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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You get stressed about the little stuff, why it's not so bad?

Chronic stress is linked to conditions like heart disease, but short-term stress actually has a positive side, pushing you to get things done-and succeed at them. "Stress triggers the hormone cortisol, which helps energize us, revving up our systems to handle the day," says Judith Orloff, MD, author of Emotional Freedom. "It also motivates us to do better on the things we care about and problem-solve."

So know that the brief stressed-out rush you get before a presentation at work will help you perform better, and when the car breaks down, a little stress will help you fix the situation quickly. Balance is key, though, so it's important to recharge your batteries every day so those once-in-awhile stressed moments don't turn into a constant thing, says Dr. Orloff. Her suggestions: Spend five minutes every day doing an activity or hobby you love, or if you prefer peace and quiet, sit in a dark room and breathe deeply.

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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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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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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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Age spots should really be called “sun spots”

Those brown spots that tend to crop up with age have little to do with the passing years, and much more to do with soaking up rays. “Age spots are the result of cumulative sun exposure and subsequent damage,” says Dr. Fusco.

“They appear because pigment cells have accumulated in the top layer of skin.” To prevent sunspots, apply sunscreen in the morning every single day—and every few hours afterward if you’ll be in direct sunlight. “The minimum SPF you should use is 30; be sure that it’s broad spectrum to block UVB and UVA rays.” advises Dr. Fusco. Aim to use a marble-sized amount of block for your face and a shot glass–sized amount for your body. Though age spots aren’t directly related to age, seborriheic keratosis, benign hereditary moles that usually stick out from your skin, are.

They vary in color from white to black, says Dr. Oppenheim, and tend to appear on the face, scalp and torso (but can show up anywhere except your palms, the soles of your feet and your mouth) as you grow older.

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Study: Coffee may boost fertility in men

"Studies have shown that caffeine has a positive effect on sperm motility-the ability of sperm to move toward an egg-and could increase your chances of [getting pregnant]," says John Wilcox, MD, FACOG, managing partner and reproductive endocrinologist at HRC Fertility in California.

In fact, a study conducted at the University of Sao Paulo found that sperm motility was markedly higher in coffee drinkers versus non coffee-drinkers. And it turns out that it doesn't matter whether you drink one or ten cups a day: The only detectable difference was found between coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers.

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Do animals truly smile?

According to Professor Nicholas Dodman, head of animal behavior at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, until recently, scientists have generally underestimated the emotional range of animals.

Dodman says that today it is widely accepted that mammals do experience primary emotions such as fear, sadness, anger, and happiness and perhaps even some secondary emotions like jealously. He points out that your pet might not understand the exact details of your hard day, but is sensitive enough to curl up and listen.

We can't be sure if the animals pictured here are truly smiling, but looking at them may make you smile.

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Diabetes Doubles Alzheimer's Risk

In a study, which included more than 1,000 men and women over age 60, researchers found that people with diabetes were twice as likely as the other study participants to develop Alzheimer’s disease within 15 years. They were also 1.75 times more likely to develop dementia of any kind.

“It’s really important for the public health to understand that diabetes is a significant risk factor for all of these types of dementia,” says Rachel Whitmer, PhD, an epidemiologist in the research division of Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a nonprofit health-care organization based in Oakland, Calif.

Whitmer, who studies risk factors for Alzheimer’s but wasn’t involved in the new research, stresses that many questions remain about the link between diabetes and dementia. The new study was “well done” and provides “really good evidence that people with diabetes are at greater risk,” she says, “but we really need to look at other studies to find out why.”

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Comet beats death, brushes up to sun and lives

A small comet survived what astronomers figured would be a sure death when it danced uncomfortably close to the broiling sun.

Comet Lovejoy, which was only discovered a couple of weeks ago, was supposed to melt Thursday night when it came close to where temperatures hit several million degrees. Astronomers had tracked 2,000 other sun-grazing comets make the same suicidal trip. None had ever survived.

But astronomers watching live with NASA telescopes first saw the sun's corona wiggle as Lovejoy went close to the sun. They were then shocked when a bright spot emerged on the sun's other side. Lovejoy lived.

"I was delighted when I saw it go into the sun and I was astounded when I saw something re-emerge," said U.S. Navy solar researcher Karl Battams.

Lovejoy didn't exactly come out of its hellish adventure unscathed. Only 10 percent of the comet — which was probably millions of tons — survived the encounter, said W. Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which tracked Lovejoy's death-defying plunge. And the comet lost something pretty important: its tail.

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Sleep on your back to prevent wrinkles

Ironically, beauty sleep can actually increase wrinkles. Over the years, habitually snoozing on your side or belly, with your face mashed into the pillow, gradually etches “sleep lines” that eventually become permanent.

According to a study published in Scandinavian Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Hand Surgery, side sleeping contributes to more wrinkling of the cheeks and chin, while slumbering facedown furrows the brow.

Sleeping on your back prevents sleep lines or may even reverse the problem. Getting enough Z’s spurs release of a “youth hormone” called human growth hormone, leading to thicker, healthier skin and fewer lines, says Nicholas Perricone, MD, author of The Wrinkle Cure.

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Facts about Blinking

All creatures great and small blink — except for fish, snakes, and other animals without eyelids. Then there are some special creatures — perhaps most famously hamsters — that wink, blinking only one eye at a time.

In 1927, W.P. Blount published the definitive guide to blinking in the animal kingdom titled “Studies of the Movements of the Eyelids of Animals: Blinking.” Among Blount’s findings: Sudanese monkeys blink like crazy, rats blink when they sneeze and goats blink at intervals of 30 to 60 seconds.

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Surprisingly Healthy Fruits: Guava

Eat just one cup of this South American fruit, and you're getting 5 times as much vitamin C as a medium orange (377 mg versus 83 mg). Like other red fruits, including tomatoes and watermelon, guava contains lycopene, which may help prevent heart disease. And according to research by microbiologists in Bangladesh, guava can even protect against foodborne pathogens such as Listeria and staph.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest released a report in June 2011 comparing the nutritional info of 50 popular fruits. They ranked them based on the percentages of certain nutrients—fiber, vitamin C, potassium, folate, iron, calcium, and antioxidant-packed pigments called carotenoids–in each serving. Guava beat out apples, bananas, and grapes to be the number one fruit.

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Babies are infrequent blinkers

Babies are infrequent blinkers: The jury is still out on exactly why human babies blink far less frequently than adults, usually just twice or less over the course of a minute. Additionally, a study found that children blink more frequently as they grow older, not reaching full “blink maturity” until the age of 14 or 15.

One theory about why babies blink less is that they sleep so much and thus don’t need to lubricate their eyes as frequently as adults do. Another theory claims that infants, when awake, are busy working their eyes (but not their eyelids) overtime to soak in visual information.

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Peneliti: Menganggur Lebih dari 6 Bulan Beresiko Sakit Mental

Peneliti dari Washington and Lee University menemukan menganggur selama lebih dari 25 minggu (6 bulan) dalam 1 tahun terakhir, maka akan mengalami 3 kali lebih mungkin menderita masalah kesehatan mental.

Temuan lain dalam penelitian ini adalah kondisi ini lebih besar terjadi pada orang yang memiliki pendidikan tinggi dibandingkan dengan orang yang pendidikannya kurang.

Pada studi ini peneliti melibatkan orang yang belum pernah didiagnosis memiliki masalah kesehatan emosional dalam kehidupannya. Lalu peneliti membandingkan kesehatan psikologis dari pekerja fulltime dengan pengangguran jangka pendek (kurang dari 25 minggu) serta orang yang sudah menganggur jangka panjang.

"Kami menemukan pengangguran jangka panjang 3 kali lebih mungkin berperang dengan tekanan psikologis dibanding orang yang bekerja," ujar Arthur Goldsmith, seperti dikutip dari HealthDay.

Goldsmith mengungkapkan ketika seseorang terkena pengangguran jangka panjang maka ia merasa kehilangan kendali atas kemampuannya untuk mencari nafkah dan mengurus keluarga sehingga ia khawatir dengan masa depannya. Kekhawatiran ini akan memicu gangguan psikologis seperti stres, depresi dan menurunnya kepercayaan dan harga diri.


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Membaca Karakter Tulisan Tangan Spasi Tak Beraturan

Dalam analisis tulisan tangan, segala sesuatu yang tidak beraturan menunjukkan kecenderungan yang kurang baik.

Jarak spasi tidak beraturan menunjukkan suasana hati yang tidak beraturan pula. Apabila terjadi pada anak dan remaja, diharapkan dengan berkembangnya kedewasaan mereka, hal ini dapat mereka atasi dengan baik. Jarak spasi tidak beraturan juga menunjukkan kecenderungan dan potensi kurang jujur.

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Choosing white bread to control your diet

A study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that when obese subjects incorporated whole grains into their diets, they lost more abdominal fat over the course of 12 weeks.

There are likely multiple factors at play, but the most notable is this: Whole grain foods pack in more fiber and an overall stronger nutritional package than their refined-grain counterparts.

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Usir Jerawat dengan Manisnya Madu

Pada waktu-waktu tertentu selama hidup seseorang, seperti saat pubertas, selama menstruasi dan menopause, hormon menyebabkan kelebihan produksi sebum, yang bila bercampur bakteri bisa menyebabkan jerawat.

Bakteri Proprionibacterium acnes atau P. acnes merupakan strain bakteri yang biasa hidup di kulit manusia tanpa menyebabkan kerusakan pada kulit. Namun bila produksi sebum makin banyak, bakteri ini bisa berkontribusi menginfeksi jerawat.

Sebelumnya telah diketahui bahwa madu bisa digunakan sebagai antibakteri. Hal ini berdasarkan studi yang dilakukan oleh University of Texas Health Science Center diketahui bahwa madu kaya akan gula, sehingga bisa membantu menciptakan lingkungan yang membuat bakteri tidak dapat bertahan hidup.

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Not drinking enough water

Adequate water intake is essential for all your body’s functions, and the more you drink, the better your chances of staying thin. In one University of Utah study, dieting participants who were instructed to drink two cups of water before each meal lost 30 percent more weight than their thirsty peers.

And you can magnify the effect by adding ice. German researchers found that six cups of cold water a day could prompt a metabolic boost that incinerates 50 daily calories. That’s enough to shed five pounds a year!

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Ciuman Bisa Cegah Gigi Berlubang?

Kuncinya terdapat pada air liur atau saliva. Air liur merupakan pelindung alami gigi. Saat sekresi dan kontak dengan gigi, air liur akan menetralkan asam yang akan terbentuk dari partikel makanan yang tinggal di mulut dan di antara gigi. Asam ini berpotensi berbahaya bagi email (enamel) gigi.

Air liur juga mengandung senyawa yang membunuh bakteri di dalam mulut. Bakteri yang tertinggal di gigi akan merusak email gigi dan menyebabkan gigi berlubang.

Selain itu, air liur juga kaya kalsium dan fosfat. Kalsium merupakan bahan utama pembentuk gigi. Kombinasi kalsium dan fosfat dalam air liur akan membangun kembali celah kecil di gigi di mana email gigi mungkin telah memudar.

Cara lain untuk mengeluarkan air liur dalam jumlah besar adalah dengan berciuman. Saat Anda berciuman, gerakan lidah akan menyebabkan sekresi air liur hingga 1 sendok teh untuk setiap menit ciuman, seperti dilansir toothachereliefreport.

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