17 Ways Exercise Sends Health Soaring

Besides losing weight, being active makes you healthier, happier, and sharper

When most of us launch into a new fitness routine, it is for one common reason: to shed fat. But it turns out focusing on your weight loss goal alone can slash your odds of success by over half, say researchers. A better inspiration: The amazing health rewards you get by being active. Finding the right motivation can make you 70% more likely to keep it up for the long haul, reports the American College of Sports Medicine.

Next time you’re too busy, tired, or achy to lace up your sneakers, remember these health-transforming benefits of exercise.

1. Be Happier at Work
Increase productivity…and maybe get a raise

An active lifestyle may help you check off extra items on your to-do list, says a study from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. On days staffers participated in on-site fitness activities, they reported thinking more clearly, getting more done, and interacting more effectively with colleagues. You’ll be less likely to miss work due to illness, too. Research shows that people who participate in vigorous leisure-time physical activity (such as jogging or bicycling) just once or twice a week take about half the sick time of those who are more sedentary.

Do this: Sign up for workplace fitness classes. None on-site? Recruit coworkers to go for a lunch hour power walk. Or ask HR to designate a room for a noontime stretching or workout session, using DVD instruction.

2. Improve Your Vocabulary
Brush up on your Scrabble skills

A single treadmill session can make you brainier. Exercisers who ran just two 3-minute sprints, with a 2-minute break in between, learned new words 20% faster than those who rested, in a University of Muenster in Germany study. Getting your heart pumping increases blood flow, delivering more oxygen to your noggin. It also spurs new growth in the areas of the brain that control multitasking, planning, and memory.

Do this: Add a bout of exercise, like running up and down the stairs, before trying to memorize anything—say, Spanish phrases for your trip to Mexico.

3. Get Natural Pain Relief
Keep moving to ease stiff, achy joints

It may seem counterintuitive, but rest isn’t necessarily best for reducing pain and stiffness in the knees, shoulders, back, or neck. Healthy adults who did aerobic activity consistently had 25% less musculoskeletal pain than their couch-bound peers, says Stanford senior research scientist Bonnie Bruce, DrPH, MPH, RD.

Exercise releases endorphins, the body’s natural pain reliever, and may make you less vulnerable to tiny tears in muscles and tendons. Staying active can also provide relief for chronic conditions such as arthritis: In a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study, arthritis sufferers experienced 25% less pain and 16% less stiffness after 6 months of low-impact exercise like balance and strengthening moves. Most people start to feel improvement within a few weeks, says study author Leigh Callahan, PhD, an associate professor of medicine at UNC.

Do this: Practice yoga or tai chi twice a week; both increase flexibility and range of motion and reduce pain.

4. Feel Sexy at Any Size
Flaunt a figure you can be proud of

A good workout practically ensures a better body image. The simple act of exercising-regardless of your weight or fitness level-can make you feel positive about how you look, possibly due to the release of feel-good hormones, finds a review of 57 studies on exercise and body image.

Working out can also boost your libido by increasing blood flow to the genitals. University of Washington research found that just one 20-minute cycling workout enhanced sexual arousal up to 169% in women. And the benefits stand the test of time: A Harvard study of swimmers found that those over age 60 were as satisfied sexually as those decades younger.

Do this: Try 20 minutes of aerobics before a romantic evening. To feel good naked anytime, walk or do yoga daily.

5. Lower Dental Bills
A health-boost worth smiling about

Flossing and brushing, it turns out, are not the only keys to a healthy smile, says Mohammad Al-Zahrani, DDS, PhD, a former associate professor at Case Western Reserve University. Exercise plays an important role, too. In his recent study, Al-Zahrani discovered that adults who did 30 minutes of moderate activity 5 or more times a week were 42% less likely to suffer from periodontitis, a gum disease that’s more common as you get older. Working out may thwart periodontitis the same way it does heart disease—by lowering levels of inflammation-causing C-reactive protein in the blood.

Do this: In addition to staying active, get a twice-yearly dental cleaning (or more often if your dentist says you are at high risk for gum disease).

6. Unlock Hidden Energy
Rouse your body out of a slump

If you’re among the 50% of adults who report feeling tired at least 1 day a week, skip the java and go for a walk. University of Georgia researchers who analyzed 70 different studies concluded that moving your body increases energy and reduces fatigue. Regular exercise boosts certain fatigue-fighting brain chemicals such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which pep you up, and serotonin, a mood enhancer.

Do this: Take a 20-minute stroll for a quick pick-me-up, or aim for 40 minutes of activity daily for a sustained lift.

7. Shrink Stress Fat
Combat anxiety-related weight gain

Just two 40-minute workouts a week is enough to stop dangerous belly fat in its tracks, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham research. The waistline of those who worked out less expanded an average of 3 inches. Exercise may lower levels of hormones such as cortisol that promotes belly fat.

8. Slash Cold Risk 33%
Build up your body’s defenses

Moderate exercise doesn’t just rev your metabolism—it boosts your immune system, too, helping your body fight off cold bugs and other germs. Women ages 50 to 75 who did 45 minutes of cardio, 5 days a week, had a third as many colds as those who did once-weekly stretching sessions, a University of Washington study found.

Do this: Add more cardio to your routine by turning your walk into a run.

9. Improve Vision
Carrots are great, but exercise might be better

What’s good for your heart is good for your eyes. An active lifestyle can cut your risk of age-related macular degeneration by up to 70%, according to a British Journal of Ophthalmology study of 4,000 adults. This incurable disease makes reading, driving, and seeing fine details difficult, and it’s the most common cause of blindness after age 60.

Do this: Protect your eyes during all outdoor activities (if you’re a walker, shoot for a mile a day). Be sure to wear UVA/UVB-blocking sunglasses all year long.

10. Reach the Deep-Sleep Zone
Decent shut-eye is not a far off dream

Say good night to poor sleep. Women age 60 and older who walked or danced for at least an hour, four times a week, woke up half as often and slept an average 48 minutes more a night than sedentary women, according to a study in the journal Sleep Medicine. That is good news for the many women who toss and turn more as they get older. As you age, sleep patterns start shifting, so you spend more of the night in lighter sleep phases, says Shawn Youngstedt, PhD, an assistant professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.

Do this: Aim to exercise for at least half an hour, even if it’s after a long day. Evidence suggests that for most people, light to moderate activity in the evening won’t disturb sleep, though trial and error will tell you what works for you.

11. Never Get Diabetes
Walk to keep your blood sugar in check

Walking 2 miles 5 times a week may be more effective at preventing diabetes than running nearly twice as much, report Duke University researchers. Because fat is the primary fuel for moderate exercise, walking may better improve the body’s ability to release insulin and control blood sugar.

Do this: Start a walking program

12. Eliminate Belly Bloat
Shrink the muffin top

The next time you feel puffy around the middle, resist the urge to stay put. A study from Spain’s Autonomous University of Barcelona suggests that mild physical activity clears gas and alleviates bloating. That’s because increasing your heart rate and breathing stimulates the natural contractions of the intestinal muscles, helping to prevent constipation and gas buildup by expediting digestion.

Do this: Walk or pedal lightly on a bike until you feel better.

13. Clear Out Brain Fog
Build your mental muscle

Exercise is linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease among older people; now, new research shows it can prevent brain fog at a much younger age too. Japanese researchers assigned sedentary young adults to two groups; one took aerobic exercise classes, and the other did not. After 4 months, MRIs revealed that the nonexercising group experienced shrinkage of gray matter in some areas of the brain, while the active participants had no change.

Do this: Try a new fitness routine, or sign up for a new class at the gym. Besides the obvious benefit of getting a workout, trying something fresh can help stimulate the growth of brain cells.

14. Save Your Heart
Reduce dangerous inflammation

Sedentary, obese women age 50 and older who began exercising lowered their levels of C-reactive protein-an inflammatory blood marker linked to heart disease—by 10% after 1 year, found research recently published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

15. Add Years to Your Life
Stay healthy and active for years to come

Being physically fit can actually change how your body works. Vigorous exercisers have longer telomeres-cellular biomarkers that shorten as we age-compared with healthy adults who rarely work out.

16. Ease Your Ailments
Heal your body with yoga

Yoga has a well-earned reputation as a surefire stress reducer (particularly when combined with meditation), and new studies show the simple stretching regimen can also help treat and prevent a number of other ailments, from back pain to diabetes. Other research reveals regular yoga practice can put an end to mindless eating by creating an outlet for emotions that can lead to binging. Unfortunately, less than 15% of women over age 35 say they do yoga frequently, according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

17. Survive Breast Cancer
Increase your defenses against the disease

Exercise not only reduces breast cancer risk, it can also save your life if you’re diagnosed. Overweight women who were exercising more than 3 hours a week before they were diagnosed were 47% less likely to die than those who exercised less than a half hour per week.

Do this: Sneak in mini bouts of exercise. Take a quick walk when you get the morning paper, hit the stairs before lunch, or knock out a few pushups and crunches while watching TV. Just two to three 10-minute workouts a day is enough to fill your quota for the week.

Why wasn’t I built to not show compassion to others, to not not care about the helpless? If so, life wouldn’t be so hard.

A new study shows that a nap can help you memorize images and solve problems, but only if you dream about them. Participants attempted to navigate through a virtual, 3-D maze. Half of them then took a 90-minute nap. Those who dreamed about the maze were 10 times better at negotiating the task than other nappers or subjects who didn’t sleep at all. Let’s say you really wanted to beat that maze—could you force yourself to dream about it?

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Possibly. People are more likely to dream about the things they worry about the most during their waking hours, so the best way to induce a targeted dream is to truly believe that it’s important. That’s no help to sleep researchers, who often need their subjects to dream about trifles like a maze or brain teaser. They can try to force the issue by having people write notes about the desired dream subject right before going to sleep. They might also encourage the use of visualization or chanting exercises. (Early studies established that repeating a phrase to yourself works better than having someone whispering in your ear.)

No one knows whether these dream incubation techniques really work, though. In 1974, William Dement of Stanford tested 500 students to see if they could dream up a solution to a word problem. To facilitate the experiment, the test subjects were told to write down the problem and visualize the letters on the page as they went to bed. About 20 percent managed to dream about the problem, with seven actually solving it. A more recent study by Deirdre Barrett at Harvard asked student-subjects to solve a problem with more personal relevance—most of them chose a homework assignment or a relationship issue. Half of the students were able to have and remember a dream related to their problem.

The study released this week showed that some students began dreaming about the maze within a minute of falling asleep. The transition between wakefulness and sleep—it’s called a hypnogogic state when you’re falling asleep and a hypnopompic state while waking up—is poorly understood. Recent research suggests that drifting off is not a linear process in the brain (PDF) and that you alternate several times between wakefulness and sleep before finally succumbing. Researchers are forced to draw a somewhat arbitrary line between the two, usually requiring that certain brain waves disappear on an electroencephalogram for 30 seconds. Many researchers think you have the most control over your dreams—if that is the proper term for the disjointed hypnagogic images and sequences that flash through your mind—in the first minutes of sleep.

These images can be every bit as compelling as the REM-phase dreams that so interested Freud and Jung. August Kekule had one such vision of a snake biting its tail just before realizing that the structure of benzene was a ring rather than a straight chain. Mendeleev reportedly dreamt an image of the periodic table. (Some historians have questioned both Kekule’s and Mendeleev’s stories.) Many artists, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, relied on the hypnogogic state for inspiration.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer ’);]]> .

Explainer thanks Deirdre Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving—and How You Can Too, Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University, Roger Knudson of Miami University, and Robert Stickgold of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.

http://www.slate.com/id/2251662/?yahoo=y

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, great minds talk about ideas; small minds talk about people. What do you and your significant other talk about? If you constantly hit the heavy stuff, you’re probably happier than if you spend time gossiping about your neighbors or coworkers.
A recent study published in Psychological Science says that people are happier when they spend more time discussing meaningful topics than engaging in small talk. Seventy-nine college students had their conversations recorded and analyzed by researchers, who distinguished between chit-chat about the food or the weather and discussions about philosophy, education, or religion. Subjects who reported the greatest amount of satisfaction spent only 10 percent of their conversation on small talk, while the unhappiest subjects kept 28.3 percent of their talking time in the shallow end.
Among the scores of substantive topics people discuss, we’ve come up with nine that we believe couples should relish during heart-to-hearts:
1. Embarrassing moments. If you can’t share the awkward, “American Pie”-worthy moments that occurred throughout high school with your partner, who can you tell them to? Don’t be afraid to broach the subject, if you haven’t already. We wouldn’t be surprised if their stories are more horrifying than yours.
2. Political viewpoints. How do you feel about the new healthcare bill? You don’t have to agree with each other, but you do need to keep an open mind. A good relationship allows both parties to discuss their own philosophies without taking the opposition personally.
3. Fears and insecurities. By fears, we don’t mean your phobia of earthworms. We’re talking about things that make you wake up with gray hairs. What worries you? What do you want to improve in yourself? What skeletons are in your closet? In being vulnerable, you risk judgment, but more importantly, you chance being understood.
4. Childhood. Ask your partner what he or she was like as a kid. Did she make friends easily? What kind of games did he like to play? Did he have trouble in school? Childhood memories make for fun conversations, but they can also lend insight into how your main squeeze became the person he or she is today.
5. Past relationships. This is a touchy one because no one wants to hear the person they’re with spouting sonnets about an ex. There is, of course, a difference between longing for (or being bitter over) the past and simply acknowledging what happened. With enough practice, seasoned, happy couples learn how to address why past relationships ended without inadvertently comparing their current partner to an old flame.
6. Family life. Knowing a person’s upbringing and relationship with his or her parents is paramount to understanding his current attitude toward family. If you’re even slightly contemplating a future with this person, it might help to ask how well they get along with their parents. Why does she resent her mother? Why is he closer to his sisters than to his brothers? How does she handle family gatherings?
7. Current events. Thanks to the overflow of information, it’s nearly impossible to stay up-to-date on everything going on around us. Here’s where teamwork comes into play: Ask your partner about his interests, be they economics or regional politics, and see if you can’t learn a thing or two. Who knows, maybe you’ll help him develop an interest in international affairs or science news.
8. TV and movies. Compared to politics and personal fears, entertainment might seem pretty shallow, but discussions about movies can fall into the “deep” category if you focus on character motivations and plots rather than on, say, the cute leading actors.
9. The future. Talking about the future can be nerve-wracking. While we’re not saying you should pressure your partner into talking about plans for marriage and children, we do believe that you should know their dreams, goals, and aspirations. What is he working toward? What drives her to succeed? Where does he see himself in five years? Someone who desires growth and is not afraid of the unknown is surely dynamic enough to deserve you.
From: http://dating.personals.yahoo.com/singles/relationships/24466/dating-tips-9-things-happy-couples-talk-about

親愛的寶貝!

我愛你, 我很高興那你是我的寶貝. 我要我們常常一起. 如果我生氣只是我要你變好. 我真的愛你.

真愛你,

寶貝

     This day is especially mentally stimulating. My brain works furiously-filling me with ideas to write about that I cannot sleep. Maybe it’s because of the test but Thank you GOD for this day as I am once again embracing intellectualism.#

     I want to make presentations. I want to deliver a pitch. I want to speak in front of a crowd.#

     When I speak, I want to speak with sensible words. I do not intend to start on nonsense talk.#

     I want to write, write, write. This surely is liberating.#