TOTALLY HUMAN

Sunrise is such a beautiful thing that some of us quite frankly ignore with our busy lives as we scurry to work to keep up with the bills and rent. But for once I really sat down and thought about nature. It was about 6:00 am. and I was just in time for the sunrise. I watched the sun slowly come out of the horizon as it sent golden beams on the dew covered grass making them sparkle like crystals. The birds darted to and fro singing their merry tunes as they played. I looked up at the sky and daydreamed just gazing at the beautiful picture each soft cloud painted against the canvas of the blue sky. And my neighbor's rabbit kept chewing away at the green grass making it look so delicious. I almost knelt down to eat it but sanity took it's toll on me. Here in the Caribbean it is truly a sight to see.

As I sat there admiring nature. I heard the faint, rumbling sound of a car. It passed right in front of my house and I looked at it a little annoyed since it disturbed my peace. As I kept looking I realized that it was emitting smoke which stained the road. Then the thought came to my head. Just what on earth are we humans doing. All of a sudden I felt my eyes open up and I truly saw the results of our knowledge. Here was a car polluting the fresh morning air and scaring away animals. And I was sure that this car had killed a bird or two while speeding at 120 km/h.

Because of this pollution our ozone layer and the very same sun that I was admiring had become a killer. How many died from skin cancer? How many died from heat stroke? Because of this our oxygen is now being cut short as more plants are dying. Before the only people that really had problems with breathing were smokers. Now everyone is technically a smoker when they breathe in the harmful gas called carbon monoxide. The smoke is not the least bit of our problems. These major oil companies throw all their toxic waste into our rivers and seas. Killing fishes and polluting our water. Now you can't even take a drink from the river because there is no more river. Now, all I see is a nasty, black drain of dead fish, oil and garbage.

Do you think that nature causes all the floods? Many of times I have seen flooding in towns due to garbage filled gutters. Many of times I've seen landslides because of some smart person building a road on the slope of a mountain. Don't you think that it's a little strange to see teens getting infected with cancer. And we wonder what causes it. I'll tell you what causes it. It's the cell phones and the laptops. Have you ever held a cell phone near to a camera or any other sensitive electrical device? The device goes crazy. Can you imagine what it is doing to our brains?

What about deforestation, acid rain and global warming? These are all products of man. You don't see a monkey building some kind of coconut bomb that would wipe out half of his monkey friends' population in a second. You don't see him kidnapping a baby for a banana. No!!! And we all do this because of greed. Greed for power, for money to buy all these fancy cars and phones.

Technology has indeed made us more comfortable. But at what price people? For the price of our lives, our very own humanity? Maybe we were better off swinging on vines and yelling all kinds of crazy mumbo jumbo. There are cars and other things that we can use that are environmentally friendly but those top guys would not be making all the money. That's why they don't promote it. Let's make a change people. Let's go green.

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I have a family history of diabetes. And because it's in my bloodline I was afraid of getting it. So I searched and happened to come across an interesting article that is entitled "Spices are good for diabetics."

It turns out that spices can do much more than flavor your food as researchers of the University of Georgia discovered that a pinch of spice can boost the health of diabetics. The test was conducted on 24 spices which the researches bought from a Wal-Mart store.

The students then took these spices back to the lab and conducted tests and discovered that spices have the power to inhibit tissue damage and inflammation brought on by high blood-sugar levels in the body. Spices are rich in antioxidants, which are thought to protect cells from damage.

Usually when one puts a lot of antioxidants in food people tend to get fat but this is no longer the case since spices can be applied in large amounts and would not get you fatter. The spices and extracts appeared to inhibit a process known as glycation, which has been linked to inflammation and tissue damage in diabetics.

The spices that seemed most likely to help diabetics were cloves, cinnamon, all spice, apple pie spice and pumpkin spice. Top herbs also included marjoram, sage and thyme.

Lona Sandon, national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, said that while research does suggest that spices are high in antioxidants and may reduce blood sugar levels, it's difficult to make recommendations as to how much should be taken.

But since they are very good in prevention and possibly aiding in cure I guess that we should all eat it until we cannot stand it anymore unless you are allergic to them. They already bring flavor to our foods so this is just one more reason why we should spice up our lives.

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How many of us use sunblock? How many of us avoid the sun? Well I avoid the sun every day since it damages my skin really badly but this lack of sunlight can bring dire consequences to us all.

Recent research has shown that a lack of vitamin D can cause a series of heart problems such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and chronic blood vessel inflammation. Not to mention the increase in diabetes. Scientists have shown that vitamin D deficiency can lead up to double the risk of heart problems.

One of the key causes of this deficiency is lack of sunlight. Many of us go to the beach or outdoors and put on sunscreen to "protect our skin." It is true that the sun is very dangerous and that it can cause cancer if you are over exposed but by putting on these sun screens we are preventing ourselves from receiving 99% (ninety nine percent) of our vitamin D that comes from the sun. And may I remind you that the sun is the major agent in supplying us with this vitamin.

How would you know if you are getting enough vitamin D. Well if you know that you are not getting sunlight then you are doomed. Also if you start to feel pains from bones or your bones feel weak then that's another symptom. If you are indeed feeling those kind of pains then do something about it right away. Those symptoms may lead to rickets which cause bowed legs etc. or osteomalacia which causes reduced bone strength.

THE SOLUTION

Try going out in the sun for less than fifteen (15 minutes) this could supply you with the required need for vitamin D. If you stay longer than 15 minutes then it is a good idea to use sunscreen. You can also get small amounts of vitamin D in your foods such as tuna or salmon. Your body needs this people. It also helps with the absorption of calcium. So drinking milk without vitamin D is practically useless.

I was always one of those people who believed that if you take a lot of vitamins that you would be safe. Well recent research has shown that this might not be the case. Recently researches reported some startling results in which almost 15,000 male doctors who were taking vitamins E and C for ten years showed no effect on cancer rates.

Another study showed that it also had no benefit for heart disease. Also recently doctors at a New York cancer center reported that vitamin C not only protects normal cells but cancer cells. Johns Hopkins School of Medicine showed that 19 vitamin E clinics with approximately 135,000 patients with high doses of vitamin E showed a four percent increased risk of dying while those taking the vitamin along with other minerals had a six percent greater risk of dying. Another study showed that daily vitamin E takers had 13 percent higher risk of heart attack.

The Journal of Clinical Oncology published a study of 540 patients with head and neck cancer who were being treated with radiation therapy. The vitamin E decreased side effects but the users had a higher rate of recurrence for cancer.

A Havard study in 2002 of 72,000 nurses showed that those consuming high levels of vitamins through supplements etc. had a 48 percent higher risk of hip fracture than those taking less. Studies also showed that taking vitamin C for colds had no significant benefit but it did decrease the harshness of the cold.

Two studies showed that vitamin B does not prevent heart attacks and help patients with vascular disease.

However, vitamins such as B12 helps the elderly and also folic acid for women bearing children. Although these results have been published consumers still continue to take their daily vitamins saying that the tests could have been wrong or maybe scientists were treating the wrong disease with certain vitamins. I don't know how much of this is true. But if it is true then how much vitamins do we really need to take? Our bodies do depend on it. What do you think?

Okay so I got up this morning around 10 am. and realized that I was not feeling the same as usual. My feet felt really weak and I just felt tired. Then I thought to myself and realized that I don't usually wake up at 10 am. I go to sleep at about 10 pm and wake at about 7 - 6 am in the morning. I don't know about you but you always feel a lot more energized when you wake up early.
There is an old saying "early to bed early to rise makes us strong happier and wise."
Or something like that. And I've been thinking that the old folks were right. I mean we humans have a biological clock in our heads. Yes believe it or not but we are made to sleep at sunset and wake up at sunrise. This method would give us the maximum amount of sleep required and allow our bodies to repair and grow. After all a good night sleep is always best. Also when you wake up early you get to breathe in fresh clean air before the hustle and bustle of daily life. You become calmer and your thoughts flow freely. Why do you think most students study early in the morning or a better question. If you had something to do let's say you had to write a speech or something. At what time exactly would you write your speech. Most likely it would be after 2 am. or before 10 pm. isn't that so. That is because those are the peak hours where our minds work better and we are more relaxed. I have a proposition for you or better yet I'll let you decide. If you have difficulty with starting your day. Or you feel awful when you wake up. Then it would be best to try out something new.

Option 1)
If you wake up at 10am-3pm and feel good then good for you. But if you wake up at those times and feel tired due to oversleep or going against your natural biological clock. Or probably have difficulty breathing, or you find it hard to get in gear for the day due to these late hours of waking up then you should use option 2.

Option 2)
You wake up early according to your biological clock so you don't feel tired. You take long deep breaths of air and indulge yourself in healthy breathing exercises. At this time your mind is rested and you are able to think clearly. The environment is quite or a little more quite than usual. You are given the chance to slowly wind into your day.

I mean which is better going with the natural design of your body or going against it. You choose. I know that some of us feel great getting up late and that's probably because your body is adapted or built to do that. So give yourself a clap you are "extremely special."But give option 2 a chance and see what difference it may make in your life.

If anyone has any information on this topic or have any experience with this topic then please post in the comments. Also if you would like us to talk about a particular topic then feel free to email me at (isaacjohn46@yahoo.com)

I had a little experience of polyphasic sleep last night. "Poly what?" Yup polyphasic. A relatively large word that makes me feel very intelligent.

Polyphasic sleep is a pattern in which the user sleeps at short intervals each day from approximately 45 minutes -2 hours. Although some people sleep for only 20 minutes for each session. Polyphasic sleeping is really used by people who want to get more waking hours out of their day. So they sleep for short amounts of time so that it would add up to 2- 5 hours of sleep a day. So they may have aproximately 6 short naps to make up for the whole day.

Now the only reason why you should use polyphasic sleeping is if you "actually" intend to use the extra hours of the day. Or else it woul not really make sense. People who use the polyphasic method claim to remember their dreams more, have more lucid dreams and are more alert.

Most doctors refer to polyphasic sleeping as a sleep disorder which is related to insomnia in which the patient finds it hard to sleep or wakes up during the night.

Now I'm a monophasic sleeper. Yeah another big word "yay me" Monophasic sleepers are those who tend to sleep for the normal eight hours straight. In other words the majority of the world sleeps monophasically which is the normal sleep pattern for human beings.
But last night I had a little case of polyphasic sleep. Actually I'm not sure if you could call it that or insomnia.
But I actually woke up this morning feeling energised. The only bad feeling I really had was a slight uneasy feeling of my eyes. Probably because I'm not used to it. My conclusion to my energetic result and note that I said MY CONCLUSION is that my body some how adapted to this polyphasic sleep in one night which is weird and my brain actually made the sleep cycles shorter. In other words I dreamt faster so I had more cycles of sleep than usual which I say again WEIRD. But if we could some how practice a form of polyphasic sleep in which we train our bodies to go through some of the more important sleep cycles more regularly imagine what it would be like. I'm not sure how the rest of my day would be like but I actually like it so far.
If anyone has any experience with polyphasic sleep or knows how to get to the more important sleep cycles faster please leave a comment.

I slept for a really long time last night and it was rather comfortable. But when I woke up this morning I had a bad pain in my neck. I could not really turn my head left nor right which is quite painful. So I decided to do some research on neck pains because I'm a very curious fellow. I stumbled upon this site by the name of midweek.com where they told me about neck pains and sleeping.
It turned out that my neck pain was caused by poor sleeping posture. I know what you are about to say. "Well duh" i sort of figured that out but what was the most startling realization was the effects that it may have on me.
It turned out that the most proper way to sleep was on your back . This is so because it retains and support your spine. I'm a side sleeper so I lay on my sides preferably my right. Although this is still good it still has some faults. Sleeping on your sides may cause your back to curve which would tamper with your spine. If you don't know anything about your spine is that it is one of the most important bones of your body since it contains or is the main channel to your nervous system. So any defaults would have you looking funny and thinking funny.
The best thing to do is to make sure and stack pillows under your head so that your head would not be tilted up nor slanted down. Also keep a pillow between your legs so that your pelvic girdle would not be damaged
For those of you who are belly sleepers I'm so sorry for you but the best thing to do is to stop sleeping on your stomach.
When you sleep on your stomach you cut off a lot of blood that goes to your head since your head is facing up. You also damage your nervous system and your spinal chord. You would not know when your spinal chord is damaged because it does not have pain sensors so be very careful. If you happen to have pain in your neck you can use ice or the better thing to do would be to use a warm cloth. The symptoms of improper sleeping practice are neck and shoulder pains, dizziness, numbness and tingling in your arms and legs.

WHAT THE ANCIENT GUYS BELIEVED

The Egyptians believed that dreams were signs from the gods.
Also Greek philosophers thought that dreaming had something to do with the stars.

I would not argue with religion or prophecy but please be sensible
If you get a dream tonight about God telling you to jump off a cliff or building or blow up yourself I hope you think it through

Did you hear about my brother who slept with his head under the pillow?
When he woke up, he discovered the fairies had taken all his teeth!

What has four legs, but only one foot?
A bed.

How do you sleep, tell us what was your experience with neck pains.

Remember if you have any information on this particular topic or you have jokes about this topic please post it in the comments. If you would like to talk about a topic please email me (isaacjohn46@yahoo.com)