Five Surprising Reasons to get More Sleep

Of course, in a less busy world, we would all grab extra shut-eye. But it could have more effect on your health than you think.

1. It could make you thinner

Research in the USA has found that the less sleep you get, the higher your body mass index tends to be. An English study may have the explanation: People who sleep five hour a night were found to have 15% more ghrelin (a hormone that boosts hunger) in their bodies and 15% less leptin (which suppresses it) than those sleeping eight hours.

2. It could boost your memory

Sleep plays a key role in making new memories stick in the brain. A Harvard experiment showed that subjects taught complex finger movements like a piano scale recalled them much better after 12 hours’ sleep than 12 hours’ wakefulness. Another study showed that working into the night slowed thinking skills, both at the time and during the next day.

3. It can fight colds, ulcers, even cancer

Good sleep boosts the immune system. A study of elderly people suffering depression found that those with disturbed sleep had fewer disease-fighting cells in their blood. Moreover, melatonin, produced when you sleep, is a cancer-fighting antioxidant. Night-shift workers, whose wake/sleep rhythms are disturbed, may have up to 70 times greater risk of breast cancer. It also seems the chemical your body makes to repair damage to the stomach lining is secreted during sleep: going without could raise your risk of ulcers.

4. It can slow down aging

Persistent sleep debt has been shown to affect carbohydrate metabolism and hormone function in a way that may increase the severity of age-related chronic disorders. In fact a large-scale study concluded that people who sleep 6-7 hours a night lived longer than those sleeping less than 4-5 hours.

5. It could keep you on the straight and narrow

If you are a child, that is. The depression and low self-esteem often associated with just being a teenager actually correlate with sleep shortage. And young kids who sleep poorly are more than twice as likely to take to drink and drugs in adolescence.

Courtesy: RD Health, Reader’s Digest, January 2006, p.162

How not to be a Workaholic

Do you eat, sleep and breathe work, weekends and holidays included? Do you find anything besides work a waste of time? If yes, then you are a workaholic, and the sooner you realize it the better.

Love vs Addiction

Don’t confuse a genuine love of work with an addiction. Work addicts suffer withdrawal symptoms if detached from their job and find that work alone defines and controls their self-esteem, public image and well-being.

Family vs Work

Workaholics are detached from the emotional concerns of the rest of the family. While critical of every detail of housekeeping, they are reluctant to help with chores, because it takes them away from their “real” work.

Health Hazards

Workaholics are often stressed out plodders, perpetually swamped in paperwork and routine chores. They are sitting candidates for heart disease and other physical and psychological problems.

The Cure

If your organization forces you to be a workaholic, get out while you can. Return to the hobbies of your youth. Renew old friendships and make new ones. Join a group or club that shares your interests.

Be Realistic

If you equate relaxation with idleness, a drastic change of pace will be hard at first. Ease yourself into a new lifestyle. Slow everything down. Take up something that does not immediately seem productive, like meditating or bird-watching.

Courtesy: Reader’s Digest, Feb.2006, p.175

A Thought for Today : January 21, 2008

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Facts & Figures-17 : Our India-1

* 38% doctors in America are Indians.

* 12% of Scientists in America are Indians.

* 36% of NASA Employees are Indians.

* 34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.

* 28% of IBM employees are Indians.

* 13% of Xerox employees are Indians.

Courtesy: 'Yuva Bharati', English monthly from Chennai, July 2001

A Thought for Today : January 20, 2008

Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty - Tacitus

My Album-12: "Aravind by Annamalai"

Aravind by Annamalai!

My Album-11: "Lord Vinayaga, Lord Shiva Temple, Paganeri"

My Album-10: "Tower of Lord Shiva's Temple at Paganeri"

Yet another photo clicked by my son using his Nokia N70m. Taken on Pongal day, January 15, 2008.

My Album-9: "A recent photo of Achu:"

The photo was clicked by my son using his Nokia N70m.

Life, Death and Consciousness

What is death? Is there life after death? Where is consciousness? And can science find the soul?

….Today, medical advances have allowed doctors to resuscitate people who in earlier times would have been irretrievably dead. In effect, medical intervention has pushed back what we call death….Nobody anticipated the number of patients who would come back with ….tales of out-of-body experience, travels down tunnels and encounters with angels or deceased loved ones. This phenomenon has labelled ‘near-death experience’ (NDE).

At first, all doctors dismissed such reports. The conventional medical explanation was hallucination, brought on by changes in the dying brain. Yet there was a problem with this interpretation. Such hallucinations could only occur if the brain maintained some function. One flat lined, the brain would be roughly analogous to a computer with its power source unplugged and its circuits detached. It could not hallucinate; it could not do anything at all.

That apparent paradox – that perceptions occur during NDEs when there is no functioning brain through which to perceive them – has scientists, theologians and ordinary folks groping for answers.

Such experiences should simply not happen if currently accepted scientific theories about life, death and consciousness are accurate. The NDE, some argue, should move science to make room for the possibility of a soul.

…..

While most medical researchers would not be caught dead uttering the word soul, some find the idea that NDEs are triggered by a failing brain to be inadequate. They speculate that NDEs may be evidence, not of an afterlife, but something as stunning: CONSCIOUSNESS DOES NOT SOLEY RESIDE IN THE BRAIN.

In a study published in December 2001 in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel recounts the NDE of a clinically-dead, 44-year old cardiac arrest victim. He was rushed by ambulance to a hospital where doctors restarted his heart with defibrillators. A nurse removed the man’s dentures so a breathing could be inserted in his throat. Once stable, the man was moved to intensive care.

A week later the man saw the nurse who had removed his false teeth and recognized her – though during their only prior encounter, his condition had ranged from coma to clinical death.

“You took my dentures out of my mouth,” he told the nurse, and went on to accurately describe other details he claimed his disembodied self had viewed.

In an attempt to the gauge the frequency of NDEs, van Lommel and his fellow researchers interviewed 343 others who had suffered cardiac arrest and survived. “18% have a story of a very clear consciousness,” van Lommel says. These patients described everything from a general feeling of peace to full-fledged NDEs.

A study by British researchers published in the journal, Resuscitation, found that 11% had memory recall of the unconscious period. 6% of those resuscitated after cardiac arrest reported NDEs. Both van Lommel and the British researchers believe that these findings suggest consciousness could exist in the absence of a functioning brain. “You can compare the brain to a TV set,” says van Lommel. “The TV program is not in your TV set.”

So where is consciousness? Is it in every cell of the body?

“I think so,” says van Lommel. “We know that each day, 50 billion cells die.” He points out that intensive cell turnover means that, eventually, almost all the cells that make up “me” or “you” are new. And yet we don’t perceive ourselves as being any different from what we always were.

To van Lommel, it follows that “there must be a kind of communication between all your cells”. In other words, all your cells – not just brain cells, but trillions of others in muscle, skeleton, gut, skin and blood – “talk” to one another in a kind of network that keeps our experience of the consciousness going seamlessly even as billions of cell die and billions of other are produced. If that is so, then those cells still alive when someone is declared brain-dead may perceive events that are otherwise inexplicable.

That hypothesis may lead us away from the interpretation of NDEs as evidence of an afterlife. But it opens up fascinating horizons and a Pandora’s box of its own.

What does it mean if the mind persists after the brain is dead? Should we, for instance, rethink the harvesting of organs for transplant from the “brain-dead”? The NDEs force us to re-examine questions we thought we had the answers to: What is death? Where is consciousness? And can science find the soul?

Excerpts from “Life after Death: The Scientific case for the human soul” by Anita Bartholomew, Reader’s Digest, October 200

My Album-8: "Paganeri Girls High School"

This is where my wife did her high-schooling. A chettiar's house converted as school.

Letters-4: "Hunger Speaks"

(1) It is sad that while rats eat grain from overflowing godowns, the poor all over India go to bed hungry. ..There are even reports of starvation deaths. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Freedman said: “If a government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, within five years, they would have a shortage of sand.”

Letter to the Editor, Reader’s Digest, (October 2003) from D.K.Vasudevan, via email


(2) Poverty remains our greatest problem. Economist Amartya Sen, too, describes the problem of poverty as one of “entitlement of access rather than the scarcity of good.” Government must solve this menace instead of ignoring the plight of its needy citizens.

Letter to the Editor, Reader’s Digest, (October 2003) from Shadaan Alam, Aligarh

Eyecatchers-51: 'Trees dying in Sunderbans'

A species of trees that gave its name to Bangladesh’s Sunderbans, home to the Royal Bengal tiger, is dying off following a cyclone late last year.

The Sundari species, from which the name was derived, are dying of a disease called “top-dying, that has intensified following the cyclone.” The Sunderbans, 400 km southwest of Dhaka, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Cyclone Sidr struck the coast on November 15 with winds of 250 kmph. It killed around 3,500 people, made millions homeless and destroyed a large part of the Sunderbans. At least 60 per cent of the 6,000 sq.km. mangrove swamps that are home to more than 400 Royal Bengal tigers was devastated by the cyclone.

Top-dying was already endemic among Sundari, but the disease has spread and intensified since the cyclone, threatening the existence of the forest, a forest official said. - Reuters

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, January 19, 2008

A Thought for Today : January 19, 2008

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults - Confucius

A Thought for Today : January 18, 2008

It has been my philosophy in life, That difficulties vanish when faced boldly - Isaac Asimov

One Paragraph that explains Life

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player, was dying of CANCER. From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed "Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease?"

To this Arthur Ashe replied "The world over 5 crore children start playing tennis, 50 lakh learn to play tennis, 5 lakh learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach , 50 reach the grand slam Wimbledon, 4 to the semifinals, 2 to the finals. When I was holding a cup, I never asked GOD "Why me?" And today in pain I should not be asking GOD, "Why me?"

Happiness keeps u sweet.
Trials keep u strong.
Sorrow keeps u human.
Failure keeps u humble.
Success keeps u glowing.
But only God keeps u going!!!!


With grateful thanks to:

Mr.Chetan Hegde M
Librarian, Amrita School of Arts & Sciences,
AVVP Mysore campus,
#114, 7th cross, Bogadi 2nd stage,
Mysore - 570026
Blog: http://lismysore.blogspot.com/
"As Long As I Live, So Long Do I Learn"
http://www.agloco.com/r/BBFT1310

A Thought for Today : January 17, 2008

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise - Sigmund Freud

Letters-3:"Time of Value"

Reading Subroto Bagchi’s “Go, Kiss the World” (Reader’s Digest, December 2005) was a journey to an era when people saw their parents as models of human values. Calling maids, sweepers and other workers mausi, amma or kaka was not just a sign of respect, but also our first lessons in human relationships. One such lesson remains etched in my memory. In the early 1960s, the sweepers in our area used to collect one roti from each household every afternoon. Many people threw the rotis into the sweepers’ baskets from a distance. My parents felt this was a humiliating practice. They taught us to respectfully hold the roti in both hands and place it in the sweeper’s hand or basket.

I wonder if we can instill such values in the younger generation today in a world ruled by materialism, hypocrisy and snobbishness.

Letter to the Editor, Reader’s Digest from Veena Bashani, via e-mail - Letters from Readers, Reader’s Digest, February 2006

Eyecatchers-50: 'Hearts from cadavers beat anew!'

US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the lab after reseeding them with live cells, a study released on Sunday (January 13, 2008) said.

Courtesy: The Hindu, Madurai, January 14, 2008 (Newscape)

A Thought for Today : January 16, 2008

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death - David Sarnoff