9 Health Mistakes Women Don’t Realise They’re Making

Attention ladies; even if you think you’re a fitness and diet guru, we guarantee you’ll be making some of these health mistakes without even realising it.

Cut out these bad habits and you’ll be healthier before you know it.

Unhealthy friends?

Having unhealthy friends

Who you’re friends with can have a big influence on your health without you even realising.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine compared obesity to a virus. When your friends gain weight, you’re more likely to gain weight yourself.

That doesn’t mean you need to ditch your friends as soon as they put on a couple of pounds – study author Dr Nicholas Christakis suggests instead taking cues from your healthier friends.

Only relying on cardio

“I can’t work out with weights because I don’t want to bulk up!” you proclaim as you follow the familiar route to the treadmill for the thousandth time. But is there any truth behind this popular excuse?

In short, no.

Far from bulking you up, building muscle will help you to shed the pounds. Experts estimate that for every pound of muscle you gain, you’ll burn an extra seven -13 calories per day.

Any fears you have of looking like She Hulk can be put to bed. Because of lower levels of testosterone, women don’t bulk up anywhere near as quickly as men.

Overusing social media

We all enjoy a sneaky Facebook stalk every once in a while, but do it too often and you could become depressed, according to researchers in Germany.

They found that overuse of Facebook can pose a serious risk to our mental wellbeing.

Checking out other people’s holiday photos was the major culprit, with one in three study participants reporting that this made them feel depressed or lonely.

Twitter is no better, with a University of Vermont study finding that Twitter users gradually become more stressed and unhappy the more they use the site.

Relying on diet products

When your sweet tooth is crying out for sugar, it can be tempting to turn to sugar-free diet options. Sadly these substitute snacks aren’t as guilt-free as you’ve been led to believe.

In place of sugar, manufacturers will often use nasty artificial alternatives to provide that sweet taste.

Aspartame, commonly found in diet drinks, was found to increase your risk of obesity by 41 per cent in a University of Texas Health Science Centre study.

Psychologists in a separate study at Cornell University observed that phrases like ‘sugar-free’ can subconsciously trigger overeating. In some cases, this meant people ate twice as many calories as they would have done if they opted for the full-sugar version.Don't become fixated on your abs (REX)

Focusing on stomach toning

All too often we become fixated on trying to develop a rock hard stomach by performing endless crunches. If this sounds like you, you’re wasting your time.

Want to know just how useless crunches are? A Men’s Health study found that you’d have to do a staggering 22,000 of them to lose just a pound of fat off your stomach.

If you want to lose weight, focus on high intensity interval training instead.

HIIT increases your metabolic rate for up to 24 hours after you exercise, and boosts fat oxidation.

Wearing high heels too often

Who can resist a pair of killer hills for accentuated legs and an instant confidence boost?

Wear them too frequently however, and your feet won’t be thanking you.

Wearing four-inch heels increases the pressure on your feet by around 30 per cent, leading to damaged tendons, reduced circulation and bone and nerve deterioration.Swap heels for flats occasionally and your feet will thank you (AP)

Not getting enough calcium

A recent survey conducted by Creighton University Medical Centre showed that 85% of women don’t get enough calcium per day, which leads to an increased risk of osteoporosis.

It’s recommended that women between the ages 19 to 50 need a daily calcium intake of 1,000mg.

Topping up on calcium is easy with dairy products like milk and natural yoghurt. If dairy doesn’t agree with you, you’ll also find high levels of calcium in fish such as salmon and sardines and even leafy veg.

Using electronics before bed

That one last game of Candy Crush you squeeze in before you hit the hay could be ruining your sleep pattern, if researchers in Sweden are to be believed.

They observed that people who use mobile phones or tablets directly before going to sleep found it harder to doze off, causing lasting health issues.

As well as displaying signs of insomnia, these pre-sleep tech-addicts suffered from headaches throughout the day.

Eating what your date eats

Next time you’re on a hot date, psychologists suggest you need to spend more time checking what’s on your plate than staring into your partner’s eyes.

University of Birmingham researchers have discovered a link between new relationships and weight gain, particularly in women.

According to their findings, when dining with a new partner you subconsciously mirror their portion sizes, which can lead to weight gain if they eat more than you’re used to.

https://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/9-health-mistakes-women-don-t-realise-making-090000295.html

Get Mindful, Psychologist Tells Davos Elite

Being `mindful` can increase confidence, creativity, charisma, attention spans, leadership and productivity.

Ellen Langer had a message for the world's elite in Davos: get "mindful", and you will be more successful in your job, live longer, be more attractive and even get on better with your dog. 
"Almost all of us is mindless, and oblivious to it," Langer, a Harvard social psychology professor, told AFP at the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of the world's political and business big-hitters high in the Swiss Alps. 
Much of what we think we believe, we learned as a child, and to lead a fuller life you should never stop questioning what you do and looking at things in a new light, she says. 
"I don't know about you but if you think you've all grown into such magnificent people, it may be a little scary to learn that much of what you are doing, seeing and believing is a function of your very young self," Langer said in a talk to a small and varied Davos audience. 
Your mind plays tricks on you as a result, often to your detriment, as Langer's many examples from three decades of research show. 
In her most recent study, she divided in two a group of 50 chambermaids -- workers with a strenuous job -- all of whom she says were under the misconception that they were doing no exercise. She then explained to half of them how much they were in fact doing. The other half she left alone. 
A month later Langer came back and found that the health of the first half had improved -- and with no discernable change in lifestyle and diet -- while the second group had stayed the same. 
"We find a loss of weight, loss of waist-to-hip ratio, loss of Body Mass Index -- in significant numbers even though they're not enormous -- and a drop in blood pressure," she says. 
"That was the result in a change in mindset." 
Eyecharts at the doctors are usually arranged with large letters progressively getting smaller as you read, creating the expectation in the mind that soon you're not going to be able to make out any more letters. 
Langer redesigned the eyechart, with small letters going to larger letters, creating the expectation that soon you will be able to make out the letters. 
"What do we find? People can see what they couldn't see before," Langer says. 
Being "mindful" can increase health and wellbeing on a host of measures, her three decades of research have shown, from confidence, creativity, and charisma to attention spans, leadership and productivity. 
And everything from arthritis, stress and alcoholism to burnout, symptoms of disease to accidents fall, she says. 
And it can also improve the reaction of others to you, whether they be customers, colleagues, potential partners, children or even animals, she told her audience. 
So how do you become mindful? 
"The concept itself is very simple, it is the act of noticing new things. That's all," Langer says. 
"What you have to do is throw yourself into some new activity. In my case it was painting. If you throw yourself into it you will feel that feeling of full engagement. That's the way you should feel all the time. Everybody gets that feeling but they think that that is unusual. 
But it's not what you do but how you do it, she warns: "You can watch TV mindfully but you can read Dostoyevsky mindlessly." 
Sessions in Davos are mostly more mundane in nature -- sovereign wealth funds, future trends in mobile technology, ethanol biofuels and the like -- and Langer's talk drew a crowd wanting some light relief. 
"I have been in lots of heavy duty sessions this Davos. This is my fun one," said Mark, a Texan software marketing executive sporting a bow tie. 
http://dalje.com/en-world/get-mindful-psychologist-tells-davos-elite/118254

The Power of Mind Over Matter - The Relationship Between Mind and Body

The phrase "The power of mind over matter" has been used so often it has become something of a cliché. To what extent is this concept valid?

Early psychologists believed than man is made up of two different substances. Mind and Matter. Matter was something that could be seen. It occupied space. It could be weighed. Mind on the other hand was a substance that could not be measured. It is clear however, that to separate mind and matter is quite impossible.

It is clear that every human action has both mental and physical attributes. When you are happy you laugh, which is a physical action. When you are sad you cry. When you are embarrassed you may blush. When you are frightened your state of mind results in physical reactions. Your blood pressure rises.

Conversely the physical condition of the body affects the mind. When your body lacks nourishment and you are hungry, you could be irritable, angry or depressed. When you are exposed to extreme cold or severe cold it will also result in certain mental conditions.

We have come to accept to what extent negative mental states can affect bodily functions. A physical reaction such as a heart attack can be brought about as a result of a severe shock. In the same way certain physical conditions can be alleviated or even cured by adopting a certain attitude of mind.

For centuries Oriental healers have maintained that it was possible to control internal body functions such as blood pressure, body temperature, brain waves, heart beat and other internal body functions by forces of the mind. Until fairly recently Western Scientists refused to accept this and ridiculed this idea. However the work carried out by researchers into Biofeedback in the 1960's confirmed that this is indeed possible and has led to a complete re-assessment of the situation.

The process of Biofeedback involves connecting a person to a machine, which can indicate changes in internal functions by recordings on the machine. These recordings are directly affected by conscious effort of the mind. In this way a person can learn, for example, to control his blood pressure by observing the reaction of the machine to thought processes.

You can quite easily demonstrate your own power to control your physical reactions

without having to resort to elaborate biofeedback machines. It can be done by the use of your imagination rather than will power. In many instances the imagination is far stronger than willpower.

Sit back in a comfortable chair with your eyes closed. Clear your mind of all thoughts. Make your mind completely blank. For example, think of a blackboard on which nothing has been written. After you have been sitting in this position for a minute or so, place the fingers of your right hand on your left-hand pulse and note your pulse rate.

Rest for a few moments, with your mind still completely devoid of all emotion, then allow your imagination to take you back to an exciting sports event you have either attended personally recently or watched on TV. It must be something in which you felt personally involved emotionally.

Recapture in your imagination every exciting incident in the sports event. While you are doing this repeat the process of measuring your pulse rate once again. You will find there is an appreciable difference as compared with the pulse rate taken when you were in a completely neutral mental state.

This will provide you with a graphic illustration of the fact that you have within you the ability, not only to control your mental state by the power of your imagination, but also your physical state.

Here is another experiment that will give you an indication of your imaginative power and also confirm that the power of imagination is more powerful than will power.

Try, by an extreme effort of will, to make yourself cry. Try and make tears come to eyes.
Unless you use an onion you will find this extremely difficult to do. But it can be easily accomplished by using your imagination.

Use your powers of imagination to produce a graphic image in your mind of a very sad, tragic or emotional incident that touched your life recently that moved you very deeply at the time.

It could have been a dreadful accident you happened to witness; or the funeral of a very dear friend or relation; or the loss of someone dear to you; or even a movie that touched you in a special way.

Focus your mind on the particular incident that affected you emotionally.

If your imaginative is sufficiently strong and the images you visualize are vivid and graphic, it is highly likely that tears will begin to well up in your eyes, especially if you are alone and can cry unashamedly.

Perhaps you sometimes wonder how actors and actresses are able to produce tears almost at will when required to do so in a scene. It is because they have been trained to use their powers of imagination to an extraordinary degree. They have developed the art of identifying themselves so completely with the characters they portray, they live the part they portray. Through training they have learnt the art of role-playing.

Role-playing is a skill that can be acquired through training. Even though you may have no desire to become an actor and no aspirations to go on stage, you will find that it is a skill you will find very useful indeed in creating helpful images in your mind.

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Power-of-Mind-Over-Matter---The-Relationship-Between-Mind-and-Body&id=670059