment, and I said my apartment was over in that building (in front of us down the little drive), and she said which apartment, and I said the one under the palm tree, well they were all under palm trees, and she asked which palm tree, and I said the one next to the compact car, and she realized I was not going to let her know where I lived and I didn't have to, either, she could go back to the school if she wanted, and look it up on a map, if she was intent on following me or having me followed. So I opened the door and got out, and I said, you know this is going to cost me a lot of taxi money, and she said nothing and I closed the door and waited until she drove away and only then did I begin to walk, looking back every minute or two, and walking through hallways and between buildings.

And at the end of that year, I was engaged to my professor boyfriend on the other side of the state and told her I was moving over there, and she asked me to officially resign on paper so she could begin looking for a replacement, and I hesitated, wanting to wait until I got another job before I officially resigned, but my fiance now said, oh go ahead, she's not going to do anything bad to you, and I did, and the next day I was over there at the big hiring conference and I got hired right away, and that was great, and then two days later then principal who hired me called me at home and said she was so terribly sorry but she had to unhire me and I asked why, and she said that the reference that the last principal gave me was terrible and I asked her what she said and she said she was sorry but she could not tell me. And I said I was there for 8 years, if I was bad wouldn't I have been fired? If she is slandering me, I have a right to know, what about what Mr. Day said, and she said I was an excellent teacher, taught more curriculum than any other EH teacher he ever knew, hard working and the parents liked me alot. So I said, what about all those letters of appreciation, and awards and the letter of commendation from the Superintendent, don't they mean anything, and she just said, I'm sorry. And that was the answer I would be getting from every principal for 3 years and my career was ruined.

So the next time you think about gossipping, you remember that the career you ruin will be on your conscience forever and a day, it will follow you past your death, and may come to bite you back someday. But remember most that you might be ruining someone's life because they will not be able to use those college degrees that they are still paying for, and might have to get deference for all the time you cannot find a job, so far 8 years, and that's a lot of time to be poor and broke and never know what slander was said about you that you can never get a job.

Just consider, you would have to be hateful to do this to someone, and yes she was, and you know it could have never happened if either of the principals told her that gossip was unprofessional and they wouldn't listen to it...

Genesis 3-23-2011 @ 4:30PM

I would sue. If it affected me that bad and it is because of something false, I would do something about it.

Lita 3-23-2011 @ 2:26PM

Is there anyone out there stupid enough to believe that gossip is good for anything? I worked with a woman who always told everyone how much her life had changed since she "Met The Lord," yet she was always stirring the pot with ugly rumor and innuendo, and often told, with relish, stories about the debauched life she led--and still led, not Christian-like, by any stretch of the imagination. And all of this, unsolicited. Sadly, social networking has made this worse. (Thank heaven there was no such thing back then.)

jcjksimba 3-23-2011 @ 3:32PM

Maybe 'gossip' that doesn't hurt people should be called something else. Our pastor says gossip is a sin.

Campbell Hayden 3-23-2011 @ 4:47PM

Between the abject and mere mortals who have 'Met The Lord' and those good and helpful Pastors, neither has one grain of proof as to what a 'God' and/or a 'Lord' is. These folks can't be reading that soap opera called 'The Bible'. Instead, they must be reading the article about 'If you don't take your shoes off before stepping inside, you may be tracking in a host of contaminants, including lead.' They should follow those 7 key guidelines for a healthier house. Maybe then the hallucinations they suffer from of a 'God', with no proof whatsoever, will go away.

Bev Jo 3-23-2011 @ 4:23PM

The criticisms of cream and organic high fat are getting old and are so wrong. I eat very few carbs and very high fat, and all my heart symptoms stopped, as well as hypo-glycemia, and I dropped 40 lbs. in five months.

Meanwhile, the suggested soy causes cancer (because it acts like estrogen and off-balances hormones) and destroys the thyroid. And which tastes better in coffee -- soy "milk" or my heavy whipping cream?

Karyn 3-23-2011 @ 4:38PM

JM My goodness that was a long story to get through, but I heard the
pain in your tale. How unfortunate that even professionals like
teachers don't have dental plans. In hindsight I think it was a
mistake to go home w/o first demanding a breathalizer and an attorney.
Administrators can intimidate people into not thinking clearly. This
former assistant of yours will get hers one day. Bank on it. Also there is a world of difference I think between idle banter that makes up office gossip and hurtful rat fink snitching.

mep 3-23-2011 @ 5:11PM

Bev-Jo, not sure about that high fat diet of yours, (whole grains, fruits and vegetables are indeed VERY healthy for you) but a little organic cream certainly isn't bad. I agree about the soy, and artificial sweetners-NO ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Was hoping this was actually a healhty type of web site. The only suggestion I would love to believe would be the bit on coffee, but with the gossip and artificial sweetner, it makes me doubt it all, but laughter, we all know laughter does the body good-spirit, soul and mind.