7 shocking things that shorten your life span

7 shocking things that shorten your life span

RealBuzz – Mon, 17 Dec, 2012

No sense of humor

You know how people always say “laughter is the best medicine?” Turns out they’re telling the truth. A study carried out by Sven Svebak at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which covered 54,000 subjects, found that people with a high capacity for humor were 35 per cent more likely to be live longer than people who ranked at the bottom of the humor scale. If you are planning to go through life keeping laughter to a minimum, you’ll be missing out on health benefits such as stress reduction, immune system improvement, and increased blood flow, which could reduce your life expectancy when compared to your chuckling peers.

Flying

It’s been proven that taking regular holidays is a stress busting health booster, but it seems the way we travel to those holidays isn’t quite as healthy. In fact, flying can be downright bad for you. It’s already been proven by the Association of Flight Attendants that people who have careers in the aviation industry are more at risk of dying from cancer, and now it’s become apparent why. According to physicist Robert Parish, when you reach the average cruising altitude of 39,000 feet in a plane you are subject to 64 times more radiation than at sea level due to cosmic rays, which over time can seriously affect your wellbeing.  

Nasty co-workers

You know that person who you can’t stand at work? As if things weren’t bad enough already, they’re actually shortening your lifespan. Researchers at Tel Aviv University found that a person’s colleagues have a significant bearing on their wellbeing, with friendly and supportive co-workers leading to lowered stress levels and a reduction in blood pressure and cholesterol. People at work who cause arguments and don’t share the workload equally have the opposite effect, causing stress and subsequently a higher risk of dying amongst their colleagues. These negative effects were most obvious in subjects between the ages of 38 and 43, so if you fall into that bracket it might be time to bury the hatchet with your work enemies.

Retiring

Retiring is often the light at the end of the tunnel for stressed workers, especially for those who have saved all of their life so that they can do it earlier. Sadly, that lifetime of financial sacrifice is leading to a shorter lifespan according to research carried out by Shell Health Services. The study discovered that people who retire at 55 on average died younger than those who waited until they were 65. John Rother, chief lobbyist of the American Association of Retired Persons, explained it rather bluntly by saying “you use it or you lose it” – by retiring early, your body misses out on its daily dose of activity and you gradually become more unhealthy.

Not drinking alcohol

We’re always told to cut back on how much alcohol we drink, and rightly so – excessive alcohol consumption can severely damage your health. However, go to the opposite end of the drinking spectrum and you could be in even more trouble than heavy drinkers. A study at the University of Texas found that non-drinkers have a lower life expectancy than people who drink a moderate amount, and in some cases even lower than heavy drinkers. This is partly due to missing out on the health benefits associated with alcohol. Alcohol (in sensible amounts) helps to protect against heart disease, and decreases the likelihood of Alzheimer’s and dementia through improved neuron function in the brain.

Sleeping too much

Getting enough sleep is important when it comes to good health, so surely the more shut-eye you get the better, right? Wrong. Consistently going too far over the recommended eight hours can negatively affect your health according to a study conducted by RealAge.com. The findings showed that participants who slept for more than nine and a half hours a night suffered from a staggering 60 per cent increase in heart disease, and a higher mortality rate when compared to people who stick to the recommended amount. As well as heart disease, over-sleeping has also been linked with a whole host of health issues, including obesity, diabetes, headaches and depression.

Not having sex

Sex is good for you. Is anyone still here? For those of you who haven’t frantically run off to tell a significant other the good news, we’ll explain why. The British Medical Journal conducted a sex survey and found that men who didn’t have sex at least once a month experienced twice the mortality rate of those who were getting lucky once a week. It’s not hard to see why this is the case – having sex burns kilojoules, lowers blood pressure, boosts the immune system, and much, much more. A study at Duke University also backed this up, finding that women who had enjoyable sex lives lived eight years longer than those who didn’t. 

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Is the Carrie Bradshaw Effect over? Female TV characters start taking responsibility for themselves

By Anne T. Donahue | omg! TV – Tue, 6 Nov, 2012


Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw on "Sex and the City." (HBO)


The past year has seen a new type of female character emerge. Unlike the Carrie Bradshaw effect of the late '90s and early 2000s, TV's fictional women are no longer glamorizing dysfunctional relationships or using retail therapy to numb emotional pain. True, characters like Mindy Lahiri ("The Mindy Project"), Ann Perkins ("Parks and Recreation"), and Jess Day ("New Girl") make their share of mistakes and poor decisions, but they don't shy away from their behaviour.


Unlike Carrie, these female characters take responsibility for their actions and handle distressing situations like adults. In this decade, the women on television control their own lives.


While "Sex and the City's" Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) made waves in the '90s for embracing an active sex life -- a trait Mindy, Ann, and Jess all share -- her irresponsible spending, penchant for labels, and relationship with Mr. Big (a man who mistreated her for years, yet whom she ended up marrying), made her the victim of her own actions. Yes, at some point, some people overspend, and some people find themselves with a partner who doesn't respect them, but unlike today's fictional women, Carrie was defined by those situations. By the second "Sex and the City" movie, Carrie kissed another man, and in response to the news, Mr. Big buys her a diamond ring to solve the problem.



Rashida Jones as Ann Perkins on "Parks and Recreation." (NBC)


On "Parks and Recreation," however, Ann (Rashida Jones) doesn't have this luxury. In the fourth episode of the current season, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) confronts Ann after noticing she adopts the personality and hobbies of any man she has a relationship with. Instead of a snide remark said at brunch (à la "Sex and the City"), the two friends actually discuss the problem, prompting Ann to re-evaluate her approach to boyfriends, and how important it is to be yourself.



Zooey Deschanel as Jess on "New Girl," and Mindy Kaling as Mindy on "The Mindy Project." (Fox)


The same can be said for "The Mindy Project's" Mindy (Mindy Kaling) and "New Girl's" Jess (Zooey Deschanel). Mindy's decision to keep up a one-sided relationship with her coworker is immediately called out by her best friend, so she instead begins pursuing men who treat her better. Meanwhile, Jess' go-to pal may be her roommate, Nick (Jake Johnson), but the two have countless confrontations about relationship choices and self-destructive behaviour. Case in point: now that Jess is unemployed, her friends have been consistently supporting her job search and keeping her motivated when she begins to feel down.




AnnaSophia Robb as a young Carrie Bradshaw on "The Carrie Diaries." (The CW)


However, this shift might not be permanent. With the premiere of "The Carrie Diaries" -- a "Sex and the City" prequel -- set for early 2013 on The CW, another generation of girls will be subjected to the franchise's "labels and love" ethos. Yes, some women like designers and others prioritize dating, but to define women by those things is limiting and dangerous, especially to young women. Shows like "Parks and Recreation," "The Mindy Project," and "New Girl" portray women as interesting and three-dimensional -- as actual human beings. They have real relationships with their friends, where bad behaviour is called out, and successes are celebrated. And while they aren't perfect, these women strive to fix their problems as opposed to shopping them away.


"The Carrie Diaries" may work to portray their characters as more than just PG-13 rated versions of their adult selves, but it might also perpetuate those dangerous traits that audiences are only now starting to tire of.


http://ca.omg.yahoo.com/blogs/omg-tv/carrie-bradshaw-effect-over-female-tv-characters-start-193247543.html

Why Men Marry: Revealed

Why (and who) do men choose to marry? How do men define happily ever after? Are men really commitment-phobic and sex-obsessed?

In a book entitled VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework, and Commitment (Simon & Shuster, 2007) author Neil Chethik examines the findings from a national survey of married men, including in-depth interviews with 70 men and a survey of another 288. And some of his findings just might surprise you.

Why Do Men Marry?

Contrary to what some of my girlfriends have said, men do not marry for free laundry service. According toVoiceMale, “Men propose marriage primarily because they want the physical, emotional and intellectual companionship of a woman. Men like company.”

Are men commitment-phobic? Not with the right woman. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nine out of 10 men will marry in their lifetime. And according to the VoiceMale survey, “Men do the proposing 85 per cent of the time. At least formally, it is overwhelmingly men who initiate the marriage commitment.”

Can you drag a man to the altar? Not likely. According to Chethik, “Men entertain the idea of marriage only when they’re ready.” And these days, men judge readiness as a “flagging interest in the singles scene.” One man quoted in VoiceMale stated, “One morning I woke up next to a woman who could have been a Playboy model, and I didn’t want her.”

Where Do They Meet the Women They’re Going to Marry?

# 24% of husbands met their wives in school
# 18% met their wives at a social event, such as a party or wedding
# 18% were introduced to their wives by friends
# 23% of men married in the last three years met their wives at work
# 6% met their wives at a bar (Who says you never meet someone nice at a bar!)
# 4% met their wives at church, synagogue or another religious setting
# 1% met online. “Because of the newness of online dating, no studies have yet been completed on whether marriages that begin online are more or less successful in the long term than those that start in more traditional ways.”

What Do Men Look for in a Future Wife?

Surprisingly, beauty was not the most important criteria for a man in choosing a wife. Sure, beauty attracts, and attraction is crucial, but the most important factors men look for in a woman are a positive outlook and self-confidence. Also high on the list were brains (hallelujah!), self-respect, motherliness and for some, devoutness to faith.

What’s more, according to Chethik’s survey, “A man who knows within a month of meeting a woman that he wants to marry her is likely to be happier in the marriage than a man who takes longer to decide.”

Do Married Men Get Enough Sex?

The stereotypes are true. Most married men don’t get as much sex as they’d like. (Although in fairness, many single men don’t get as much sex as they’d like either.)

However, the solution for all the sex-starved husbands might be as close as the broom closet. According to the VoiceMale survey, “The more satisfied a wife is with the division of household duties, the more satisfied a man is with his marital sex life.” That’s right guys, there’s nothing sexier than a man who knows how to use a toilet brush.

In the honeymoon phase (the first three years) men are generally happy with their sex lives (54 per cent get it at least three times a week, and eight per cent get it every day!). But the childrearing years (years four-20) are the toughest for men sexually.

The number of men having sex three times per week drops to 24 per cent. The next stage of marriage (years 21-35) brings with it an increase in sex, 29 per cent of men report their wives have an equal sex drive. And finally, in the last stage of marriage (35 years or more) the frequency of sex drops considerably, but 88 per cent of men are satisfied with their sex lives during this phase of marriage.

As far as happily ever after is concerned, you might be interested to know that 93 per cent of the men surveyed by Chethik said if given the chance, they’d marry the same woman all over again. Now who’s afraid of commitment?

~By Lisa Daily

Scent of a woman's tears lowers men's desire

What a downer! Men who smell a woman's tears experience a dip in both sexual arousal and testosterone, a new study finds. 

The libido-dampening effect occurred even when the men never saw the women cry and didn't know they were sniffing tears, researchers report online today (Jan. 6, 2011) in the journal Science.

The results are the first to suggest that humans can chemically communicate with tears.

"We conclude that there is a chemosignal in human tears, and at least one of the things the chemosignal does is reduce sexual arousal," study researcher Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told LiveScience.

An odorless signal

It's obvious that humans communicate both verbally and visually, but recent research has shown that chemosignals also carry lots of information. Chemosignals may be entirely odorless - in Sobel's study, participants were unable to tell the difference between tears and saline solution - but they affect both behavior and physiology.

Earlier work by Sobel and others found that male sweat can boost mood and sexual arousal in women, as well as bumping up their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. And a 2004 study published in the journal Hormones and Behavior found that the scent of a lactating woman's nursing pads could increase sexual desire in other women.

Scientists have found that emotional tears contain more proteinthan do the everyday tears that protect the eyes. Until now, however, chemical signals in tears had been found only in mice and blind mole rats. To investigate the phenomenon in humans, Sobel and his colleagues put out fliers recruiting people who could cry easily. They got about 70 responses (only one of them from a man), he said. The researchers screened the volunteers and found the three best criers - women who could produce at least a milliliter of tears while watching a sad movie.

The researchers then had 24 men sniff both saline and the women's tears. Both the tears and saline had been allowed to roll down the women's cheeks, as a way to control for any odors in their skin or sweat.

None of the men could tell the difference between the two samples, and even the experimenter was kept in the dark about which she was presenting. The men then saw photos of women's faces, which they rated for sadness and sexual attractiveness. [Read Sexual Pheromones: Myth or Reality?]

"To our surprise, there was absolutely no influence on sadness or empathy or anything of that sort that we had expected," Sobel said. However, "sexual arousal dropped after sniffing tears."

Questions about crying

The researchers tried the experiment again, this time priming 50 male volunteers for sadness by showing them a depressing video clip. Again, sniffing tears instead of saline didn't make men sadder. But it did lower their sexual arousal and their testosterone levels.

As a final experiment, the researchers repeated the tear-sniffing with 16 men who were situated inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI). The fMRI shows patterns of blood flow in the brain, which coincide with brain activity.

Sure enough, the tears reduced activity in areas known to be involved in sexual arousal. Those areas included the hypothalamus, an almond-size structure just above the brainstem, and the left fusiform gyrus, which is on the surface of the left side of the brain.

The study was "very well done," said Charles Wysocki, a psychobiologist at the Monell Chemical Sense Center in Philadelphia.

"Tears contain proteins that are also found in the underarm," Wysocki told LiveScience. "And in the underarm they bind the chemicals that we think are involved with chemical communication, so it's quite possible that these proteins found in tears might be doing the same thing."

The finding is likely to remain controversial until researchers discover a specific chemical that causes the response, however. Sobel's lab is now working to identify the compound in tears that sends the signal.

"There's something that's operating at a very low concentration to cause this effect," George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Center who wasn't involved in the study, told LiveScience. "It's obviously a molecule with a lot of oomph."

The study also raises questions of whether children's and men's tears send signals, and what signals are conveyed within one's own gender by tears. Whether happy tears send a signal is another open question, Wysocki said.

"You can understand where women might not be aroused when they are, in fact, crying," Wysocki said. "And maybe they're telling the male, it's a chemical communication way of saying 'No' or at least 'Not now.' You can see that, it makes sense. But if doesn't make sense to have the same chemical signal being released when a guy gets back after a year of tour of duty and his wife greets him withtears of happiness and pleasure. I would speculate that those tears would be containing something else."

Given the newfound parallel between rodents and human tears, the idea that humans are the only mammals to cry emotional tears may be wrong, Sobel said.

"Human emotional tears were considered unique because they were considered purely an emotional response," he said. "But what we've shown is that they're a form of chemosignaling, at least in part, and that puts them on par with mice tears and mole-rat tears."

• New Theory for Why We Cry
• Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
• Top 10 Things That Make Humans Special

Style Tips From Sex And The City

Twelve years ago Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda strutted onto our TV screens and forever meshed feminism and style. Take a look back on some of those beauty moments from Season I to the big screen. (By Rose L. Thayer)

How It All Began

It all began back in 1998 with Carrie's crispy curls, white eyeliner, and those awkward interviews during each episode — nothing could stop women everywhere from being captivated by her (and her friends') trials and tribulations! Let's journey through some of the looks we've loved — and loved to hate — from Season 1 right through the Sex and the City sequel. Bring on the hats, shoes, halter tops, and hair dos and don'ts!

Classic Charlotte

Count on Charlotte to always be put-together, conservative, and simply elegant. Her style is the epitome of the classic American look, ripped straight from the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalog. Whether she's working at her art gallery, attending singles' night at a synagogue, or chasing around two children and a nanny, Charlotte never falters in her dress — or her morals.

The Ever-Evolving Carrie

No matter how you feel about the insane outfits Carrie has worn throughout the years (which change as often as she and Mr. Big break up), you can't deny that she pulls them off with her trademark je ne sais quoi. Who else could travel to Paris in such a clichéd Parisian hat and make it look so chic and effortless, or sport a petticoat and Dior fashions in the Arabian Desert? But, hey, how many of us, given the body, budget, and opportunity, can really say we wouldn't do the same?

That Is So Samantha

Samantha is a woman who knows what she wants and knows who she is. She keeps her look the same — bangs, blond hair, and hot man candy by her side — but plays it up with trendy outfits, Birkin bags, and sparkling, treading-on-gaudy jewelry.

No-Nonsense Miranda

Thank goodness Miranda's tough lawyer look wears off as the show continues. Everything about early Miranda is harsh, from her super-dark, slicked back red hair to the no-nonsense way she handles the men in her life. Before Steve, who knew she even had a soft side?

Series Finale

By the close of the series in 2004, all the women are looking their best. They have really found their groove — in their lives and in their styles. Miranda especially is dramatically and beautifully transformed by the final season. Her highlighted, layered bob softens her overall appearance, and gone is the buttoned-up, no-frills fashion sense of the earlier episodes.

The Fab Four Today

Twelve years later, these four women still look amazing — you could say they're like fine wine! And judging by the box office numbers for their latest film, it seems that America is still madly in love. We'll stay tuned for Sex and the City: The Golden Years!

20 Secrets Men Keep

20 Secrets Men Keep

MC's male dating blogger, Rich Santos, reveals what men really think about sex, dating, relationships, and you.

What He's Thinking

We like to cuddle. Cuddling is all about mood and ambience. It's peaceful to lie in someone's arms in the dark with great music or even the low buzz of the TV (although that tends to distract me) in the background. It's nice to hear nothing but your lover's breath against the backdrop of the evening or early morning. Holding someone close in bed also makes you feel very secure with one another and the relationship.

more.... 20 Secrets Men Keep