Acupuncture

Acupuncture is an ancient healing art that helps temper an overactive immune system. It can also provide immediate relief to swollen, irritated nasal passages. Sterile acupuncture needles are applied to the face, while far away points in the hands and feet help re-balance the energy meridians. Source

What You should know more about Sucralose

While sucralose, better known by its brand name, may originate with sugar, the end product is anything but natural. It's processed using chlorine, and researchers are finding that the artificial sweetener is passing through our bodies and winding up in wastewater treatment plants, where it can't be broken down.

Tests in Norway and Sweden found sucralose in surface water released downstream from treatment discharge sites. Scientists worry it could change organisms' feeding habits and interfere with photosynthesis, putting the entire food chain at risk. The chemically derived artificial sweetener acesulfame K was also detected in treated wastewater and tap water.

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Stretching Before Exercise

The idea here is that stretching before and after you exercise can prevent injury while you’re working out and muscle soreness afterward.

While stretching does promote flexibility (something you should strive for as an element of overall fitness), a study published in British Medical Journal found no scientific evidence to back up the notion that stretching before a workout reduces injuries or that stretching before and after can prevent muscle soreness.
Exercise Speeds Metabolism for Hours

While partly true--your metabolism does amp up during exercise and for a few hours afterward--the truth can be a big disappointment: the number of calories you can expect lose thanks to the afterburn is negligible, only 20 extra ones for the whole day according to one study.

But (and this is a really big “but”) you may be able to set your metabolism on high for hours after your workout if you can exercise intensely enough to reach the top of your VO2 max (the maximum amount of oxygen you can take in during exercise) and continue at that high level for 45 minutes. A tough prescription, but if you can manage that, a recent study found that you could burn as many as 190 extra calories in the hours after exercise.

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Crunches Lead to Sixpack Abs?

Sure they will as long as you also get rid of any belly fat that obscures your abdominal muscles. While crunches strengthen muscles, they won’t burn off the fat in your belly.

To flaunt your newly crunched abs you’ve got to trim the fat via diet, cardiovascular exercise and resistance training. And, of course, for crunches to work, you’ve got to learn to do them right.
Running on a Treadmill is Easier on the Knees

Sorry, but it is the running itself that stresses the knees, not the surface you’re pounding.

To ease the impact on your knees, experts advise varying your aerobic activities: mix running with riding a stationary bike or using the elliptical machine at the gym.

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Protect yourself online

If your password is a common name or phrase, a hacker could guess it. Make your online accounts more secure by avoiding using the same password on multiple sites and sticking with longer, hard-to-guess words or sentences.

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You forget to take your vitamins, why it's no so bad?

Although vitamins can fill in the gaps to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs (a perfect diet all the time is next to impossible!), there's a downside to always popping a vitamin. It may make you reach for the bag of potato chips instead of an apple-and skip your workout to boot, reveals a new study published in Psychological Science.

Researchers found that taking a multivitamin every day may make you feel like you have the leeway to blow off other healthy habits-like grabbing dinner at the drive-thru rather than eating right or channel surfing instead of taking a walk, notes Benjamin Caballero, MD, PhD, a professor of pediatrics, nutrition and international health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

In general, your body best absorbs nutrients in their natural form, so rather than relying on vitamins, focus on eating a healthy diet packed with whole foods. If you do take vitamins, remind yourself that they don't replace a healthy diet and exercise or provide a buffer against unhealthy habits.
Find out which 5 nutrients you need the most-and how to get them.
You get angry-and show it!

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How A Woman's Sex Drive Declines

A happy, healthy relationship and sex life are all very well, but when it comes to measuring a woman's sexual desire, all scientists really need to know is how long a couple has been together. Women's sex drives gradually ebb over time, say the authors of a new study, while a man's stays at around the same level. In fact, on a desirability scale, women's yearnings decreased steadily with every passing month of a relationship, making it possible to gauge a woman's sex drive just by looking at a union's duration.

170 men's and women's desire levels were monitored and rated on the Female Sexual Function Index. Participants, all in heterosexual relationships ranging from one month to nine years in length, were all undergraduates at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, where the author's lead researcher, Sarah Murray, is based.

Ranging from 1.2 to 6.0, the scale quantifies sex drive so accurately that Ms Murray and her research partner Robin Milhausen found 'specifically, for each additional month women in this study were in a relationship with their partner, their sexual desire decreased by 0.02 on the Female Sexual Function Index'.

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Coffee may help promote a healthy weight

Drinking an espresso or cappuccino after a meal is more than a relaxing habit. "When you drink coffee after a meal, it causes your body to more slowly process the meal you just ate," says Chris Kilham, medical researcher, founder of Medicine Hunter, Inc. and author of Psyche Delicacies.

According to David Levitsky, PhD, professor of nutritional science at Cornell University, "Caffeine decreases the rate at which the stomach dumps its contents into the duodenum-a part of the small intestine where digestion takes place-and also increases metabolic rate."

Keep in mind, though, that java isn't a miracle brew: Downing it after dinner won't make the pounds melt away; rather, sipping a cup post-meal could, in small part, help promote a healthy weight.

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Surprising Ways to Use a Hair Dryer

Detach a photo from an album. To work a delicate photograph off one of those sticky pages, blow warm air onto the back of the page while gently tugging the photo free.

Dust tough-to-reach places. Set the dryer on cool and point it at dusty shelves or intricate knickknacks to blow the debris right off. (Start from the highest shelf to make gravity work for you.)

Dewrinkle plastic shower curtains or table-cloths. Blow hot air onto fresh-out-of-the-bag material to "iron" out wrinkles-just keep the dryer 12 inches from the surface so it won't melt.

Perfect frosting or icing. To harden frosting on cakes or cookies, blow cool air directly on it. To brighten a dull finish, give the icing a hit of hot air.
Get 8 recipes for delicious layer cakes.

Erase crayon marks or wax spills. Kids gone wild? Blow-dry the stain on high until the wax melts, then wipe with a soapy sponge.

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Dating clichés that are actually true

Bad boys are especially sexy: Sean Penn, Colin Farrell, and Chris Brown: three men most of us might think are indisputably hot, but as luck would have it, scientists still wanted to prove the allure of these bad boys. Researchers at the University of British Columbia found that guys who look moody or sullen are more attractive than men who smile, according to a study published in The American Psychological Association journal, Emotion. The reason: A man with a don’t-come-near-me face conveys that he’s strong and valuable — two traits that women traditionally look for in a man.

Men prefer younger women; women prefer rich men. Donald Trump and Melania Knauss, Kelsey Grammer and Kayte Walsh, Hugh Hefner and… well, anyone may look ridiculous walking down the street together, but these unlikely pairings can be explained with science. Research published in the journal Biology Letters found that men prefer younger women because they’re very fertile, upping their odds of producing lots of healthy offspring. Psychologists at the University of Turku in Finland found that men who marry women 14.6 years younger than themselves have the highest number of healthy babies. Likewise, women prefer older, wealthier men due to their status in society, plentiful resources, and ability to provide for their offspring.

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Love is good for almost everything

The power of love to keep us well comes from a study showing that health suffers after a divorce or when one spouse dies. The researchers found that being single after being married brings about a decline on physical health. The divorced and widowed in the study had 20 percent more health problems such as heart disease and diabetes than mid-life couples who remained married to their first spouse.

Even worse, the positive health benefits of marriage were cancelled out for the divorced and widowed people in the study: they had worse health problems than men and women who had never been married.

Here are some startling statistics illustrating how vital love is to our mental as well as physical well-being: rates of major depression are nine times higher in unmarried men; divorce or separation more than doubles the risk of suicide in men; married men and women drink less alcohol and use less marijuana and cocaine than the unmarried; 70 percent of chronic drinkers were divorced or separated - only 15 percent were married.

So there you have it, love is good for almost everything. The only exception: it doesn’t help you lose weight.

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Play the "travel game"

Some people like chess while others like Sudoku or crossword puzzles. Expert suggests to play the game of travel, which requires strategy and collaboration to get hotels at about 40 percent of retail price.

You can start with Priceline.com and Hotwire.com, and then go to the travel boards of biddingforrtavel.com and betterbidding.com, where people will post the names and bidding amounts of hotels they've won. If you don't see what you are looking for, you can post a question which always seems to get answered.

In just about a half hour, you can often save hundreds of dollars per trip and that's a whole lot more rewarding than finishing a Sudoku game.

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Can Ice Ease Muscle Pain?

Applying ice to a sore muscle can numb it so it feels better, but a new review of evidence from 36 earlier studies concluded that icing doesn’t help heal muscle tears and can actually reduce muscle strength and power temporarily. This makes it a poor strategy for football players and other athletes who are itching to return to the action immediately after icing.

The researchers suggested that it is okay to ice sore muscles provided you don’t go right back to exercising. And they noted that more study is needed to learn more about the effects of icing, but this will be tough to accomplish since, for comparison purposes, there’s no placebo that feels like ice.

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Work Gossip is Good for You?

You might have heard that it's bad workplace etiquette to gossip, but if you've witnessed someone with bad behaviour, feel free to spread the news. "Prosocial" gossip - the kind that helps prevent others from being taken advantage of - does not only benefit the greater good, but also improves the health of the gossiper, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (via the ScienceDaily).

"Gossip gets a bad rap, but we're finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social order," said Robb Willer, a psychologist and co-author of the study.Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley says that gossip is actually therapeutic and can lower stress levels for participants. In one experiment, participants were hooked up to heart rate monitors as they observed two people playing a game. After a couple of rounds, the participants saw one player not playing by the rules, which caused their heart rates to increase. When the observers were able to pass along the "unsavory characters" to other people, their heart rates decreased.

"Spreading information about the person whom they had seen behave badly tended to make people feel better, quieting the frustration that drove their gossip," Willer said.

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In Mexico, never eat tacos with a fork and knife

Worried about spilling re-fried beans and salsa all over your front? Tough. Mexicans think that eating tacos with a fork and knife looks silly and, worse, snobby—kind of like eating a burger with silverware. So be polite: Eat with your hands.

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Surf the net, email, make calls - with your glasses!

The technology giant is close to launching a pair of futuristic glasses that would deliver all the services of a smartphone straight to the wearer’s eye. Featuring a miniature display on one lens, the hi-tech specs allow users to surf the internet or deal with text messages and emails without lifting a finger.

The screen is controlled with a ‘mouse’ which is moved simply by tilting your head. And should you still wish to actually talk to someone, it is believed the glasses will let you make calls using an in-built microphone. Reports suggest the device, which would revolutionise the smartphone market, could be available by the end of this year costing less than £380 – making it cheaper than Apple’s iPhone.

Users would also be able to see through the lenses as normal and go about their daily business, then with a flick of the head activate the display and start surfing. The glasses would use the same Google operating system that powers Android smartphones and tablets and would connect to the internet through 3G or next-generation 4G mobile networks.

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Police Records FPI Involved in 34 Violence Cases in 2010-2011

The police have recorded a total of 34 cases of violence or destructive behavior by FPI (Islam Defenders Front) members across the country in the period 2010-2011, a spokesman said.

"According to our records, the FPI engaged in violence and destructive behavior in 29 cases in 2010 and in 5 cases in 2011 in the following regions : West Java, Banten, Central Java, North Sumatra, and South Sumatra," Insp Gen Saud Usman Nasution, head of the National Police’s public relations division, said here Friday.

So far, he said, the police had mainly played a role in facilitating the central and regional governments in supervising and nurturing existing mass organizations to keep them from taking high-handed or arbitrary actions in exercising their freedom of expression. "There are certain rules that must be observed and if a violation happens, it is our job to legally process it."

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Indonesians Seem to be The Most Contented People on The World?

Despite economic woes,wars, conflicts and natural disasters the world is a happier place today than it was four years ago and Indonesians, Indians and Mexicans seem to be the most contented people on the planet.

More than three-quarters of people around the globe who were questioned in an international poll said they were happy with their lives and nearly a quarter described themselves as very happy. “The world is a happier place today and we can actually measure it because we have been tracking it,” said John Wright, senior vice president of Ipsos Global, which has surveyed the happiness of more than 18,000 people in 24 countries since 2007.

Brazil and Turkey rounded out the top five happiest nations, while Hungary, South Korea, Russia, Spain and Italy had the fewest number of happy people. Perhaps proving that money can’t buy happiness, residents of some of the world biggest economic powers, including the United States, Canada and Britain, fell in the middle of the happiness scale.

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Don't Even Think to Celebrate Valentine's Day in The Indonesia's City

Pekanbaru one of the cities in Indonesia, has officially banned the celebration of Valentine’s Day among school students through a circular issued by the local education office. "The ban on celebrating valentine’s day is official and a letter informing all schools in the city has been circulated," Yuzamri Yakub, head of Pekanbaru city’s education office, said on Monday.

The circular marked the first time for Pekanabaru to ban the celebration and it was intended to make students aware that love towards one’s neighbors should be shown at all times, not just on a particular day, he said. Information on the ban had been conveyed not only to teachers and students at junior and senior high schools but also at institutes of higher learning in the city, Yuzamri said.

"The ban is also meant to prevent extra-marital sex among young people as valentine’s day is identical with all sorts of things that deviate from religious norms," he said.

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Indonesian Police Arrest Alleged Serial Sex Killer

Indonesian police said Wednesday they had arrested a man who allegedly killed at least four men with tea laced with rat poison after having sex with them. The 24-year-old, identified as Mujianto, was arrested on Monday in Nganjuk district of East Java province for the killings committed since the middle of last year, local police chief Anggoro Sukartono told reporters.

“He confessed he had attempted to kill 15 people. He said he did it because he was jealous that his male lover was having a sexual relationship with other men,” he said. “Four of the victims died, two survived, and we have no idea what happened to the others,” he added.

Mujianto had offered his victims tea mixed with rat poison after he had sex with them, Sukartono said. Under Indonesian law, Mujianto could face the death penalty if convicted of premeditated murder.

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