POSTS WITH TAG: sleep

Healthy Living

10 Reasons It's Awesome to Be an Insomniac

Posted by Jill Smokler
on Feb 6, 2012 at 9:04 AM

For the past several years, I have spent the hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. wide awake while the rest of my house (the rest of the world) is fast asleep. It certainly explains why I'm always so damn exhausted and fight the urge to fall asleep every afternoon, but isn't without benefit, too. In fact, on the rare night when I actually sleep through the night, I wake up disappointed about all of the things that remain undone. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're alone for a change!

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Healthy Living

Brooke Burke Is Crazy to Put Sleep Before Sex

Posted by Maressa Brown
on Dec 23, 2011 at 9:00 PM

brooke burke on the cover of fitness magazineBrooke Burke has a lot going on these days. She's not only a host on Dancing with the Stars, but she also has four kids, a husband (sexy David Charvet), a modeling career, a product line (Baboosh Baby!) for moms, and probably a whole slew of other stuff I can't even think of right now. In short, she's a busy woman, and she barely gets enough shuteye. Not too much different from most moms, really. But the way she handles her sleep deprivation is a bit different.

Burke told Fitness magazine recently shared her secret to getting enough sleep, which in turn leads to a healthy sex life, as well as keeping her sanity. Throw all those guesses out the window, because it's probably not what you think.


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Healthy Living

5 Tricks for Getting Shut-Eye in the 10 Most Sleep-Deprived Cities

Posted by Emily Abbate
on Oct 27, 2011 at 2:42 PM

sleep deprived womanDid you know there are certain places with more walking zombies than others? No, I'm not just talking about Halloween haunted houses here. The mattress company Sleepy's recently did some research and came up with the 10 most sleep-deprived cities. And let me just say, now it makes sense why a lot of people in New York City are a tad bit grumpy early in the morning!

Ready for the results? The most exhausted city in the U.S. is Detroit. The others include (in order from most tired to least): Birmingham, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, New York, Cincinnati, Louisville, Raleigh, Columbus, and Boston.

To be honest, the list doesn't surprise me too much. These are cities we're talking about here -- they're always bustling! But if you live in one of these places, it definitely doesn't mean you don't deserve some solid shut-eye. Check out these 5 tips for a good night's sleep:

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Healthy Living

6 Tricks to Help You Recover From These Dreaded Trips

Posted by Adriana Velez
on Oct 3, 2011 at 4:10 PM

jet lagI'm taking a red-eye flight home from my brother's wedding this weekend and I'm not looking forward to my slow transformation into a zombie. You know what I'm talking about: that irregular napping and neck lolling that turns you into a cranky, achy, sleep-deprived monster. 

And it doesn't help that I'll be crossing two time zones from Mountain to Eastern standard time, which is two hours ahead. That kind of double-whammy of jet lag doesn't just cause fatigue -- it can lead to other health woes like irritability, confusion, nausea, coordination problems, anxiety, and dehydration. Yeah, good times.

Deep breath! Time to get out my jet lag recovery kit ...

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Healthy Living

Napping at Work Isn’t as Fun as It Sounds

Posted by Lindsay Mannering
on Sep 8, 2011 at 1:50 PM

nappingWhen your boss comes to you and tells you to take a nap every day at work, you don't ask any questions. My task was to take a 30-minute nap during the work day for five days in a row and to see how it affected me. Did I feel more energized? Tired? Did the naps increase my productivity or decrease it? How did I feel overall? You get the picture.

Armed with a pillow and a cellphone for an alarm clock, I went to our office's nap room (it has a day bed and a sound machine and a thing that projects stars on the ceiling and everything!) to see what I could find out about taking a snoozer midday.

My results were more than a little unexpected.

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Healthy Living

Being a Single Mom Is Not a Health Hazard

Posted by Jacqueline Burt
on Jun 7, 2011 at 11:25 AM

single momAs a single mother of two, I got a little peeved when I read the results of a recent study which found that single motherhood could be bad for a woman's long-term health, especially when I got to the part about researchers admitting that determining the exact reasons why single mothers are unhealthy was "beyond the scope" of their study. (Gee thanks, that's helpful!)

Among the possible explanations offered, however, was one that made sense: Single mothers tend to face greater financial challenges than their married counterparts. And not only is stress bad for you, but lack of funds generally equals lack of access to adequate healthcare. So what have we learned here? Single mothers have issues with their health because they're poor, not because they don't have husbands. Enough with scapegoating single mothers!

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Love & Sex

8 Things That Men Say & What They 'Really' Mean

Posted by Jennifer Cullen
on May 13, 2011 at 6:34 PM

Man's brain I’ve always thought guys were more likely than ladies to think about sex all day. After all, don't we have better, more cerebral things to think about?

Now it turns out that the old belief -- that men think about sex all of the time -- may not be true. A new study reveals that men actually think about food and sleep proportionately more than they do about sex.

This was a surprise to me. Maybe all of those times that I thought my husband was coming on to me, he just wanted me to make him a big bowl of ice cream and then get some shut eye. Have I been entirely misinterpreting his advances? For example:

He says: Come give me a hug.
You think: Uh oh, he wants to grind against me as foreplay.
What he really means: I want to feel physically and emotionally close to you.

Here are a few other statements made by men that perhaps have been misinterpreted:

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Healthy Living

Proof That Kids Suck the Life Out of You!

Posted by Jacqueline Burt
on May 6, 2011 at 2:57 PM

sleeping mom

I knew it! Mommy Brain is not a myth! Turns out getting less than six to eight hours of sleep per night on average can actually age the brain four to seven years. So all of that absentminded behavior you've been blaming on your kids? You really can blame it on your kids!

If you're like me (that is to say, exhausted), you feel oddly satisfied every time another study comes out about the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Of course I can't remember where I put the keys ... lack of sleep leads to forgetfulness! Yeah, I'm cranky -- you want to make something of it? Losing valuable snooze time causes irritability. As for that "short" email it's taking me an hour to write? Chalk that one up to fatigue-induced inability to concentrate.

 

 

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Healthy Living

Watching the Royal Wedding Live? Tricks to Stay Awake

Posted by Julie Ryan Evans
on Apr 26, 2011 at 8:50 PM

Royal WeddingAfter all the months of planning and speculation, the most anticipated wedding in decades is finally just days away. In London Friday, at last Prince William and Kate Middleton will walk down the aisle, say their vows, and give the world its fairy tale. Only this half of the world should be asleep during the blessed event as it begins at 5 a.m. on the East Coast. *YAWN*

In order to ensure that you're fully alert and don't miss a detail of the divine day, you're going to need a plan of attack. One can't just set an alarm and expect one's body to be alert enough for such a big event at that dreadful hour (even worse if you're on west coast time -- 2 a.m.!). One must carefully think through and plot out a plan to ensure optimal wedding viewing. Here are a couple of strategies for you to consider:

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In The News

Should Surrogates Be Paid?

Posted by Heather Murphy-Raines
on Mar 22, 2011 at 8:07 PM
Op-Ed


Heather Murphy-Raines/Scout's Honor
Suppose a strange couple came upon you on the street and thrust their child in your arms. They ask you to care for the child for months upon months, feeding, protecting, and caring for the baby with much self-sacrifice, pain, and risk to your health. Would you do it? Would you do it for free?

Now imagine instead of on your hip, someone asks you to care for their child in your womb. It is not your egg nor your cells nor your DNA. You are simply asked to be a surrogate. You want to help, but pregnancy is work. It's a strain on any woman, yet this back-breaking, 24-hour-a-day, exhausting work is not valued enough to merit minimum wage in some states. You're just a vessel so that another couple may have the gift of parenthood.

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