But this night is somehow different. You suddenly become filled with a certain something. It’s a malaise that doesn’t let you do much more than click the remote control. You can’t exactly put your finger on what it is. Let’s call it the Sunday Night Blues.

Rather than relax, you actually begin to get worked up, even annoyed. It comes in waves. Then you realize you are grinding your teeth, dreading the predictability of tomorrow’s work day. It might be time to look for a new job.

[See 10 Ways to Use Social Media in Your Job Search.]

At some point, all of us will reach this crossroads. Maybe you’re there now. If you check off more than three items from the list below, it’s likely time to start actively looking for a better work arrangement.

Nightmares about work. There’s nothing worse than dreaming about work. It’s like spending hours at the office–without getting paid. The worst part is that employment nightmares can throw off your work-life balance, making you feel as if you have not had a healthy amount of time away from the office. Sometimes the dreams are so realistic, you wake up feeling like you’ve worked a 24-hour shift. These reflections of your subconscious might be sending you a message: Find a new job!

Boredom/predictability. When the minutes feel like hours, it’s time to move on. Boredom is a “gateway problem” to a host of ugly things. While the feeling might appear harmless, sustained periods of boredom can lead to a plethora of psychological and physical issues, including anxiety and depression. If you know everything your coworkers will do–before they do it–it’s time to go. Ennui is more than a mild irritant, it might be a telltale sign that a new job is needed.

Try, try, try. If you have spent the past year employing all of the tactics you’ve read on career advice blogs and in employment books, but keep winding up back in the same dark place, it’s time to find a new job. Sometimes advice can be summed up in two letters: G-O!

[See How to Choose a Career That's Best for You.]

Your Gut. Oftentimes, our minds and hearts will know the answer to a question. But rather than accept that, we ask anyone who will listen. And while these folks will do their best to deliver solid answers, the answer to seek new employment lies within. Ignore your instinct at your own peril. If a little voice keeps telling you to move on, you should listen up.

Management issues. If the people running the show appear confused, odds are, they are confused–and that doesn’t bode well for employees. Personnel can change, but company culture is much less likely to evolve quickly. Working amongst chaos is a major stressor, one that often outweighs a job’s perks. If your company doesn’t have their stuff together, you need to get your stuff together and leave.

Misaligned values. The ideal work scenario has you working for, and alongside, people who share a similar core value system with you. If the head honchos have different philosophical beliefs than you (i.e., let’s not recycle paper or let’s stay two hours late every night), the organization might not be a good fit for you.

Work is work. Every job should come with some fun. If the good times have been completely drained from your 9-to-5, you need to move on. Even employees conducting the most macabre jobs are able to share some laughs. If you find yourself working at Sourpuss Central, start sending out resumes and regain your inner child. Even a fake smile has a value!

[See Why a Quiet Office Is Bad News.]

Life change. As you collect your regular paychecks, life changes around you. Regularly evaluate your priorities. If you are planning to start a family or considering a cross-country move, it might be time to analyze how your current job stacks up against your new needs and wants. There’s no shame in changing, but it is a shame to not recognize that a change is needed.

Checked out. Helplessness and hopelessness have no place in positive lives. If work has made you question your own worth or value as an employee, you need to spruce up that resume.

Change in appearance. From weight gain or loss to bags under the eyes, if you’ve thrown in the towel with regards to your looks, or you find yourself either unable to eat or using food to pacify your angst, it may be time to punch up that resume. Appearance and confidence go hand-in-hand. Take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself if you like what you see.

Lack of sleep. Bad dreams are one thing, but insomnia brought on by the dread you feel waiting for the alarm clock to sound, is another. If you manage to catch a few winks, and they are restless and disturbed, take a hard look at your lifestyle. Is it the foods you are eating? A lack of exercise? Or is it your job?

Complaining about work. Some people just can’t leave their troubles at the office. They are defined by their jobs. If you suddenly find yourself consumed by work and unable to shake the negative attitude you have toward it, you may be heading down a dead-end path. In many cases, this behavior starts with a small work clique. Each member works the other ones up on how horrible everything job-related is. Ironically, you soon end up feeling isolated and miserable. Nothing productive comes out of chronic complaining, so get your butt in gear and put your money where your mouth is.

[See 10 Ways to Make Any Job Healthier.]

Job-search addiction. You start by checking once a day, then twice a day, before you know it, you’re practically living on job boards. The worst part is, you’re giving serious consideration to jobs that are unrelated to your skillset and pay substantially less than what your skills are worth. Check please!

Internet-search balance shift. Sure, most of us surf the Web at some point during our workday. But if you find that you are spending more and more time Web window shopping or treating fantasy football like it was reality football, you might as well start clearing out your desk. Give yourself this one-question quiz: Are you begging to be caught?

Your boss is cruel. Yelling. Manipulative games. Arrogance. If dealing with your boss is a royal pain and your company does not have the proper communication channels set up for you to address the issue, it might be time to move on. A bad boss might be tolerable, but a sadistic boss is unacceptable.

Your company doesn’t foster employee growth. Self motivation is exhausting. It’s a big plus to have your employer in your corner, helping you learn and grow as an employee. From tuition reimbursement to management mentoring programs, if your employer is not invested in you, you can’t expect to grow.

We want your additions to this list. What signs do you think are important to look for that indicate it’s time to find a new job?

Andrew G. Rosen is the founder and editor of Jobacle.com, a career advice blog. He is also the author ofHow to Quit Your Job and an established freelance blogger who is available for hire. Follow him on Twitter (@jobacle) or connect on LinkedIn.

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Knowing what to eat for peak performance may be as important before a big meeting as it is when training for a marathon. Athletes know how to load up on all the right foods and how to hydrate on a regular basis, in addition to fueling up before a big race or game.

Think of your job hunt from a total body perspective and consider the following suggestions to help improve performance in key areas:

[In Pictures: Ignore These 10 Outdated Pieces of Job-Search Advice.]

Thinking clearly, optimal brain function. Web MD suggests antioxidant-rich blueberries, omega-3 essential fatty acids such as salmon, and foods high in vitamin E, such as nuts and seeds. Unhydrogenated nut butters such as peanut butter, almond butter, and tahini may also help improve brain function. The article also suggests eating avocado to contribute to healthy blood flow and brain health. Other good “brain foods” include oatmeal, breads, brown rice, wheat germ, pomegranate juice, freshly brewed tea, and dark chocolate.

ArtBistro promotes incorporating flax into your diet, since it is “the best source of alphalinoleic, a healthy fat that enhances the performance of the cerebral cortex–where your brain processes sensory information.”

Other suggestions from ArtBistro to improve memory and focus include vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid, which “help produce red blood cells and improve your sense of wellbeing and mental clarity.” Other suggestions for B vitamin intake include whole grains like brown rice, as well as broccoli, parsley, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. Other important nutrients to help you focus include folic acid and vitamin K, found in leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and Swiss chard.

[See Mastering the New Freelance Economy.]

Problem-solving skills. The Online Education Database reminds readers of foods that help prepare your brain to solve complex problems. Some of their suggestions include high-quality olive oil, organic foods (with fewer toxins), and superfoods such as goji berries and raw foods. The article also reminds readers not to miss breakfast, which has long been considered an important meal for brain function.

Reducing anxiety, controlling stress. Eating yogurt and nuts can help reduce anxiety, according to a study by scientists in Slovakia. Joey Asher reports on Speechworks’ blog: “The scientists gave either amino-acid supplements or a placebo to a group of men and asked them to give a speech. The men who had taken the supplements experienced half as much anxiety according to measurements of stress hormones in their bloodstream. Yogurt and nuts have very high levels of the type of amino-acids used in the study.”

[See 6 Ways the World of Work is Changing.]

While we’re all rushed and busy, grabbing the fastest thing to eat before an interview is unlikely to improve performance. Do you need to be chewing on chard right before you interview? Of course not! Fitness Magazine suggests eating the following in moderation at least an hour before your interview: lean protein such as fish, chicken, low-fat cottage cheese, or an egg-white omelet and a slice of whole-grain bread or brown rice, along with one cup of fruit or vegetables. Their expert suggests including tea or coffee with your meal if it’s part of your routine.

Approach your job hunt as an athlete trains for a race–take care of your body and mind so you’ll be in great shape to perform at your next important interview.

Miriam Salpeter is a job search and social media consultant, career coach, author, speaker, resume writer and owner of Keppie Careers. She is author of Social Networking for Career Success . Miriam teaches job seekers and entrepreneurs how to incorporate social media tools along with traditional strategies to empower their success. Connect with her via Twitter @Keppie_Careers.

Copied from: http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/What-to-Eat-Before-an-usnews-1235479508.html?x=0

Hacking your Wii hasn’t been difficult, but it has required a somewhat detailed process. Now we have LetterBomb, which is an incredibly simple way to hack your Wii. It only takes about five minutes to accomplish. Here’s how to do it.

First things first, you’re going to need the following:

• A Nintendo Wii, obviously, but make sure it’s running System Menu 4.3
• An SD or SDHC card with some free space—it can have other stuff on it.

Step One: Get Your Wii’s MAC Address

Before we can do anything, we need to go find your Wii’s MAC Address. Go to your Wii’s home screen and click the Wii Options button. Once it loads, choose Wii Settings. From there, navigate to the second page and click the Internet button. Finally, click the Console Information button and you’ll have your Wii’s MAC address. Either write this down or just leave it up on your screen.

Step Two: Generate the LetterBomb.zip File

Now get on your computer and go to please.hackmii.com and enter your Wii’s MAC address. You’ll also need to type in what you see in the captcha image. Once you’ve filled those things out, cut the red or the blue wire. It doesn’t really matter. This will generate a LetterBomb.zip file that will start downloading.

Step Three: Prepare the SD Card

Now insert your SD or SDHC card into your computer, because we’re going to need to copy some files onto it. First, unzip the LetterBomb.zip file on your computer. Next, drag the contents of the zip to your SD or SDHC card. When it’s done copying, eject it, and put it in your Wii.

Step Four: Open the LetterBomb

Back on the Wii, head on over to the Wii Message Center. There’s going to be a new message for you with a bomb in it, but where that message is going to be will depend on your time zone and when you generated the file. In most cases, it will be in yesterday’s mail, but it could be today or a couple of days ago. You’ll know when you see it. When you’re ready to pull the trigger, just click on the LetterBomb message icon. The process will take about a minute, so be patient. You’ll have a hacked Wii when it’s done.

If you run into any issues along the way it’s probably because you don’t have the right version of the Wii System Menu. If you try to use LetterBomb with the wrong version, it’ll freeze your Wii. Not to worry—just force-reboot your Wii, make sure you update properly, and try again. Obviously you want to do the update beforehand, but in the event you forget it’s not really a big deal.

Step Five: Install BootMii and the Homebrew Channel

Once LetterBomb has done its thing, it’ll tell you to press 1 to continue. Do that and you’ll be able to use your WiiMote to start installing things. What you’re really interested in is the Homebrew Channel, but BootMii will provide you with some extra features (like backup). Once everything is installed, you’ll be all set.

Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5830367

Our days are filled with small, unused pockets of time during which most of us turn to smartphones for a short shot of Sudoku, bird-on-pig warfare, or some other brief distraction. Designer Stefan Pintaric fills those precious seconds with tiny but rewarding tasks that ultimately make him feel less preoccupied and stressed about work. He calls it being microproductive; here’s how it works.

When the clock strikes 5:00, or 6:00, or 11:30 (whenever it happens to be that you deem your work day over), it’s common to find relief through disconnecting—from your workplace, your clients or from whatever project is occupying your thoughts. This can be harder in practice than in concept: looming deadlines, demanding or irate customers, and one’s own perfectionist tendencies can mean the work day never really ends.

Paradoxically, I’ve found that one of the best ways to stop the constant preoccupation with work is to keep at it, filling my downtime with easily accomplishable yet rewarding tasks. This has become vastly more feasible with the advent of smartphones and tablets, and the ubiquitous presence of the laptop for most professionals.

The key to microproductivity is to eliminate the goal-setting, task-list mentality that we typically employ to keep on top of our workload. Microproductivity instead holds that getting anything done is better than getting nothing done. Don’t plan to finish a major task in an unrealistic time-frame; the point of the practice is to squeeze productivity out of whatever time you have.

Instead, consider some of the following points for staying productive on the go. You’ll find that nagging anxiety at the back of your mind will fade as you know you’re doing the most you can.

Identify true downtime.

True downtime is any time where you’re waiting for some prerequisite event to resolve in order for you to progress with whatever it is you want to do. The length of these waiting periods then determine what kind of small tasks you might be able to accomplish reasonably before your wait is over.

We encounter these periods of true downtime every day: the queue at the grocer, the elevator ride or the wait for the subway. Periods such as these already see us turning to our phones to check the time, or to see if we’ve got a new text message from last night’s date. These are the ideal times to get microproductive; rather than pushing through yet another level of Angry Birds, get something—anything—done instead.

You can do a lot in 30 seconds.

The smallest periods of downtime are the most lucrative from a productivity perspective: They happen with great frequency, adding up to a substantial amount time on the whole. However, since that sum-total time is divided into such small increments, it is important to use those increments for tasks which are realistically accomplish-able within them. Here are a few examples of 30 second tasks:

• Sort your email. Individual messages may vary wildly in length, meaning you might not be able to read a long proposal, but a quick glance at the subjects will let you sort them meaningfully so you can respond appropriately later.If you’re using Gmail, setup labels for different task groupings. The more detailed you get here, the more useful to your workflow. If you’re an editor, labels like “Rough Draft” “Final Review” and “Pre-Press” are examples of ways to tag your mail so that you can respond to it later. A designer might benefit simply from tagging the extensions of different attached filetypes—”.psd” “.css” “.ai”—from your teammates.
• Set Alarms. Every day has it’s own schedule, no matter how typically consistent your routine is. Use your elevator ride to set an alarm for when you want to start your lunch, and one 10 minutes before you want to return from it. Those “I lost track of the time” answers when you’re arriving late for a meeting will be a thing of the past.Further, you can time your tasks to ensure you’re on top of things. Again, as with your inbox, you don’t have to set every alarm you’ll need for the day in 30 seconds; just thinking of and setting a few will make your day easier.
• Take a “Note to Self”. Considering most cellular phones, intelligent or otherwise, have some kind of audio recording capacity, why waste time trying to type out a note to yourself when you could record your own voice? It may seem awkward at first, but as you get into the habit, you’ll quickly see that 30 seconds of audio will tend to contain more information—and more coherent information—than your hurried touchscreen or predictive-text memorandums. You’ll spend less time trying to decipher your own shorthand, and more time re-connecting with your Eureka moments.
• Update Your Project Status. Whether it’s using project management software, a shared Google Calendar, or an email list, quickly checking in with your team to let them know where you’re at with your task list is really valuable, and takes next to no time to do.
• Prune Your Contacts. Over the course of a given week, the number of people we communicate with in our professional lives can often lead to our having hundreds or thousands of contacts in our various lists. While retaining this information can be useful for repeat business, oftentimes this can lead to substantial bloat. When you have five different John Smiths and you only ever talk to one, consider eliminating a few of the others. The old fashioned Rolodex had one advantage over the cell phone: you had to be choosier about whom you put in there.
• Give out your card.Just because you’re not in a professional setting doesn’t mean you don’t have a professional opportunity in front of you. One of the best things you can do to promote yourself remains the tried and tested approach of giving out your card. Start thinking of it when you’re out and about on your daily errands; you’ll start to see opportunities you may have been ignoring.Introducing yourself and giving your card to your butcher may well result in his giving you a call to redesign his signage, build him a website, or get in touch with his sister who’s a major player at a local design firm. That 30-second handshake and card exchange can have huge payoffs down the road.

Ultimately, you’ll start to figure out how best to use your downtime to stay productive your way. The above examples hint at just a few of the activities that can be accomplished in a negligible amount of time, but as you add your own, you’ll find the rewards increase exponentially.

So the next time you’re on the escalator, in a line-up or waiting for the train, think about being microproductive—your inner taskmaster will thank you.

Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5846675/microproductivity-get-more-done-and-lower-your-work-stress-without-a-second-wasted

Image remixed using a photo by Alex Galt.

Myth 1: Never Use Wooden Cutting Boards with Meat

This rule, one that I myself have repeated, comes from the notion that using a wooden cutting board will result in tiny scratches and cuts from your knife, and if you use that cutting board with meat-especially raw meat-that all those meat juices will settle into those tiny cuts in the board, and no matter how much you scrub, those germs aren’t coming out. The point has even been made by people as esteemed as Alton Brown. The solution is to use plastic cutting boards, which can be dishwashed and sanitized, and therefore must be safer, right?

Unfortunately, there’s a great deal of research that disputes this notion. One of the most famous studies was conducted at the University of California: Davis, by Dean O. Cliver, Ph.D of the UC-Davis Food Safety Laboratory. His research points out that there’s no significant antibacterial benefit from using a plastic cutting board over a wood one. He notes that even if you apply bacteria to a wooden cutting board, its natural properties cause the bacteria to pass through the top layer of the wood and settle inside, where they’re very difficult to bring out unless you split the board open.

Although the bacteria that have disappeared from the wood surfaces are found alive inside the wood for some time after application, they evidently do not multiply, and they gradually die. They can be detected only by splitting or gouging the wood or by forcing water completely through from one surface to the other. If a sharp knife is used to cut into the work surfaces after used plastic or wood has been contaminated with bacteria and cleaned manually, more bacteria are recovered from a used plastic surface than from a used wood surface.

Dr. Cliver’s study tested 10 different hardwoods and 4 different plastic polymers. In the end, the result was a very scientific one: if you want a plastic cutting board, anti-bacterial properties is no reason to buy one. If you want a wooden cutting board, bacterial infection shouldn’t scare you away. Which is better? That’s a different discussion, but ultimately it’s more important that you take care to properly clean and disinfect whatever board you buy, regardless of what it’s made of. Oh, and don’t fall for plastic or other cutting boards that tout themselves as being coated or made with anti-microbial chemicals or materials, that’s largely junk science as well. Photo by Jarrod Lombardo.

Myth 2: Adding Salt to Water Changes the Boiling Point, Cooks Food Faster

This is one of those food myths that doesn’t want to die. You’ll hear it repeated by home cooks and professional chefs, but any first year Chemistry student (or in my case, a Physics student taking Applied Thermodynamics) will be able to show you how little the amount of salt you would add to a pot of boiling water in your kitchen actually alters the boiling point.

Yes, strictly speaking, adding salt to water will alter the boiling point, but the concentration of salt dissolved in the water is directly related to the increase in the boiling point. In order to change water’s boiling point appreciably, you would have to add so much table salt (and dissolve it completely) that the resulting salt water would be nearly inedible. In fact, the amount of salt you’re likely to add to a pot of water will only alter the boiling point of water by a few tenths of a degree Celsius at most.

So this is one of those food myths that rings of chemical truth, but only on scales that wouldn’t be applicable for cooking. One thing is for sure though, adding salt to your pasta water definitely makes the resulting pasta tasty.

Myth 3: Low Fat Foods Are Always Better For You

Alannah DiBona, a Boston based nutritionist and wellness counselor made this her number one food myth. She said:

“Without fat, the human body is unable to absorb a large percentage of the nutrients needed to survive. Additionally, fat deprivation prevents messages from being passed between neurotransmitters, resulting in all kinds of neural misfiring in the body! While good fats and bad fats do exist, the right fats in the proper amounts can actually aid in weight loss and cholesterol management.”

The high-fat/low-fat food myth is one that’s been around for a long, long time. Ultimately, it’s more important to flip over the food you’re about to buy and read the label, see what kinds of fats are in it, and then make an educated decision instead of immediately reaching for the low-fat version of whatever it is you’re planning to buy, thinking it’ll be healthier. In fact, many products that are “low-fat” are low in good fats as opposed to the bad ones, or substitute in other ingredients like sugars and sodium that you don’t want more of in your diet.

Seattle-based Registered Dietitian Andy Bellatti also called out this particular myth. He said, “A good intake of healthful fats is beneficial for cardiovascular health. Prioritize monounsaturated fats (avocados, olives, pecans, almonds, peanuts) and omega-3 fatty acids (hemp seeds, chia seeds, sea vegetables, wild salmon). Virgin coconut oil and dark chocolate (80% cocoa or higher) also offer healthful fatty acids. Many low-fat diets are high in sugar and refined carbohydrates (i.e.: white flour), which are increasingly becoming linked to increased rates of heart disease.” Photo by Bradley Gordon.

Myth 4: Dairy Is The Best Thing For Healthy Bones

When I asked Andy Bellatti about the most stubborn food myths he’s encountered, he noted that too many people confuse “dairy” with “calcium,” assume they’re the same thing, and think that dairy is the best thing for healthy and strong bones. He explained, “Dairy contains calcium, but so do dark-leafy greens. Milk is fortified with vitamin D, just like all milk alternatives. Additionally, bone health goes beyond calcium and vitamin D. Vitamin K is important for bone health (dark leafy greens have it, dairy doesn’t). Magnesium (present in foods like almonds, cashews, oatmeal, and potatoes, but missing in dairy products) also plays an important role in bone health.” Photo by Quinn Dombrowski.

Ultimately, if you’re concerned about bone health, you should make sure to get enough calcium in your diet, and while milk and cheese are good sources of it, they’re by no means the only sources. It’s important-and can be just as healthy-to branch out and make sure you’re eating dark leafy greens instead of just chugging down milk. Even the Harvard School of Public Health points out that milk isn’t the only, or even the best, source of calcium, as does the University of Missouri’s Nutrition “mythbusters.” If you’re looking for good sources of calcium and Vitamin D, consider collard greens, mustard greens, kale, and bok choy instead of milk.

Myth 5: Everyone Should Drink 64-Ounces or 8 Glasses of Water Every Day

This myth is a holdover from a poor attempt by a number of doctors who wanted to wage an ill-researched campaign against sodas and sugary drinks. Their hearts were in the right place, but the fact of the matter is that there’s no uniform rule for how much water a person should drink in a given day. Alannah DiBona explains, “Water’s been touted as the cure for all sins, and in some ways, it’s true—proper hydration is necessary for just about anything body and mind-related. However, sixty-four ounces per day isn’t going to always be the right number for you.” Photo by Michael McCullough.

My old nutritionist explained to me that I should try to drink my body weight in ounces of water, divided in half. She noted that’s a good guideline for most people, but also noted that it’s a goal—not a rule. When I asked her whether there would be real health benefits from it, she explained that it’s not going to make my body work better or somehow stave off disease magically, but it will give me energy, prevent dehydration, get me up away from my desk and walking to the water fountain, and she pointed out that often our bodies interpret thirst signals as hunger. It’s anecdotal, but I have to admit that drinking more water made me feel better by leaps and bounds.

While it’s important to hydrate, it’s not important to stick to an arbitrary rule defining how you hydrate, or how much you drink, or even where you get it, although water is obviously the best source of, well, water. “Nutrition is an individual science, and there will be days when your body and mind require less than the average recommendation,” DiBona explains. “Remember that water is available to you through all liquids, fruits, and vegetables, and that the mark of proper hydration is very light yellow-colored urine.”

Myth 6: High-Sodium Foods Taste Salty, So Avoid Salty Snacks

Andy Belatti pointed this one out when we spoke, and it’s especially important for people who are managing their salt and sodium intake because they’re at risk for hypertension or diabetes. While new research indicates that low-sodium diets may not be better for your heart, they definitely reduce your chances of high blood pressure or type II diabetes. The trouble with managing sodium though, is that not all high-sodium foods taste salty when you eat them.

“While surface salt (the type on pretzels and salted nuts) is noticeable, stealth sodium (that which is added during processing) is harder to taste. This is why many people don’t realize that a Dunkin’ Donuts corn muffin contains as much sodium as 9 McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets,” Belatti explains.

This fact is a testament to the importance of reading nutrition labels when you grocery shop, and why it’s important to look up nutrition information for your favorite foods at restaurants or fast-food eateries either on the web or in-store when you’re out for lunch or dinner. Sodium can lurk in strange and surprising places. Check out the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (at the NIH) for more tips on reducing your sodium intake, and what to watch out for.

Myth 7: Eating Eggs Will Jack Up Your Cholesterol

A number of you took me to task on this one the last time I insinuated that eggs may not be healthy, and rightfully so. Alannah Dibona cleared this one up once and for all, and notes: “More often than not, a person diagnosed with high cholesterol will go out of his or her way to avoid eggs, which is really unnecessary. The body’s cholesterol levels are influenced by certain saturated and trans fats; eggs contain very little saturated fat (1.5 grams of fat per large egg) and absolutely no trans fat. Depriving yourself of an egg means foregoing 13 naturally occurring vitamins and minerals (and a really delicious breakfast option).” Photo by Olaf Gradin.

Ultimately, eliminating eggs from your diet because you’re concerned about cholesterol will do absolutely nothing for you, and instead may actually be harmful because you’re missing out on the health benefits they have. The Harvard Medical School agrees, as does the Mayo Clinic, although they take a more metered approach to the issue, and suggest that if you love eggs, eat the whites and not the yolks. Both agree that even though the yolks have a lot of cholesterol, very little of it actually makes it into your bloodstream, where it matters.

Myth 8: Searing Meat Seals In Juices

19th century German chemist Justus von Liebig was one of the first people to propose that by applying very high temperatures to meat you would create a “sealed” layer of cooked meat through which liquid inside the meat couldn’t escape. Ever since then, the mantra has been repeated over and over again, specifically in reference to dry heating cuts of raw meat. Photo by Naotake Murayama.

The trouble is that Liebig’s experiment compared the liquid and nutrients from a piece of meat submerged in cold water which was gradually heated in that water and simmered in the cooking liquid with a dry piece of meat applied to an extremely hot surface. When considered this way, you can see why Liebig thought that searing meat “sealed in juices,” because the resulting meat was juicier than the meat that was essentially boiled to death.

However, in the book On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee finally makes a direct comparison between a seared piece of meat and an un-seared piece, both cooked with identical methods. The result was that the seared piece of meat actually retained fewer juices than the un-seared piece, and at the very least the searing did nothing to preserve the moisture inside the meat.

This debate is still one that rages today. There are plenty of people who think that searing meat does result in moister meat, while Maillard Reaction, which results in some delicious browning on the surface of the meat. At the end of the day, you should definitely sear your steaks—not because it “locks in juices,” but because it’s tasty.

Myth 9: Aluminum Foil and Cookware Is Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

If you haven’t heard this one in a while, good-it was repeated often in the late 80s and through the 90s, and even though it’s fallen out of fashion (largely because it’s just not true) there are still a lot of people who believe it. This myth has its roots in research from the 1960s and 1970s that showed elevated levels of aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The hyperbole alarm was subsequently sounded, and for years people were warned off of aluminum pots and pans, and even aluminum foil to store food.

Since those studies however, a great deal of research has been done into what possible connections aluminum may have with Alzheimer’s Disease, and at best has failed to show any substantive link or connection between aluminum and risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. At worst there have been conflicting results. Most experts at this stage believe any aluminum absorbed by the body is processed by the kidneys and urinated out, and it does not pose a threat for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Myth 10: Don’t Eat After 6/7/8PM

Both Andy Belatti and Alannah DiBona called this myth out in different ways. Andy went right for its throat, noting that it is “A silly weight-loss gimmick. What matters is what you’re eating throughout the day. Food eaten after 7 does not magically turn to fat. This is also a ridiculous ‘tip’ for someone who goes to bed at midnight or 1 AM. This tip often ‘works’ because people end up reducing their total caloric intake.” Photo by Ishikawa Ken.

He’s right: this myth comes from a half-scientific understanding of how digestion works. The idea is that if you eat too late and go to bed on a full stomach, your body’s metabolism will slow down and instead of burning the food you just ate, you’ll turn it all into fat and gain weight. That statement is only partially true, and isn’t universal for all people. While it’s true your metabolism slows down when you go to sleep, it doesn’t stop, and you still churn through the food in your stomach, albeit slower. If your diet, exercise, and activity habits mean that a meal is more likely to metabolize into fat because you sit at a desk all day, eating it at 5pm versus 7pm isn’t going to change that.

In reality, what really happens for the people who swear by this trick is that they don’t wind up eating breakfast the following morning on top of a stomach full of food, and that they’ve blocked off areas of their night when they’re not consuming food-as opposed to someone who would be tempted to have a late-night snack. In essence, they’re just eating less overall. This myth is so popular that the ADA has a page dedicated to debunking it.

Belatti also makes the point that if you’re the type of person who’s up very late, setting an arbitrary time to stop eating at night isn’t going to help you lose weight, it’s just going to make you skip a meal. DiBona had something specific to say about meal skipping, and how dangerous it can be: “Just several years ago, I remember reading in Cosmopolitan magazine that skipping breakfast or lunch following a “night of indulgence” could aid in one’s efforts to lose weight. The editors couldn’t have been more wrong. If a meal is skipped, the body begins a process of metabolic slowing commonly referred to as ‘starvation mode.’” She continued, “Additionally, surges of hormones then encourage overeating at the next meal, resulting in a higher caloric intake at the day’s end. Keeping one’s blood sugar balanced with small meals and snacks throughout the day is a much more successful approach for weight maintenance and mental alertness.”

Bonus Myth: Wine Has Health Benefits, Beer and Liquor Do Not

Cheers, everyone: while studies outlining the health benefits of wine make for great headlines, it’s commonly accepted that in addition to the antioxidants in wine, all alcohols-when consumed in moderate doses-can raise the body’s levels of HDL, or the “good cholesterol.” Alannah DiBona explains: “Wine (as well as beer, liquors, and all types of alcohol) in moderate doses raise the body’s levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, which protects the heart against the plaque build up that may cause strokes and heart attacks. As Europeans have proved for centuries, 1 to 2 alcoholic beverages per day helps to reduce the risks of heart disease.”

While we’re not going to tell you to go out and develop an alcohol problem in the name of good heart health and lower cholesterol, a glass of wine or a couple of beers can actually reduce your risk for heart disease when combined with a good diet and exercise. Just be careful of the calories you intake when drinking alcohol-that bottle of wine or six-pack of beer isn’t calorie-free, you know.

How to Debunk Your Own Food Myths

Some of the most persistent food myths are the ones that are considered common knowledge, or the ones that have been long disproven but were trumpeted loudly when they were “discovered” but never formally rebutted so much when they were debunked. If there’s anything I learned in my years as a scientist and a student, it was to always keep an open mind. Not so open that your brains fall out, mind you, but open enough that you’re willing to challenge your own deeply held beliefs in the light of new evidence that contradicts them. Photo by emokson.

Keeping an open mind is only part of the battle however: you also need to seek out and pay attention to reputable sources of information when you’re reading about or researching food or nutrition science. The Cleveland Clinic has an excellent guide to considering reputable sources on the web. We also suggest checking up on food news and new research with the American Dietetic Association, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Information Center, and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthfinder.gov portal for reliable food and health information. Also, don’t ever hesitate to seek out peer-reviewed scientific studies and research to prove or disprove a point.

It’s all too easy on the internet to demand someone produce a study when they present an idea you disagree with-it’s another thing to look for it yourself, or to similarly concede when they do so, instead of simply finding a new vector of attack.

One last note: common sense reigns king: if some tip or magical diet truism seems too good to be true, or too simple to be uniformly true for all people, it probably is.

Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5847591/10-stubborn-food-myths-that-just-wont-die

Extreme exercise programs like P90X, CrossFit, and Insanitywill without a doubt kick you into the best shape of your life in a very short amount of time—but only if you stick with their crazy-for-most routines. The majority of people (trainers I’ve spoken with say something like 9 out of 10) give up on these workouts because they’re really intense and require an hour almost every day to do them.

We’ve created a workout that borrows a few of the best ideas from these popular, though extreme, fitness programs, but tailored the workout to be easier for the average person to stick with, and we’ve plugged it into Fleetly, a group exercising webapp and iPhone app, so we can all work towards a shared goal of getting fit. It’s equipment-free, it’s something anyone can incorporate in their day regardless of their current fitness level, but it’s still about incorporating fitness in your life. This is The Lifehacker Workout.

A Workout That’s Doable and Well-Rounded

I personally got through about a third of the P90X program before a medical emergency interrupted my progress; all it takes is an interruption, big or small, to feel dissuaded (or use as an excuse to stop), especially when the bar is so high. Honestly, though: I was ready for less pain.

So I turned to personal trainer and fitness competition champion Gillian Mounsey to help develop a more realistic program: One that provides variety, works out your core muscle groups with strength and cardio exercises, and won’t make you feel like you’re dying ten minutes into the exercises. Lifehacker member The Other Half (who is an independent Beachbody coach in addition to having many other talents) offered some great insights as well.

Then there’s the inclusion of the free group-exercise tool, Fleetly. Exercising in groups helps team members stay motivated and achieve greater fitness goals. Thanks to technology we can all exercise together, in a way, even if we’re actually working out on our own in separate homes.

Why This Workout?

The Lifehacker Workout is designed so you won’t need any equipment except a deck of cards and, for tracking your walks or runs, a pedometer or app on your smartphone (many running/walking apps have built-in pedometers); previously mentioned Gmaps Pedometer is something you can use to calculate distance before or after your walk too. This means you can do the workout just about anywhere—and have no excuse to procrastinate. We’re starting the workout challenge in the next week or two, in fact. (More on that in a bit.)

Additionally, it’s a 3-day a week program that only takes 30-40 minutes a day. Because we’re not doing the 1-hour a day, 6 days a week more demanding P90X regimen, we’re working out our whole body every time (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), using good, basic movements that are easy to make more difficult as we progress.

For additional training, we’ve added an optional 4th day (Sunday) with more targeted workouts that vary each week. For those more intense workouts, however, you’ll need some equipment to get the most benefit: resistance bands or dumbbells at least, a pull-up bar, and maybe a bench.

To be clear, this workout isn’t designed for building mass or getting into “beach body” shape in the quickest time possible. It’s designed for normal people, and it’s scalable to each person’s level, whether you tend to sit at your desk way too long or are more physically active.

Join the Challenge on Fleetly

One of the benefits of this program, of course, is that we’re doing it together. We’re setting up a group challenge on Fleetly for everyone who wants to join us. Once you log a certain number of workouts for the month, you’ll get your special Lifehacker medal. (It’s not about the badges, points, or other trappings, though, as much as we’re all getting it done.)

We’ll update and repost this article with a link to the challenge when we’re ready to begin (in about a week or two) so you can participate, but you can get started with the Lifehacker Workout, of course, as soon as you want. Like now:

The Lifehacker Workout

Ready? Here’s an overview of the schedule. Click on the links below to jump to that day’s exercises (or just click through the days in the Lifehacker sidebar on the right). You’ll be able to see these shared workouts and associated videos on Fleetly too (chosen precisely for its group challenges and sharing of workouts).

Monday: 30-40 minute Full Body Workout
Wednesday: Deck of Cards Workout
Friday: 30-40 minute Full Body Workout
Sunday: Optional Targeted Workout

A Few More Words Before Getting Started

When beginning any exercise program, remember to take it slow, listen to your body, and build it up gradually. Also don’t forget to add in some stretching before and after exercising.

Finally, the importance of what you eat when you’re training or trying to make a significant difference in your fitness level can’t be over-emphasized. When upgrading your fitness routine, also don’t forget to upgrade your eating and sleep habits as well.

See you all at the virtual gym soon! Photo remixed from originals by Christos Georghiou and Slobodan Djajic.

Thanks to Gillian and The Other Half for their time and advice developing this plan.

Gillian Mounsey has a B.S in Exercise Science from Hofstra University and has been a personal trainer for over 15 years. When she is not training, coaching or conducting workshops Gillian devotes her time to raising funds and awareness for Hope for the Warriors™ and she also runs her own non-profit initiative, Live Fit America. Her numerous athletic accomplishments include winning first place in the nation in the 1995 United States Marine Corps National Youth Physical Fitness Championship (a battery of events including max push-ups, max pull-ups, max sit-ups in 2 minutes, 300 yard shuttle run and broad jump), taking 3rd place in the 2008 CrossFit Games and most recently, in July, taking 1st place in the 69kg weight class of the 2011 Liberty open North Texas Weightlifting Meet.

You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5849409/the-lifehacker-workout-exercise-for-normal-people

In this age of online sleuthery, everyone’s got a horror story about using the internet in uncovering how some guy they were dating lied and said he was a doctor when he was really a nurse, or said he was single when he was really married, or insisted he was a professional athlete when he was really Raffi. A class being offered in New York City promises to accelerate the ongoing investigation of the background of every man in America, giving women the tools, confidence, and unrelenting suspicion and paranoia they need in order to successfully terrify themselves out of any relationship. But we don’t think the class goes far enough.

Sure, the class suggests women vet their dates by calling their alleged alma mater’s alumni relations office and telling them that you’re trying to get in touch with an old classmate. It also suggests double checking claims of bilinguality by tricking him into a three way call with someone who speaks another language.

A truly dedicated snoop would go much further than checking court records for 10 year old underage drinking arrests or scanning old vacation pictures for ex girlfriends and then confronting him about it. If you really want to know the truth, you have to go for the jugular of any potential lie that he has ever told. Try these not-for-the-faint-of-heart tips to make sure he’s double extra super not lying, if you can stomach it.

• Put a tiny webcam on his dog’s collar. Dog collars are absurd, and men are oblivious, so your manfriend won’t notice an extra bauble on Fido’s neck bling. Dogs are also the perverts of the domesticated animal world and love watching their humans have sex. If he’s messing around on you, a dog collar camera is the way to go. Pretty sure you can get them from Skymall.
• Break into his house when he’s not home. Put truth serum in all of the liquids in his fridge. Make sure you’re around when he drinks something from his fridge. And, uh, don’t drink from there yourself, or you’ll end up telling him that he’s consumed truth serum and the gig’s up.
• Hire your sexiest friend to hit on him and trying to trick him into cheating on you. In an unforeseeable plot twist, your boyfriend’s best friend and your sexy decoy friend fall in love while he thinks that she’s hitting on your boyfriend. You will be played by Ginnifer Goodwin in this scenario.
• Uncover his family’s heritage using the internet and plan a romantic vacation to his family’s ancestral town without telling him of your investigation. When you’re there, scour the streets for a guy who looks like an older version of your boyfriend and see if he’s grown any additional chins. If he has, your boyfriend will also probably have chin-growth in his future, and if you’re the kind of superficial person who cares about that kind of thing, you’ll want to break up with him while he’s still good looking.
• Using the Freedom of Information Act, request copies of his ex-girlfriends’ medical records. If the hospital won’t comply with your request, impersonate his ex girlfriends and request them yourself.
• Rob the bank where he does his checking, and make sure none of the money has lipstick or long blonde hairs on it. If you find either, assume it’s because he is secretly married.
• Use a blacklight on all of his belongings to make sure he doesn’t have an internet porn addiction. You’ll be able to tell if he’s been ejaculating by his computer if the entire thing glows under blacklight.
• Start a fake Facebook account and with it, friend all of his friends so you can see everyone’s profile. Use your fake Facebook account to hit on your boyfriend. Here’s a suggested flirty message: “We have so many friends in common! I can’t believe I’ve never run into you! I’m sure I’d remember you ” When sending facetious flirtation over the internet, don’t forget to punctuate every sentence with an exclamation point and include only the horniest emoticons. Don’t tell him it’s you who set up the profile.
• Buy your own hot air balloon and secretly follow him to work in it. Hover above his place of business to make sure he isn’t sneaking around. Even though hot air balloons are the clowns of the sky (they’re colorful, scary, and no one likes them, but here we are in 2011 and hot air balloons/clowns are still A Thing), this will give you a bird’s eye view of just how far your obsession has gone.
• If you’re suspicious of any female friends, find out what they’re allergic to and cover your manfriend’s coat with a fine dust of the allergen every day. This will ensure the friend breaks out in hives and momentarily becomes so swollen that your boyfriend couldn’t possibly cheat on you.
• Call his kindergarten teacher and ask her if the man ever pooped his pants during school. If the answer is yes, he’s probably a serial killer.
• Utilize GPS trackers on whatever belongings of his you can.Get creative. Try his shoes, his car, and especially his underwear. If he doesn’t wear underwear, you shouldn’t be dating him in the first place, because men who routinely don’t wear underwear are a special kind of depraved. Trust me on this one.

Copied from: http://jezebel.com/5850528/twelve-completely-foolproof-and-not+at+all+crazy-ways-to-make-sure-hes-not-lying

Stress is an unpleasant fact of life. We all experience it for various reasons, and we all try to come up with ways of coping with it—some with more success than others. So what exactly is stress doing to your mind (and body) when you’re staring down a deadline? And what can you do to power through it?

The real problem with stress is that, for such a well understood and universally experienced condition, as a society we deal with it so poorly that it leads to many of our most lethal illnesses and long-term health problems. High blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, stroke, obesity, and insomnia are all medical conditions across the spectrum that can be related to or directly influenced by high stress as an environmental condition.

In order to cut through some of that fog, let’s take a brief look at what stress is, how it impacts us on a physical and mental level, and finally what we can do about it, with the help of some experts. Photo by bottled_void.

Defining Stress: Acute and Chronic

Everyone experiences stress in some way, shape, or form. We all recognize when we’re in stressful situations, and we all know when we’re stressed. At the same time, stress is more than just a feeling that we have a lot to deal with. For the purposes of our explainer, we’re focusing on so-called “bad stress,” as opposed to “good stress,” like the kind of you experience on a roller coaster (if you went on willingly), when you get a big promotion, or kiss someone for the first time. Aside from good stress, there are primarily two types of stress: Acute (short-term) stress that’s usually a response to a specific influence (called a stressor), and chronic (long-term) stress that sticks with you and could either have sprung from a short-term stress that stuck with you, or a constant state of stress that you’re under due to persistent stressors and conditions. Photo by Becky Wetherington.

Acute Stress: Acute stress is the type of stress you experience when you have an immediate reaction to something you’re presented with. This is the “in the moment” kind of fight or flight response that you have when you have to speak in a meeting, your boss just asked you to stay late, you’re startled by a sudden noise, or someone on the internet makes a ill-informed comment about your favorite smartphone platform/operating system/hardware manufacturer. (How could they!?)

Acute stress is defined by the fact that it’s immediate and short term. In most cases, once the stressor has been removed, your body and mind return to a normal state.

Chronic Stress: Chronic stress is entirely different, and is characterized by its long-term nature. This is the type of stress that you feel that you’re under every day, with no reprieve from the things that make you feel stressed. Most chronic stressors are situations, for example, in which you dislike your job and detest going every day, being there all day, and thinking about it when you leave. Living paycheck-to-paycheck and struggling with financial security issues is another common source of chronic stress that many people are familiar with.

Its these types of chronic stress situations that are the most dangerous. They keep your body’s defenses activated and heightened longer than is generally healthy, and unfortunately more and more of us are living under constant conditions that create stress. Add to this the fact that “coping with stress” isn’t exactly a topic you learn in school and you have a recipe for a lot of very unhappy people.

What’s Actually Happening When You’re Stressed

Your body shows signs of stress in two ways: first, the rush of hormones that elevate your heart rate, boost your blood pressure, and stop your digestion, and then second the symptoms that you experience and are aware of, like clenched teeth, headaches, and emotional upset.

Most of us can tell when we’re stressed momentarily, or are just feeling stressed out generally, but there’s a lot going on inside our bodies when we’re stressed that play a role in our health.

Symptoms: The most common and recognizable symptoms of stress are the ones most of us know all too well: insomnia, headaches, jaw pain, back and neck pain, stuttering, heartburn and nausea, nervousness and anxiety, fidgeting, nail-biting, lateness and trouble focusing, and a lack of interest in work or activities that are normally interesting. The American Institute of Stress (AIS) has a list of 50 common signs and symptoms of stressthat include these, but also note a number of other symptoms that you may not have immediately associated with stress and not another condition like depression.

For example, behavioral changes that lead to other conditions can also be signs of stress, like addictive tendencies, a sudden interest in smoking, alcohol, excessive eating, or gambling, or any other addictive behavior that can be interpreted as an escape from chronic stressors. Often, even subconsciously, many of us try to escape stressful situations or conditions by blocking them out or escaping by way of anything that makes us feel better. Even if it’s fleeting, it’s common to search out an escape so you can relax for a while. Photo by The American Institute of Stress.

I spoke with Roger S. Gil, MAMFT, about some of the less productive ways people cope with stress, and he highlighted that trying to escape without dealing with the actual stressor is more common than you may think. “Overeating, alcohol/substance abuse, displaced anger, denial, defensiveness, etc. All are signs of avoidance and coping strategies that are meant to protect the ego from the discomfort caused by the stressor…and none of them do anything about the stressor,” he explained. “Withdrawing (i.e. checking out mentally) from the situation at hand is something I see A LOT of in my work with couples. For example a husband may withdraw into his own little world when his wife complains about something. Instead of hearing her concerns, he pulls away and encourages her to nag him some more…which causes more withdrawal.”

These behavioral changes cut both ways though: the AIS notes that stress reactions can also lead to isolation, loneliness, and severe depression as well. If you’ve been suddenly feeling alone, forgetful, overly defensive, disorganized, uninterested in your everyday life, overwhelmed by what’s going on around you to the point where you need to lie about them, and having difficulty communicating with others, it’s possible that chronic, poorly managed stress may be part of the problem.

Physiological Effects of Stress: While stress is most often discussed in terms of how it changes our mental and emotional condition, stressors and stressful situations also have a profound impact on our bodies. Stressors, whether they’re acute or chronic, immediately set off the body’s fight-or-flight response, flooding your system with stress hormones like norepinephrine and cortisol that are meant to give you a needed boost in dangerous situations. Image via Wikipedia.

In short and small bursts, those hormones can make you more alert, more perceptive, raise your heart rate so your muscles get more blood to them, and raise your breathing rate so you get more oxygen into your lungs. Your digestive processes stop entirely so your body doesn’t waste energy processing food when it needs all the energy it can muster to survive. It’s a good thing if, say, you’re dashing across a busy street or escaping a burning building, but keeping your body’s fight or flight response turned on all the time and those stress hormones at high levels in your body is unhealthy, as this eHealth article explains.

If these hormones stay in your system for too long, they can eventually lead to high blood pressure and increased heart rate, stress-induced hypertension and stroke risk, ulcers and other gastrointestinal distress, a suppressed immune system, fatigue, sexual issues like impotence and decreased libido. After all, those stress hormones are meant to be in our systems for a short period while we deal with an acute stressor, at a time where we need all of our faculties about us. Over the long term, keeping the body on full alert is more of a detriment than a benefit.

What You Can Do About Stress

Once you recognize the effects of stress and understand the damage you’re doing to your body by not coming up with ways to cope with the stress that you’re under, it’s time to do something about it. I spoke with clinical psychologist Jeffrey DeGroat, PhD about some of the ways you can reduce the impact that chronic stress has on you and how to cope with acute stressors.

Dealing with Acute Stressors: If the stressor is acute and temporary, Dr. DeGroat suggests applying simple relaxation techniques like deep breathing, to calm the mind and the body so you can get the clarity you need to address the situation. He proposes taking a 10-second breathing cycle: breathe in for four seconds, and then out for six seconds. “Works as a thought distraction,” he says, “as well as physically slowing down heart rate. This is a good technique to use anytime and anywhere.” Photo by Shawn Rossi.

Previously mentioned app CalmDown for Mac is a utility designed just for situations like this: it encourages you to take a deep breath (or a few) so you can step back from the stressor for a moment, gather your thoughts, and push through the fog of frustration and anger that often come with stressors.

I also spoke with Roger Gil about dealing with stressful situations and he reinforced the point: “Stressors like these can produce physical responses at first; so if you’re heart is racing, you’re short of breath, or you feel your muscles tightening somewhere in your body, know that you’re feeling a physiological stress response. In those cases, channeling your awareness of your body can sometimes distract a person away from the area of the body having the stress response.” Recognizing that you’re having a physical reaction will help you calm down and deal with the situation the way you really want to, as opposed to letting it stew in your mind only to come up with what you wanted to say 15 minutes after you should have said it.

In that vein, Dr. DeGroat explains that figuring out what you wanted to say a few minutes after you said it is very common, and often a result of being unprepared for the stressful situation you’re presented with. Aside from making sure to be ready for those situations in advance if you can be, he suggests acknowledging that you’re stressed in the situation and telling the person or people you’re dealing with that you’ll get back to them later. Photo by Sasha Wolff.

“Rather than responding immediately with something we may regret later, or not saying anything at all,” he says, “another option might be to indicate to the person that you’ll talk to them later about the situation. For example, [imagine] you find out that a co-worker is dating an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend of yours. Rather than yelling at them and making yourself look out of control, or saying ‘oh, that’s cool,’ when you’re really upset about it, you could say, ‘let’s not get into this right now.’ This will give you some time to collect your thoughts and approach them on your terms and on your time.” Time, as Dr. DeGroat explains, is key to defusing acute stressors, letting your body and mind return to normal, and giving yourself the space to deal with them in a healthy way.

Dealing with Chronic Stressors: Stressors that you deal with on a daily basis or that are always hanging over your head are a different matter entirely. Usually they give you a little more time and space to deal with the thing that’s making you stressed, and there are other relaxation techniques for stressors that may not require action on your part right away, or stressors that are always lurking in the background, like your boss, for example.

Visualization is one way to relax yourself when you’re presented with a stressor that you don’t need to respond to immediately. Dr. DeGroat suggests that if you can, take five to ten minutes to immerse yourself in the most relaxing environment you can possibly imagine, whether it’s green fields, a chair by the sea, or your favorite easy chair at home. Focus on as much of that environment as possible, trying to manifest the sounds, smells, and details about it in your head. The more you do this, the farther away you’ll get from the thing that’s bothering you. It won’t make that thing go away, but it will give you a little clarity of mind and distance from the stressor. Photo by Gabriel Pollard.

If you have additional time to relax and some space to be alone, Dr. DeGroat suggests progressive muscle relaxation to defuse some of the natural tension that comes with being stressed. “Systematically tense and relax muscle groups, beginning at your toes and working your way all to the top of your head. [This] serves as a distraction from current stressors and can help reduce physical tension that often accompanies stress.”

Another tip Dr. DeGroat offers is to identify whether level of stress and your response to it is realistic or unrealistic when you’re in the middle of it. If it’s realistic, as in anyone would respond the same way and there’s something you can do about it (like your computer froze or you just dropped something,) then address the situation and move on. If the response is unrealistic and others may not respond the same way (traffic isn’t moving fast enough or security lines at the airport are too slow,) then address yourself: calm down, step back, and try to relax.

The first step to addressing yourself is to challenge the way you’re thinking about the stressor. “Challenging these automatic thoughts that often hijack our minds and promote stress has been shown in research to be a great way to help break the patterns of thinking & behaving that are counterproductive/harmful,” Roger Gil explained. “Once the ‘mental battle’ is won, the IRL battle is more easily handled.”

Granted, none of these measures have to be practiced only in the context of chronic stress, but it is more likely that if your boss is getting on your nerves again today or the rent is due and you’re worried about being able to afford groceries, you’re more likely to take a few minutes and address how you feel so you can approach the issues in a clear manner than you are if you’re stuck in a meeting and asked to speak on a topic you weren’t ready for.

How to Deal with Stress In the Future

When I asked Dr. DeGroat how we could deal with certain kinds of stress that seem to crop up from time to time, like an overbearing extended family or an aggressive and disrespectful employer, he pointed out that while there are ways to deal with each situation on its own merits, much of the stress that gets to us the most comes from relationships. “Really, I believe stress in relationships (occupational, family, social), often includes difficulties with setting and maintaining boundaries. Others seem to expect too much from us. Rather than setting our own limits/boundaries, we allow others to cross these boundaries, and end up feeling irritated and resentful. One of the best ways to prevent stress in relationships is to identify our own limits/boundaries and hold to them,” he says. Photo by Joel Mendoza.

In some cases, it may simply be better to remove yourself from chronic stressors if you’re having difficulty adapting to them or minimizing them. After all, if your job is wearing you down and there’s no improving it, it may be time to look for a new job. If your relationship is so stressful it’s destructive for everyone in it, it may be time to break it off, and if your apartment is run down and your landlord won’t fix it, it’s time to move out. There are plenty of good reasons to learn to cope with stress, but there are other equally good reasons to remove the stress from your life when you can.

To that end, there’s no real way to live a completely stress-free life. Remember, there are positive stressors as well as negative ones, and the positive ones are usually good experiences that we enjoy or seek out. The same applies for negative stressors: they’re bound to happen eventually and avoiding them is a futile effort. The key is in knowing how to deal with them, and how to minimize their effect on you.

If the stress you’re experiencing is chronic, consider other activities like taking up a hobby, meditating, or traveling—anything that can take your mind off of those stressors and provide a healthy outlet where you can relax. “Other helpful stressful coping mechanisms are exercise, doing an activity you’re good at that won’t worsen the stress (e.g. cooking, video games, etc), and watching a very engrossing movie/TV show,” Gil said, “Sometimes interrupting the state of stress a person is in with an activity they enjoy is enough to keep them from losing control.”

There’s no magic formula for dealing with stress, but employing coping mechanisms that give you distance, helps you get through the moment, and at best minimizes the overall impact the stressor has on you are a good way to stay healthy, happy, and productive. Photo by Jacob Bøtter.

“It is how we approach it that can cause us problems, or allow us to grow. The more control we can find within a situation, or over ourselves, the more likely we will grow from the situation,” Dr. DeGroat explained, “The more we are able to identify and act upon the control and choice we have in situations, the less debilitating the stress will be.”

Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5836879/what-stress-actually-does-to-you-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

We’re celebrating Labor Day here in the states (or “Labour Day” in Canada), which means the government’s celebrating your hard work by giving you the day off. While long weekends are great, if you don’t take a moment to unwind they don’t do you much good. Make your day off count and check out some of our favorite ways to relax and recharge.

Recognize and Repair Burnout

You want to avoid burnout, but sometimes you don’t recognize the signs or the severity of the problem. Here are a few articles that explain how and why you get stressed out plus what you can do about it.

Why Technology Is So Addictive, and How You Can Avoid Tech Burnout

We’re surrounded by gadgets that demand our attention, constantly fragmenting our ability to properly focus on the task at hand. Living with technology doesn’t mean we have to live with an addiction, however. More »

Burnout and How to Deal With It

Developer and blogger Jeremy Hutchings knows what it’s like to work yourself to the bone and end up completely burned out. He also has some great suggestions for how to deal with it. More »

Exercise Your Mind and Body

Not all exercise has to be work. Meditation and yoga are two great ways to keep your mind and body active without the process feeling like work. We’ve got guides to help you get started with both.

A Guide to Meditation for the Rest of Us

Believe it or not, you can improve your concentration and slow down your day-to-day life with meditation without ever uttering the word “chakra.” Incense, yoga pants, and annoying dinner conversation are also optional. More »

How to Find the Right Style of Yoga for You

Yoga offers a host of health benefits, including stress relief and mental clarity, but many people don’t think it’s for them. There are, however, so many approaches to yoga-Ashtanga is a fast-paced flowing style while Kripalu combines gentle movements with a philosophy of compassion and mindfulness-that if you are interested, you should be able to find a yoga style that fits your needs and reap these great benefits. Here’s how to get started (or continue) on your individual yoga path. More »

Learn How to Improve Your Sleep

Sleep is about as relaxed as you get, and if you want to recharge you’re going to need to sneak a few hours here and there. These posts can help you find time for naps and improve your overall quality of sleep.

End Your Insomnia, Snoring, and Other Common Sleep Problems with These Expert Tips

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How to Reboot Your Sleep Cycle and Get the Rest You Deserve

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An Expert’s Guide to Napping

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How I Achieved Better Sleep with the Help of Technology

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How to Get Away with Sleeping at Work

A lack of sleep is like being drunk on the job, which is probably more detrimental to your productivity than actually taking a quick nap break during your work hours. If you need to get away with sleeping on the job, here are a few ways to do it. More »

Pzizz Helps You Get to Sleep Faster

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Make Changes to Improve Your Work Life

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Top 10 Tips and Tricks for Making Your Work Life Better

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How to Stop Working and Go Home At Night

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How to Ergonomically Optimize Your Workspace

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Just Have Some Fun

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How to Turn Your Computer into a Retro Game Arcade

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Top 10 Gaming Hacks and DIY Projects

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How to Hack Your Wii for Homebrew in Five Minutes

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How to Create an Awesome Summer Reading List

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Copied from: http://lifehacker.com/5837329/21-ways-you-can-relax-and-recharge-on-your-day-off

From the perspective of neuroscience, listening to music is one of the most complex things you can do. Many parts of your brain have to work together to comprehend even the simplest tune. So what is music reallydoing to our minds?

The Mechanics of Music

There isn’t a single music center of the brain, in large part because listening to even very simple music combines a bunch of distinct neurological processes. Let’s first look at the more strictly mechanical aspects of listening to music. As you might be able to guess from its name, the auditory cortex is an important part of processing the sound of music. Part of the temporal lobe, the auditory cortex takes in information from the ear and assesses the pitch and volume of the sound.

Other parts of the brain deal with different aspects of music. Rhythm, for instance, is only connected in a relatively minor way to the auditory cortex. A lot goes into keeping even relatively simple, regular beats – tapping along to something as basic as a 1:2 rhythm brings in the left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum, and more unusual rhythms bring in still more areas of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum.

Tonality – the building of musical structure around a central chord – is another crucial part of musical understanding, and it reels in still more parts of the brain. The prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and many parts of the temporal lobe all go into our ability to recognize the tone of a given piece of music. Taken all together, this means that music already brings in three out of four of the lobes of the human brain – frontal, parietal, and temporal, with only the visual processing occipital lobe unaffected…and there might be a bit more to say about that in a moment.

Music is sometimes given a quick and dirty classification as a “right-brained” activity, meaning that the act of processing music is centered on the right hemisphere of the brain. While this fits nicely with the general dichotomy that the left side of the brain is more engaged in logic and the right in creativity, these are all pretty big oversimplifications. While it is broadly true that music involves more of the right hemisphere than the left, the fact is that the processing of music is so diffuse and decentralized throughout the brain that it’s hard to come up with any single category for all the different areas involved.

The Deeper Impact

Those, however, are just the basic mechanical aspects of listening to music. A good song can trigger a cascade of secondary responses, often involuntarily. An obvious example of this is the propensity to move in time with music – not so much dancing, which is an active, independent process, but simple motions like tapping one’s toe along with the song. This is caused by stimulation of neurons in the motor cortex.

Another intriguing side-effect of listening to music is the activation of the visual cortex, found in the back of the brain in the occipital lobe. Research indicates that some music can provoke a response in this part of the brain, as the engaged listener tries to conjure up appropriate imagery to match the changes and progression in the music.

Part of the reason that music tends to be so meaningful to us is that it’s deeply intertwined with memory. Because the brain is so completely engaged in listening to music, it’s one of the parts of a situation that is remembered most clearly later on. Songs and pieces of music can serve as powerful triggers for memories – hence the cliche about couples and “their song.”

And let’s not forget the language aspect of music. Obviously, not all songs have lyrics, but those that do draw upon the language centers of the brain. The two main parts of the brain associated with language are Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area, the former of which is found in the temporal lobe while the latter is in the frontal lobe. Previous research has tended to indicate that Wernicke’s area is more crucial to language comprehension, while Broca’s area is more tied up in language production, though it now appears that there’s significant overlap. In any event, we can add them to the list of brain regions tied up in music comprehension.

The Subjective Sounds

So just why does music carry so much meaning for us? Because music draws on so many different parts of the brain, it’s hard to say with certainty, but that might actually help give us an answer. Music is extraordinarily complex even before it enters the brain – the pitch of music, for instance, has to be much more stable than frequencies we normally sound, or else it would just devolve into chaotic noise. The same is true of rhythm, tone, and other musical properties – these have to be highly complex to cohere into anything even vaguely musical in the first place.

And it’s not as though there’s any real objective measure of what counts as “musical” and what doesn’t. That shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s ever read a music review, but it’s crucial to remember just how much the brain is involved as an active participant in shaping our interaction with music. Memory is one of the most obvious influences here – you’re more inclined to like a particular piece of music if it carries positive associations, for instance.

It’s also possible that a person’s particular brain chemistry can affect his or her appreciation of music. Considering how many different parts of the brain are activated by listening to music, even one unusual link in that chain can drastically alter the person’s response. There’s also plenty of more everyday factors to consider – how much a person knows about music, whether they themselves play an instrument, whether the music has lyrics, and even whether it’s a recording or a live performance can all dramatically change the particular neural response to the same basic piece of music.

The Hardwired Responses

If there’s one constant in all this, it’s that songs carry a tremendous ability to provoke emotional responses – indeed, it can even seem that that’s our brain’s primary concern when it comes to music. Brain imaging studies have shown that “happy” music stimulates the reward centers of the brain, causing the production of the chemical dopamine. That’s the same chemical produced from eating great food, having sex, and taking drugs.

Even better, the brain hangs onto the ability to understand the emotional impact of music, even if the finer points of comprehension are lost. One study, for instance, focused on a woman with damage to her temporal lobe – and, by extension, her auditory cortex – that made it impossible for her to comprehend different melodies and other basic parts of musical structure. Even so, she was still able to read the basic emotional content of the music, respond appropriately to “happy” and “sad” music in turn.

This process seems to start early, too. Researchers at Brigham Young University found evidence that infants as young as five months are able to discern when a happy song is playing, and by nine months they’ve added comprehension of sad music to their repertoire. Interviewed in 2008, BYU music professor Susan Kenney explained what the babies were responding to:

“The happy songs were all in major keys with fairly short phrases or motives that repeated. The tempo and melodic rhythms were faster than any of the sad selections, and the melodies had a general upward direction. Four of the sad songs were in minor keys and all had a slower beat and long melodic rhythms. For an infant to notice those differences is fascinating.”

And the effects of such music only increases as we get older. (Considering the babies’ responses to the music involved turning their heads slightly, you’d sort of hope it would.) We actually can have physiological reactions to music – happy music with a fast tempo and major key can make us breathe faster, while sad music in a slow tempo and minor key can slow down our pulse and cause blood pressure to rise.

Of course, the roots of those reactions are found back in the brain. It’s just another indication of how powerful and multi-faceted our relationship with music really is, and how it’s able to change our brains in ways both obvious and so subtle that we can barely comprehend what’s happening.

Copied from: http://io9.com/5837976/what-happens-to-your-brain-under-the-influence-of-music