Make Happiness a New Year's Resolution

Make Happiness a New Year's Resolution

Rallie McAllister, M.D., M.P.H.

If you're still working on your New Year's resolutions, you might want to consider adding "be happy" to your list.

Around this time of year, most of us set goals that we believe will bring us joy: We vow to lose weight, earn more money or buy a new house. As it turns out, the best way to achieve more enjoyment in life may be to take a more direct approach, by simply applying ourselves to the intentional pursuit of happiness.

When Abraham Lincoln said, "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be," he was on the right track. Most experts agree that sustained happiness depends on more than chance or good fortune -- it requires deliberate control of our thoughts and actions.

Knowing what makes you happy is an important first step to achieving greater pleasure in life. For most folks, happiness is best measured in terms of relationships and experiences, rather than in dollars and cents.

In spite of popular myth, money doesn't guarantee a perpetual state of bliss, especially if it comes too easily. Emory University scientists determined that lottery winners and trust-fund recipients don't derive nearly as much satisfaction from their cash as those who earn it the old fashioned way -- by working.

In an effort to determine whether money can buy happiness, researchers at the University of Colorado analyzed data collected from a national survey of more than 12,000 Americans. The majority of respondents reported that they gained more enduring pleasure and satisfaction when they invested their money in life experiences rather than material goods.

Spending money on others can promote greater feelings of happiness than spending it on yourself, according researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School. As part of their study, the scientists gave volunteers either a $5 bill or a $20 bill and asked them to spend the cash by 5:00 p.m. the same day.

Half the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves, while the other half were asked to spend it on others. The participants who spent the money on others reported feeling significantly happier at the end of the day than those who spent the cash on themselves.

Fortunately, you don't have to spend a single cent to experience joy. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside found that simply doing a few good deeds daily, such as holding the door for a stranger or offering someone a sincere compliment, can dramatically lift your spirits.

Performing random acts of kindness makes the person performing the acts happier, especially when the good deeds are carried out in succession. People who did considerate things for others five times in one day reported experiencing greater happiness than those performing five good deeds over the course of a week.

The same researchers found that practicing gratitude can promote happiness. Study participants who expressed gratitude by writing down five things they were grateful for each week reported feeling significantly happier than those who didn't take part in the exercise.

One of the best ways to improve your state of mind is to surround yourself with happy people. Recent research from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego suggests that happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, family members and neighbors.

In a study of more than 4,700 people followed over a period of 20 years, scientists found that when one person in a social network became happy, the chances that a friend, sibling, spouse or next-door neighbor would become happy increased by 15 percent. Even better, happiness continued to spread from person to person through three degrees of separation.

Happiness is a critical component of emotional wellbeing, and it plays an equally important role in physical health. In an article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, researchers reported that happy people are not only healthier, they also enjoy a life expectancy that is seven to 10 years longer than that of unhappy individuals.

Scientists at the University College of London found that blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol were roughly a third lower among happy individuals compared to their less cheerful counterparts. Chronically elevated cortisol levels have been linked to a number of serious conditions, including obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Finding joy in life isn't always effortless, but it is entirely possible. Because happiness doesn't always happen by luck or chance, intentionally pursuing it may be the best way to attain it.

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Rallie McAllister is a board-certified family physician, speaker and the author of several books, including "Healthy Lunchbox: The Working Mom's Guide to Keeping You and Your Kids Trim." Her website is www.rallieonhealth.com. To find out more about Rallie McAllister, M.D., and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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The healing power of the mind. Let me show you how

The healing power of the mind. Let me show you how

1) Admit and accept that you have an illness. (the hardest and most important step

You may think that I am absurd but life's problems are not solved by denying their existence.  Many people actually find it hard to admit to themselves they have an illness. The most important step you can take in healing would be to accept your present circumstance, but to positively expect that you can heal yourself using the powers of your mind and live life again.

2) Commit yourselves to it and take action

Seek treatment that suits you and do the necessary individual research on you illness like the diet you should be eating. Getting treatment lets you assume control over your life again. This lightens the feeling of helplessness; hence, you can think better and make the right and necessary decisions.

3) Take comfort in a Higher Power.

It would even better for your recovery if you seek comfort from you religion. It gives you the power and confidence in battling your illness.

The power of your mind can be used as a medicine or a poison. Stay in positive touch with your mind, and it becomes your medicine. On the contrary, neglect your mind, it becomes your poison.

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SMOKING IS THE LARGEST PREVENTABLE CAUSE OF DEATH -

SMOKING IS THE LARGEST PREVENTABLE CAUSE OF DEATH - by Aanchal P Achipalya- Fitness Guru

Smoking just doesn't harm your body but it also plays mind games with you and kills your soul by affecting your beauty, diet and sleep patterns and complicating the ways you handle stress. This is how lighting up that all consuming cigarette ruins your life:

1. Reduces life expectancy
Smoking reduces life expectancy by 7 - 8 years. This means, every time you smoke, your life expectancy is shortened by 8 minutes.

2. Causes head to toe cancer
Almost all cancers are more likely to affect a smoker than a non-smoker. Smoking regularly makes you a favourable victim for the cancer of the mouth, stomach, lungs, kidneys, cervix, esophagus, larynx, rectum, colon and certain other organs.

3. Impairs your circulatory system
Smoking weakens the heart and the circulatory system so much that many smokers are left wishing for death. Such is the impact of smoking that certain smokers may find it difficult to even walk two steps.

4. Does not let an offspring develop
Smoking affects reproductive abilities, leaving many smokers childless forever. It can make men impotent and cause infertility in women and even lead to miscarriages.

5. Ruins your beauty
Your skin suffers a great deal on account of smoking. Smoking can be responsible for wrinkles on your face and yellowing and staining of your teeth and fingers. Also, it hurries the process of skin ageing.

6. Kills hunger
Smoking can destroy your appetite and also your sense of taste and smell.

7. Gifts you many a sleepless nights
Smoking regularly can make a person insomniac, in turn weakening their over all immune system and wrecking havoc on their health.

If this isn't enough for you to quit smoking, nothing will be. And if you do want to quit smoking, here are some tips to help you walk the tight rope:

- Drink plenty of fluids throughout the day to cleanse your body and to provide it with antioxidants to reduce the free radical irritation.
- Munch on carrot, cucumber, radish and other raw vegetables as oral substitutes to deal with psychological ties to smoking.
- Develop and maintain a positive attitude towards life and stay busy to keep your mind off smoking.
- Get another smoker to stop smoking with you so that you can discuss common problems and get each other's support.
- Exercise, it is one of the healthiest addictions you can develop, which in turn helps you get over other addictions.


Have a nice day,


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Dengue Fever Remedy

I would like to share this interesting discovery from a classmate's son who has just recovered from dengue fever. Apparently, his son was in the critical stage at the ICU when his blood platelet count drops to 15 after 15 liters of blood transfusion.

His father was so worried that he seeks another friend's recommendation and his son was saved. He confessed to me that he gave his son raw juice of the papaya leaves. From a platelet count of 45 after 20 liters of blood transfusion, and after drinking the raw papaya leaf juice, his platelet count jumps instantly to 135. Even the doctors and nurses were surprised. After the second day he was discharged. So he asked me to pass this good news around.

Accordingly it is raw papaya leaves, 2pcs just cleaned and pound and squeeze with filter cloth. You will only get one tablespoon per leaf. So two tablespoon per serving once a day. Do not boil or cook or rinse with hot water, it will loose its strength. Only the leafy part and no stem or sap. It is very bitter and you have to swallow it like "Won Low Kat". But it works.

*Papaya Juice - Cure for Dengue*

You may have heard this elsewhere but if not I am glad to inform you that papaya juice is a natural cure for dengue fever. As dengue fever is rampant now, I think it's good to share this with all.

A friend of mine had dengue last year. It was a very serious situation for her as her platelet count had dropped to 28,000 after 3 days in hospital and water has started to fill up her lung. She had difficulty in breathing. She was only 32-year old. Doctor says there's no cure for dengue. We just have to wait for her body immune system to build up resistance against dengue and fight its own battle. She already had 2 blood transfusion and all of us were praying very hard as her platelet continued to drop since the first day she was admitted.

Fortunately her mother-in-law heard that papaya juice would help to reduce the fever and got some papaya leaves, pounded them and squeeze the juice out for her. The next day, her platelet count started to increase, her fever subside. We continued to feed her with papaya juice and she recovered after 3 days!!!

Amazing but it's true. It's believed one's body would be overheated when one is down with dengue and that also caused the patient to have fever papaya juice has cooling effect. Thus, it helps to reduce the level of heat in one's body, thus the fever will go away. I found that it's also good when one is having sore throat or suffering from heat.

Please spread the news about this as lately there are many dengue cases. It's great if such natural cure could help to ease the sufferings of dengue patients.

Furthermore it's so easily available.
Blend them and squeeze the juice! It's simple and miraculously effective!!

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Girl lives 118 days without heart, goes home healthy

Girl lives 118 days without heart, goes home healthy

Doc: First For A Child To Survive On Pumps. GRATEFUL: D’Zhana Simmons sheds tears of joy.

Miami: D’Zhana Simmons says she felt like a “fake person” for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. “But I know that I really was here,” the 14-year-old said, “and I did live without a heart.”
As she was being released on Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she’s endured. Since July, she’s had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants.

Marco Ricci, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at St Holtz

Last spring D’Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, South Carolina, to Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant. But her new heart didn’t work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later.
And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh who works with the kind of pumps used in this case, said what the Miami medical team managed to do “is a big deal”. “For (more than) 100 days, there was no heart in this girl’s body? That is pretty amazing,” Wearden said.

The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood. With D’Zhana’s heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children’s Hospital crafted substitute heart chambers using a fabric and connected these to the two pumps. Although artificial hearts have been approved for adults, none has been approved for kids’ use.
During the almost four months between her two transplants, D’Zhana wasn’t able to breathe on her own half the time. She also had kidney and liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding. Taking a short stroll — when she felt up for it — required the help of four people, at least one of whom would steer the photocopier-sized machine that was the external part of the pumping devices.
When D’Zhana was stable enough for another operation, doctors did the second transplant on October 29. She’ll be able to do most things that teens do, like attending school and going out with friends. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there’s a 50-50 chance she’ll need another transplant before she turns 30.
The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long. AP

MEDICAL MIRACLE
1

Doctors replace 14-year-old D’Zhana Simons’s heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that keep blood flowing through her body until she’s ready for a second transplant

2

The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood

3

With her heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children’s Hospital craft substitute heart chambers using a fabric, and connect these to the two pumps

4

D’Zhana isn’t able to breathe on her own half the time. She also has kidney and liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding

5

Taking a short stroll — when she feels up for it — requires the help of four people. At least one of them has to steer the photocopier-sized machine that forms the external part of the pumping devices

6

Doctors say she’ll now be able to do most things that teens do, like going to school. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there’s a 50-50 chance she’ll need another transplant

Men more attractive if they have scars

Men more attractive if they have scars

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LIVERPOOL, England (UPI) -- Men with scars on their face are more attractive to women seeking short-term relationships, researchers in Britain said.

Dr. Rob Burriss, from the University of Liverpool's School of Biological Sciences, says that it was previously assumed that in Western cultures scarring was an unattractive facial feature but in non-Western cultures they were perceived as a sign of maturity and strength.

The researchers found that women preferred men with facial scars for short-term relationships but they equally preferred scarred and unscarred faces for long-term relationships. Men regard women with and without facial scars as equally attractive for both types of relationship.

"Male and female participants were shown images of faces that displayed scarring from injury or illness, and were asked to rate how attractive they found the person for long-term and short-term relationships," Burriss said in a statement.

"Women may have rated scarring as an attractive quality for short-term relationships because they found it be a symbol of masculinity, a feature that is linked to high testosterone levels and an indicator of good genetic qualities that can be passed on to offspring. Men without scars, however, could be seen as more caring and therefore more suitable for long-term relationships."

The findings are published in the journal of Personality and Individual Differences.




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