What can help period pain – Part 3?

In my previous post I said that the activity you do to chill out doesn't matter it you just need to enjoy it and it absorbs you. So why not consider paying video games, yes video games.  If you ask any gamer, who enjoys playing them and they will tell you it help them relax or de-stress.  I know this may sound unlikey.  However that is scientific research to support the idea that regularly playing video games can help people unwind an dimprove their ability to handle everyday stress. In 2010 Associate Professor Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson of the Texas A&M Public Research Facility demonstrated that both men and women who play violent video games long-term seem to be able to adopt mental skills to handle stress, become less depressed and get less hostile during stressful tasks.  In 2014 reserarchers from University College London  found that people who played video games after work experienced faster recovery from work related stress. While there are a number of video games on the market which are specifically aimed at helping people unwind and manage stress, it seems that almost any form of game playing will do the trick.  Spending half an hour each day on a video console could be be as effective as going to the gym for helping you “chill out” at the end of a busy day. References http://www.christopherjferguson.com/hitman.pdf http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1418103/  

While it may not seem the most obvious time of year to start talking about sleep, we can often forget when the sun is out our natural instinct is to go out and play sport or socialise.  In addition summer is often a time when things naturally slow down in the business world so we can be tempted to pack in as many things as possible before it gets busy at work. This means at this time of year we can often find out ourselves feeling depleted and short on sleep due to hot summer nights which are not condusive to a good nights sleep. I know I have blogged in the past about sleep, here are my tips for a good nights sleep .  I have talked in the past about how we feel good if we get a good nights sleep but the medical profession is still unclear about why we need sleep.  What is clear is that sleep is a huge clear out of thoughts and feelings that accumulated during the day - and this is critical to our health.  The medical profession has many theories about why we dream or need to dream - what is agreed on is that parts of our brains are very active when we dream  and that dreaming improves our ability to solve problems and be creative. The key question about sleep is often how much sleep do I need.  I don't focus on a figure but go by how my body feels.  That means sometimes it needs more sleep and sometimes less sleep.  What I focus on is the quality of sleep which I judge by how refreshed I feel in the morning.      

Here are some top tips on how to live to 100.  These tips are from Dr Claudia Kawas at the University of California, on of the world's leading scientific researchers into longevity and scientists at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and the scientists working on the Blue Zone project. Scientists studying lonevity are tyring to answer the question why doesn one person live until they are 94 while another dies at 75.  Dr Claudia Kawas has spent 15 years studying "super-agers" - those who live until into their nineties and beyond while keeping their minds sharp.  By studying the lifestyles of these "super-agers" scientists have discovered some common lifestyle habits and traits including:

1. Drinking two cups of coffee a day
2. Don't over eat
3. Get out and socialise including talking to strangers
4. Drink two glases of wine a day
5. 15 mins of light exercise a day
6. Positive thinking or optimistic outlook in life
7. Resilience when bad things happen
8. Having a purpose/ belief in life
9. Put others including family first
10. Be with the "right" people for you
11. Healthy eating i.e. more plant based diets