6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals
6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals |
- 6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals
- 6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals
- What makes Buddhism & Hinduism distinct from other religions?
- Meditation as an act of love
- BPA Linked with Lower Testosterone
- Early Morning Mindfulness Inspiration - 5/8/2013
- The higher search
- God talks to lots of people... the mind talking to itself
- 'Go Nuts' and Still Lose Weight
- Spontaneous compassion is inherent to us all (Day 27)
- Dalai Lama visits the United States
- 50-Year-Old Fluoride Mystery Closer to Being Solved
- Why Are So Many Newborns Dying in the US?
| 6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals Posted: 08 May 2013 01:01 PM PDT  However, developing focus is not an easy task. It is not something you can achieve overnight. It calls for a set of actions that you follow regularly. Here are six more tips that can help you strengthen your focus and in turn, help you achieve your goals. 1. Set a ScheduleWhen you have vague goals and plans, it is not easy to work towards achieving them. So, the first step in improving your focus is to make sure your goals are clear and your plans are well thought out and most importantly, that you have a schedule for every step of the way. For example, saying you want to spend more time with your parents is vague – write it down as "I will call my parents every Wednesday and Friday and meet them on Sunday." A schedule ensures you have a clear picture of what you need to do and this makes it easier to focus and actually perform the necessary actions. Some people even find that using their Smartphone to set reminders or alarms for a particular task work out very well. 2. Stop ProcrastinatingWhen there is something you need to do to achieve a goal, do it at once. Stop procrastinating. Doing something right away is beneficial in two ways – for one, it allows you to get the task done and more importantly, you do not block valuable mind space with thoughts of having to do the task you postponed doing. Often, it is the starting that is difficult; once you begin, the actions just flow and before you know it, the job will be completed. If you have decided to write a few lines in your diary every evening, don't postpone it until after you watch your favorite late-night show; take a few m! inutes before the show and get it done and over with. 3. Focus on LessHaving too many things to do is a sure fire recipe for a lack of focus – no sooner do you start one task than your mind starts thinking of another. This eats away at your time as well as your concentration. If you face this problem, make it a habit to jot down the tasks that come into your mind and pick three or four that are the most important right now. Of these, take up one at a time and focus on accomplishing the goals related to the task; once that is over, move to the next item on your list. 4. Get Back on Track When You SlipYou wake up early and exercise for about a week. Then, because you work a lot, you "forget" to exercise for three days. Your mind will tell you that you have ruined your wonderful routine and trick you into pushing off getting back to your routine until the next week, or until this important project is over or….you get the idea; before you can realize it, your focus is gone. The best way to avoid being trapped like this is to tell yourself it was a busy three days, but now, you have to start exercising again. 5. Learn to DelegateIf there is an event and the organizer tries to do everything himself, do you think he can really focus on all the tasks? Definitely not – that is the reason why there are committees and sub-committees to whom the organizer can delegate tasks while he focuses on the larger picture. Doing something well does not mean you have to do it on your own. In fact, this approach is often counterproductive because of your inability to pay attention to so many jobs simultaneously. Instead, identify the jobs you are good at doing and focus on them. For all other areas – delegate. 6. Team UpSometimes, it can be helpful to work with a friend or a relative who is also trying to build focus. Tell each other about your goals and plans and set up a system of catching up a fe! w times a! week to see how well each one is sticking to their decisions. Often, this external motivation will help you develop focus faster than working on your own. As most of us realize in hindsight, it is not important to merely have goals – you have to actually take action. Think well and think hard about why you have something on your goal list. Write down these reasons. Read this list frequently to get the motivation you need to stick to your quest for success.
Have a bucket list? Create yours today with this list of 101 things to do before you die! Grab your free pdf e-book in the next second by signing up for the free newsletter.     Read More @ Source | |||
| 6 Powerful Tips to Help You Strengthen Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals Posted: 08 May 2013 01:00 PM PDT However, developing focus is not an easy task. It is not something you can achieve overnight. It calls for a set of actions that you follow regularly. Here are six more tips that can help you strengthen your focus and in turn, help you achieve your goals. 1. Set a ScheduleWhen you have vague goals and plans, it is not easy to work towards achieving them. So, the first step in improving your focus is to make sure your goals are clear and your plans are well thought out and most importantly, that you have a schedule for every step of the way. For example, saying you want to spend more time with your parents is vague – write it down as "I will call my parents every Wednesday and Friday and meet them on Sunday." A schedule ensures you have a clear picture of what you need to do and this makes it easier to focus and actually perform the necessary actions. Some people even find that using their Smartphone to set reminders or alarms for a particular task work out very well. 2. Stop ProcrastinatingWhen there is something you need to do to achieve a goal, do it at once. Stop procrastinating. Doing something right away is beneficial in two ways – for one, it allows you to get the task done and more importantly, you do not block valuable mind space with thoughts of having to do the task you postponed doing. Often, it is the starting that is difficult; once you begin, the actions just flow and before you know it, the job will be completed. If you have decided to write a few lines in your diary every evening, don't postpone it until after you watch your favorite late-night show; take a few m! inutes before the show and get it done and over with. 3. Focus on LessHaving too many things to do is a sure fire recipe for a lack of focus – no sooner do you start one task than your mind starts thinking of another. This eats away at your time as well as your concentration. If you face this problem, make it a habit to jot down the tasks that come into your mind and pick three or four that are the most important right now. Of these, take up one at a time and focus on accomplishing the goals related to the task; once that is over, move to the next item on your list. 4. Get Back on Track When You SlipYou wake up early and exercise for about a week. Then, because you work a lot, you "forget" to exercise for three days. Your mind will tell you that you have ruined your wonderful routine and trick you into pushing off getting back to your routine until the next week, or until this important project is over or….you get the idea; before you can realize it, your focus is gone. The best way to avoid being trapped like this is to tell yourself it was a busy three days, but now, you have to start exercising again. 5. Learn to DelegateIf there is an event and the organizer tries to do everything himself, do you think he can really focus on all the tasks? Definitely not – that is the reason why there are committees and sub-committees to whom the organizer can delegate tasks while he focuses on the larger picture. Doing something well does not mean you have to do it on your own. In fact, this approach is often counterproductive because of your inability to pay attention to so many jobs simultaneously. Instead, identify the jobs you are good at doing and focus on them. For all other areas – delegate. 6. Team UpSometimes, it can be helpful to work with a friend or a relative who is also trying to build focus. Tell each other about your goals and plans and set up a system of catching up a fe! w times a! week to see how well each one is sticking to their decisions. Often, this external motivation will help you develop focus faster than working on your own. As most of us realize in hindsight, it is not important to merely have goals – you have to actually take action. Think well and think hard about why you have something on your goal list. Write down these reasons. Read this list frequently to get the motivation you need to stick to your quest for success.
Have a bucket list? Create yours today with this list of 101 things to do before you die! Grab your free pdf e-book in the next second by signing up for the free newsletter. Read More @ Source | |||
| What makes Buddhism & Hinduism distinct from other religions? Posted: 08 May 2013 12:00 PM PDT
Read the original article » Read More @ Source | |||
| Posted: 08 May 2013 11:00 AM PDT
- Bob Sharples, from Meditation: Calming the Mind If you're participating in the 100 Days of Lovingkindness, it's because you want to become a nicer person, right? I'm right there with you. Here's the thing, though. Anytime we take on a practice with a goal in mind, we can get subtly sidetracked. We sit on our cushion and try to feel more warm-hearted. We try to think kinder thoughts. We try putting ourselves in our difficult person's shoes. All that trying can make us a little tight, maybe even anxious. We're striving to reach some imagined wondrous state that isn't where we are now. And that probably doesn't feel all that good. Or kind. Hmmm…. what's wrong with this picture? What if you dropped all that self-prodding and just loved yourself, as you are? Rather than trying to make yourself into something else, how about just being loving, right now? When we stop reaching for that something else (which is a subtle form of self-flagellation), we can touch down into that "endlessly delightful and encouraging" place. And there you are. There's the lovingkindness you were seeking. Meditation isn't a tool we whip out to help us achieve some goal off in the future. It's a way of being that draws out our inherent nature – which is aware, warm, open, kind. Can we be that way, right now? OK, that's easy for you to say, you might be thinking. What if I'm depressed or don't like myself? What if I really don't want to be where I am now? Well, no matter how bad things are, we all have some sense of what feeling good inside is like, don't we? What if just for one moment, you set aside all those yammering unhappy thoughts – maybe imagine putting them in a box off to the side – and giving yourself a break from them for even just three seconds. Doesn't it feel good to stop beating your head against the wall? What if you took a deep breath, and felt what it's like to relax those tight, wound-up muscles in your body? If you have a dog, go pet him and note how it feels when you get those adoring eyes back at you. See what I'm getting at? No matter how depressed or unhappy you are, there's something inside you that knows what it's like to feel good. Why not go visit that place in your mind and body? What can you do, in this moment, that would be a simple and kind thing for yourself? And what if those nasty self-critical or cynical thoughts keep intruding? First, you can forgive yourself that they arose. Blame doesn't belong here at all. But from this moment forward you could choose not to buy into those thoughts so much. How about labeling them as just another thought, and loosening your grip on them a little? Old habits take a long time to unwind. You can be patient. They'll subside eventually, as long as you don't indulge them. But remember, NO beating yourself up! What if you're ill, in pain, or grieving the loss of a loved one? And you can't find any way to feel comfortable in your own skin? Then you could imagine how you'd respond if a friend showed up at your doorstep in your current state. What would you do for her? Wouldn't you want to give her a hug, sit her down, and show her how much you care? How about doing the same for yourself? Can you sit yourself down and give yourself a metaphorical hug? Maybe even have a good cry if that feels good in its own way? What if you're bored with your practice? Well, you could ask yourself, what 's the kindest thing I could do for myself right now? Am I falling prey to a habitual tendency to seek distractions? Do I want to recommit to my longer-term intentions? Can I turn my attention in a kind way to something I know feels pleasurable and interesting (as described above)? Or would I prefer to give myself a break today, as an act of kindness, and keep my sit shorter than usual? So those are some examples of ways to BE kindness, instead of seeking it out. The real challenge of this practice is to find a genuine connection to an experience of gentleness, forgiveness, warmth, caring, and nurturing, — right now, no matter what state you're in. And the emphasis is on "genuine connection," as opposed to "find." True, it might take some exploring and experimenting to figure out what's most helpful for you. But if you do it with an attitude of warm, open curiosity, that in itself becomes an act of kindness. When we respond to everything with this sort of soft touch, lovingkindness gets rooted more deeply into our being. It becomes more and more the way we just are. And that's how we get there without trying. Read More @ Source | |||
| BPA Linked with Lower Testosterone Posted: 08 May 2013 09:00 AM PDT
Chronic exposure to the chemicalbisphenol A (BPA) may lower testosterone levels in men, a new study from China suggests. In the study, men who were exposed to BPA because they worked in a chemical plant for at least six months had lower levels of testosterone in their blood compared with those who worked in a tap water factory. Specifically, chemical plant workers had reduced levels of "free" testosterone, which is the form thought to have the greatest influence on the body. (Most testosterone in the body is not "free," but is bound to a protein.) The findings provide even more evidence that BPA may change men's sex hormone levels, said study researcher Dr. De-Kun Li, a senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, Calif. Previous studies, also conducted on Chinese factory workers, have suggested that BPA may lower sperm counts as well as increase the risk of sexual dysfunction in men — health effects that are controlled in part by sex hormones. BPA is similar to the female hormone estrogen, meaning that it could have effects on the human body. The effect of BPA on men may be more immediate and easier to detect than the effect on women, because men have very low levels of estrogen to begin with, Li said. [See Is BPA Really a Health Hazard?] However, whether similar effects would be seen in the general population at lower exposure levels is not known, and need to be studied further. BPA is found in some plastics, canned food containers and other food packaging, and most people in the U.S. have the chemical in their urine. Heather Patisaul, an associate professor at North Carolina State University who studies the effects of BPA, noted that the study looked at BPA in the blood, rather than the urine. BPA levels in the blood are thought to be a better measure of chronic exposure to the chemical, but are typically very low, and could be influenced by environmental contamination, Patisaul said. Men who don't work in a chemical factory would likely have BPA levels in their blood that are too low to detect, Patisaul said. In the study, about 70 percent of men who worked in the chemical plant had detectable levels of BPA in their blood, while the same was true of 5 percent of those who worked in the water factory. "This data should not raise alarm bells for men who don't work in chemical factories," Patisaul said. Patisaul said that the new study was small and did not do a great job of accounting for differences in hormone levels that might be due to the time of day samples were collected. The study was published online May 6 in the journal Fertility and Sterility. Pass it on: Exposure to BPA in the workplace is linked to lower testosterone levels in men. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily.  Read More @ Source | |||
| Early Morning Mindfulness Inspiration - 5/8/2013 Posted: 08 May 2013 07:00 AM PDT  "In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?" ~The Buddha      Read More @ Source | |||
| Posted: 08 May 2013 01:00 AM PDT Modern society wants us all to be winners, to accomplish the impossible if we can. Above all else we have to make a success of our temporal body's brief time on this planet. But in the spiritual world things are somewhat different because what we have to accomplish, in the way of awakening to the true nature of existence, transcends the temporal body, its senses and its perceptions (samjñâ). Yes, this immaculate nature is attainable. Yes, it's real. In fact, it is the very substance of the universe. If it were not, Zen master Huang-po would not have said the following:
To realize the One Mind (ekacitta), or our true nature, we have to give up our worldly presuppositions including our preconceived way of conducting a search for it, while still maintaining an intensive search. We cannot approach the One Mind by conceptualizing it (samjñâ). It is not in the world of philosophical thought. Such thoughts (even the word "One Mind") at best are mere signifiers—not the One Mind itself. They are inadequate to the task at hand which is to stand in the presence of the actual One Mind which is the Buddha. In a way, we are there right now. But the Five Aggregates including other things prevent us from fully knowing this. It's like having a dark cloud over us all the time which keeps us from seeing the sun. Try as we might, for example, by pretending to be Bodhisattvas (taking the Bodhisattva precepts) or becoming a monk or a nun, we are still far away from the One Mind. At some point our old ways of searching have to be exhausted and put to an end. We have to come to the realization that nothing we've tried has worked in the past or will ever work. Sitting in zazen until our arse bleeds or doing a million prostrations will not succeed. The force of our will that tries to make the One Mind a reality for us is doomed to fail, also. As paradoxical as it sounds, an exhaustive search that drains away all of our presuppositions, which eventually leads to utter failure, is what we really need. In other words, truly, there is no success like total failure. Only then will the Buddha appear. | |||
| God talks to lots of people... the mind talking to itself Posted: 08 May 2013 12:00 AM PDT Has God ever talked to you? Have you ever heard divine sounds, or seen divine visions? If so, you've got lots of company according to "Is That God Talking?" by T.M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford. A questionnaire posed to 375 college students found that 71 percent reported vocal hallucinations of some kind, according to a study published in 1984 (a finding consistent with my own research). A 2000 study found that 38.7 percent of the population reported visual, auditory or other hallucinations, including out-of-body experiences. Interesting. Fairly frequently people post comments on this blog or send me emails about "inner" experiences that, to them, prove that they're right and I'm wrong: God certainly does exist, as do heavenly supernatural realms. Well, by that logic we'd have to believe in the validity of countless Godly experiences, many of them decidedly contradictory with each other. Is God a person, a power, a universal presence? Is there one God or many Gods? Is God involved with the world, or does God sit back as a passive observer? Is there a single favored way to know God, or many ways? People who have religious experiences come up with all kinds of answers to these sorts of questions. Christians almost always find the tenets of their faith confirmed; Hindus, the tenets of their faith. It's rare for someone who is a fervent believer in some religion to have a vision of the divine that leads them to proclaim, "I was wrong! Christianity isn't correct -- Buddhism is!" [or whatever} Yet if God is objectively real, why don't people who hear or see God agree about what the divine nature is like? Luhrmann suggests an obvious answer: what religious people fervently believe conceptually to be true, eventually becomes experientially true for them. The mind is a marvelous creator of subjective reality. It will deliver what is wanted, if the desire is strong enough. I eventually discovered that these experiences were associated with intense prayer practice. They felt spontaneous, but people who liked to get absorbed in their imaginations were more likely to experience them. Those were the people who were more likely to love to pray, and the "prayer warriors" who prayed for long periods were likely to report even more of them. The prayer warriors said that as they became immersed in prayer, their senses became more acute. Smells seemed richer, colors more vibrant. Their inner sensory worlds grew more vivid and more detailed, and their thoughts and images sometimes seemed as if they were external to the mind. Later, I was able to demonstrate experimentally that prayer practice did lead to more vivid inner images and more hallucination-like events. Again, if descriptions of these inner sensory images -- sights, sounds, smells, and such -- were consistent across religions, this would be much stronger evidence that those who pray and meditate were coming into contact with an objectively true supernatural reality. But this doesn't happen. Again, Christians have Christian'y experiences; Meditations have Meditation'y experiences; Hindus have Hindu'y experiences. What the mind dwells upon and expects, the mind delivers as inner experiences. Nothing supernatural involved. Just the mind doing its thing. Prayer and meditation are powerful tools that create "divine" experiences. So, of course, do psychedelic drugs like psilocybin. The more interesting lesson is what it tells us about the mind and prayer. If hearing a voice is associated with focused attention to the inner senses — hearing with the mind's ear, seeing with the mind's eye — it suggests that prayer (which today, the National Day of Prayer, celebrates) is a pretty powerful instrument. We often imagine prayer as a practice that affects the content of what we think about — our moral aspirations, or our contrition. It's probably more accurate to understand prayer as a skill that changes how we use our minds. | |||
| 'Go Nuts' and Still Lose Weight Posted: 07 May 2013 11:00 PM PDT
Eating fatty nuts may not ruin your diet, new report shows. That's right — we've always been told to limit nut consumption because of their high fat content, but maybe that advice should fall by the wayside. In the new analysis, published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers reviewed data from 31 studies conducted worldwide and found there was very little difference in weight among people who ate nuts and those who didn't. This doesn't mean that eating nuts will cause you to lose weight, but the research suggests that it probably won't contribute to significant weight gains. Just remember that not all nuts are created equal. Some are better for your health than others. Here's a look: Enjoy
Take Caution
Avoid Sweet or savory varieties: Avoid any kind of nut that has been doused in sugar, salt or any other seasoning. The added salt and sugar turn an otherwise healthy snack into junk food. Healthy Bites appears on MyHealthNewsDaily on Wednesdays. Deborah Herlax Enos is a certified nutritionist and a health coach and weight loss expert in the Seattle area with more than 20 years of experience. Read more tips on her blog, Health in a Hurry! Read More @ Source | |||
| Spontaneous compassion is inherent to us all (Day 27) Posted: 07 May 2013 10:01 PM PDT
Compassion is part of our genetically inherited mental tool-kit. Other animals show compassion: primatologist Frans de Waal (one of my personal heroes) points out that chimpanzees take care of the sick and elderly, for example by bringing water to older females who are crippled by arthritis. The much less brainy capuchin monkey also shows empathy, and will help others when they have nothing directly to gain themselves. Even mice show the capacity for empathy. Compassion is part of our evolutionary heritage. We may think of moral emotions as being handed down from on high (on a mountain-top, engraved on stone tablets) but actually they are to a large extent handed up from below, inscribed in our DNA. We often take our compassion for granted, or ignore its whisperings. But it's there all the time, even if we're not aware of it. Certainly, we often act in ways that are uncompassionate — even unkind or cruel (that harsh word, the judgmental thought, the unkind glare, cutting someone off in traffic) — but our uncompassionate instincts and our more compassionate ones coexist. The brain, and hence the self, is not unitary, but modular. The brain has not been designed from scratch as a smoothly functioning system, but has evolved piecemeal and is full of cooperating, competing, and antagonistic modules. We therefore find ourselves morally divided. One part of us believes that showing dominance or anger is a valid means to find happiness or peace; if we're aggressive, we hope, the troublesome object of our aggression will stay away from us and trouble us no more. But another part of us recognizes that conflict is painful and that compassion and kindness are more likely to lead to peace within our minds and in our world. In our everyday behavior we swing from one set of motivations to another. So we need, sometimes, to let go of a whole layer of behavior and assumptions about how the world works, and how happiness is brought about in our lives, in order to connect with our innate compassion. As with lovingkindness meditation, I have some simple reflections that help me reconnect with my innate ability to feel compassion. As I'm beginning the practice of cultivating compassion, I recognize the truth of the following:
I drop these thoughts into the mind, and give them time to sink in. I give myself time to respond to the truth of these statements. I don't have to make a response happen. I don't have to think about these concepts — and in fact thinking about the concepts will get in the way os acknowledging their essential truthfulness. The response, like compassion itself, will come up from below. These thoughts are deceptively simple. As you're reading them, your eyes skimming the marks on this page, they may have no perceptible effect. The left brain understands the concepts, but perhaps isn't touched by them. It's just data. But let them sink in and the right brain can relate. These words reflect a fundamental reality of your life — something deep, primal, and moving. Be still, and let the words ripple through the space of the mind and see what happens. Listen. Often the response is in the form of a mild heart ache, a tenderness in the center of the chest. This feeling of tender vulnerability is not something to avoid; it's something to accept. It's the stirring of compassion within the heart.  If you like my articles, please check out my books, guided meditation CDs, and MP3s, including The Heart's Wisdom, which includes all four lovingkindness meditations. When I reflect in this way I recognize something I often overlook because it's so obvious. Life is a difficult thing to do. We want happiness but keep stumbling into suffering instead. This being human is a hard thing. And having let these thoughts drop into the heart, and having felt the heart's response, I let the part of me that wishes me well speak. I strengthen the innate compassion that's been revealed by dropping phrases into the mind, just as I do in lovingkindness practice. There are other traditional phrases that you can use, like
The exactly wording of the phrases doesn't matter too much, but they have to be meaningful for you, short enough to remember, and said with sincerity. You can just use phrases like "May I be well; may I be happy; may I be free from suffering." At the same time you are aware of the fact that you suffer. You don't have to think about this or dwell upon it. You just have an awareness of this fact in the back of your mind. It's like if you're talking to a friend and you know they're going away for a few weeks and this is the last time you're going to see them for a while; you don't need to keep saying to yourself "My friend is going away. My friend is going away." Instead, you just get on with your conversation, and in the back of your mind you know the truth of the situation. And that truth affects everything you say. Similarly, having established that you don't want to suffer, and yet to, everything you say to yourself is touched by that awareness. You get on with having a conversation with yourself — a conversation that turns the heart to kindness and compassion. Read More @ Source | |||
| Dalai Lama visits the United States Posted: 07 May 2013 04:00 PM PDT
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to begin his public engagements… Read the original article » Read More @ Source | |||
| 50-Year-Old Fluoride Mystery Closer to Being Solved Posted: 07 May 2013 03:00 PM PDT
The more than 50-year-old mystery of how fluoride battles tooth decay may be one step closer to being solved, researchers say. The study suggests that fluoride works by reducing the ability of bacteria to stick to teeth, making the germs easier to wash away with saliva, brushing and other activities. When fluoride bonds with tooth enamel, bacteria probably cannot hold onto it as strongly, said study researcher Karin Jacobs, a physicist at Saarland University in Germany. Fluoride is now often added to drinking water, toothpastes and mouthwashes. Although fluoride compounds reduce the risk of cavities, despite more than a half-century of research, it remains controversial exactly how they do so. Fluoride'scavity-fighting benefit is often explained by its ability to fuse with teeth to create an acid-resistant layer. However, there is also evidence that fluoride might control mouth bacteria, which cause tooth decay. Analyzing real teeth can be tricky, because teeth can differ substantially from one another, and even a single tooth can vary throughout its composition. This variability helps explain the decades of difficulty in figuring out exactly how fluoride keeps bacteria off teeth. Scientists have tried experimenting on artificial versions of the main ingredient of tooth enamel, a compound known as hydroxyapatite. However, this material is often more porous than real enamel, so it is not a good representation of a real tooth's composition. To create better tooth mimics, Jacobs and her colleagues polished artificial teeth with microscopic grains of diamond to make the surface as smooth as possible. Some tooth imitations were then exposed to fluoride, while others were not. Both groups were prodded with probes covered in tooth-decay germs, and examined under a microscope to measure how well the bacteria clung. "The bacteria we're studying are likely to be charged negatively," Jacobs told MyHealthNewsDaily. "They feel attached to positively charged surfaces." The fluoride probably makes tooth enamel more negatively charged, repelling germs, she added. Fluoride might also prevent materials from sticking to teeth — in the same way Teflon does for metal pans. Much remains uncertain about how fluoride prevents tooth decay. For instance, it might also weaken bacteria, suppressing them or the fortresses they can build, known as biofilms. "Next, we'll look at how fluoride treatment affects the buildup of an initial biofilm," Jacobs said. The scientists detailed their findings online April 4 in the journal Langmuir. Read More @ Source | |||
| Why Are So Many Newborns Dying in the US? Posted: 07 May 2013 02:00 PM PDT
The United States does not fare well in a new report looking at the percentage of babies that die the day they are born. In that report, the United States falls behind 68 other countries, including Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in terms of its rate of deaths on the first day of life. Yearly, about 11,300 U.S. babies die the day they're born, according to the report from the charity organization Save the Children. So why are newborn deaths in the United States so high? The nation's high preterm birth rate plays a role. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of preterm birth in the industrialized world (1 in 8 births) — twice that of Finland, Japan, Norway and Sweden. Complications from preterm birth are the cause of 35 percent of newborn deaths in the U.S., Save the Children says. Babies born preterm, or before 37 weeks of pregnancy, are at risk of death from loss of body heat, inability to take enough nutrition, breathing difficulties and infections, the report said. Another factor, which contributes to the preterm birth rate, is the country's high rate of teen birth. "Teenage mothers in the U.S. tend to be poorer, less educated, and receive less prenatal care than older mothers," which in turn, increases the baby's risk of being born early and dying in the first month, the report says. But teen births have decreased in recent years, and the United States still has the highest preterm birth rate of any industrialized country, Save the Children says. Women need access to proper prenatal care, in part to understand their risk of preterm birth and other pregnancy complications, said Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children. Poverty can prevent women from getting the care they need, she said. The Save the Children report did not include stillbirths. It's possible that, in trying to reduce the rate of stillbirth, the United States has increased preterm birth rate, said Dr. Joy Lawn, senior health adviser to Save the Children. For instance, doctors in the United States may detect a pregnancy problem early on, and intervene to allow the baby to be born alive early, only to have the baby die on the first day of life, whereas the same baby may have been stillborn in another country, Lawn said. However, Lawn said that other industrialized countries are performing the same types of obstetric interventions that are done in the U.S., so this would not necessarily explain the ranking of the U.S. in relation to industrialized countries. Pass it on: The high rate of preterm birth in the United States plays a role in its relatively high rate of newborn death. Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on MyHealthNewsDaily. Read More @ Source |
Tiffany Andras, Opposing Views: As two of the oldest sustained world religions that both developed in and spread from India, Hinduism and Buddhism have many similarities in basic beliefs despite their large differences. Though Hinduism, like other major religions, ascribes to a belief in God, Buddhism does not — one of the biggest points of divergence between the two. However, because of their parallels in origination, there are tenets that form the basis of both religions that make them discrete from most others, with the exception in large part to Jainism and Sikhism which have their origins in Hindu and Stress Reduction philosophy themselves…
"Don't meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself; rather, do it as an act of love, of deep warm friendship to yourself. In this way there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement, for the endless guilt of not doing enough. It offers the possibility of an end to the ceaseless round of trying so hard that wraps so many people's lives in a knot. Instead there is now meditation as an act of love. How endlessly delightful and encouraging."
Talking about cultivating or developing compassion can have the unfortunate side-effect of giving us the idea that compassion is something we don't have, and need to create. Actually, the words cultivate and develop are meant to imply that we already have compassion as a natural attribute, and that what we need to do is to connect with this innate compassion and make it stronger. Really, karuna bhavana is "strengthening compassion."
Harold Mandel, Examiner.com: There is a lot of excitement among many Americans about the visit of the Dalai Lama to the United States. Phayul.com has reported on May 6, 2013, The Dalai Lama leaves for US visit. On Sunday His Holiness the Dalai Lama left his exile hometown of Dharamshala, north India, for a visit of the United States of America. He has been invited by various universities, colleges, and organizations to interact with students and give a series of lectures, public talks, discussions, and teachings on topics which range from compassion to global environment.
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