Hi Everyone, I am here in beautiful Aruba and as I was sitting on a beach chair thinking about what differentiates successful people in life with unsuccessful people. This is a topic I contemplate quite regularly… Anyhow check out this short video to hear 3 important things that you really need to master to reach your dreams.
Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”
http://www.yourgreatmind.com/blog
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“Body clock” is a twenty-four-hour rhythm of physiological processes of all living beings including animals, and plants. Jet lag is a condition resulting from alteration of this rhythm in a short period of time. When a person travels across a number of time zones in a day, the body processes which are conditioned by daylight and darkness cannot adjust quickly enough for the destination conditions. A person’s body-clock gets disoriented and is what we call jet-lag.
This disorientation can cause a person to be irritable, forgetful and tends to lose their concentration easily. The person may suffer from mild depression, disturbed sleep pattern and loss of appetite. Occasionally the person may suffer from dehydration and develop swollen or uncomfortable feet.
A long flight to places within the same time zone will not cause jet lag; it may give you cramps, headache and discomfort. A journey from Los Angeles to Tokyo which goes across time zones can cause jet lag, not the journey from Johannesburg to Frankfurt which is within the same time zone. Crossing time zones is the essential condition necessary for being jet lagged.
Jet lag does not affect all people all the time nor is its severity. The elderly seem to suffer much less from jet lag as compared to the younger ones. Also it seems to affect women of reproducing age group more often. It depends upon a person’s physiological adjustability. If you know you are prone to suffer from jet lag here are some of the precautions you can take that will cut down on the severity.
Try to start the journey in a relaxed frame of mind and avoid rushing around. A good night’s sleep on the day prior to the journey is helpful. During the flight take alcohol in moderation and drink plenty of water. Some light exercises such as stretching and walking up and down the aisle helps. Take off your shoes, wiggle the toes, stretch your legs and this will avoid swelling of the feet.
You can find many “anti jet lag” suggestions. Act on them with caution. Do not take sleeping pills to get over jet lag as some people may suggest; it may have rather unpleasant consequences. In some cases the jet lag condition may persist for many days. Experts suggest that the recovery rate that you can expect from jet lag is “one day per time zone.” Sleep well, eat a sensible diet, relax, and get some moderate exercise are the simplest cures for rapid recovery. How fun does this sound? A vacation is supposed to be a respite from all those “sensible” things. Enjoy your trip - Bon Voyage!
What did you think of these tips? Let me know.
Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”
http://www.yourgreatmind.com/blog
A lot of clients often ask me why they don’t see any weight loss result. These clients generally do some things correctly but sadly enough, they often focus on the wrong actions and prevent long term weight release. First we have to change the way we look at “weight loss”. As humans what are we conditioned to do when we lose something? Let’s suppose you lose your keys, or you lose your car in a crowed parking lot, what will you do next? My guess is you will find it somehow. If you condition your mind around the topic of losing weight, I promise you will find it at a later point in time. Let’s use the word release. When you release something you do not expect it to come back. Understanding how expectation impacts our lives is very important! Now on to 7 specific tips to “release weight” as quick as possible:
1) Limiting your calories: Most people think that if they eat healthy and low fat food, they don’t need to limit their calories. I have bad news for you. To release weight you need to burn more calories than you take in.
2) Muscle building: Muscle building is in my opinion very beneficial in losing weight. Why? Because muscle building is a very intense type of exercise that will help raise your metabolism. By raising your metabolism you will be burning more fat and at the same time toning your muscles.
3)Reduce the amount of starchy food: Starchy food like white rice, white bread, pasta and bake goods are not good for weight loss & fat loss. These food have lots of empty calories and when eaten to often will promote weight gain. They lack vital vitamins and minerals needed for a healthy body.
4) Exercise first thing in the morning: A lot of research have been done on exercising on a empty stomach. It as been found that you can tap in your fat reserves faster. The best time to do it is first thing in the morning. Why… because you have been fasting for 8 -10 hours.
5) Drink lots of water: Water as no calories and keep you full for 30 to 60 minutes. Instead of drinking cola or fruit juice, drink some water and you will see that you will release weight faster.
6) Train with a group of people: Training with a group can get you very result. You will be able to help and motivate each others in attaining your mutual goal. I recommend you join an exercise group of your choice like yoga, spinning or aqua fitness.
7) Have a specific goal: It will be easier to release weight if you have a specific goal. I recommend you write down on a piece of paper what kind of physique you would like, be very specific. Write the actual numbers you want. Like “26 inches waist within 12 months”. Read this piece of paper every day and you will start to focus more on your goal.
Let me know what you think of these ideas.
Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”
http://www.yourgreatmind.com/blog
I think you will find this article very interesting. Let me know what you think.
Scientific American Mind - September 3, 2008
High-Aptitude Minds: The Neurological Roots of Genius
Researchers are finding clues to the basis of brilliance in the brain
By Christian Hoppe and Jelena Stojanovic
Within hours of his demise in 1955, Albert Einstein’s brain was salvaged, sliced into 240 pieces and stored in jars for safekeeping. Since then, researchers have weighed, measured and otherwise inspected these biological specimens of genius in hopes of uncovering clues to Einstein’s spectacular intellect.
Their cerebral explorations are part of a century-long effort to uncover the neural basis of high intelligence or, in children, giftedness. Traditionally, 2 to 5 percent of kids qualify as gifted, with the top 2 percent scoring above 130 on an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. (The statistical average is 100. See the box on the opposite page.) A high IQ increases the probability of success in various academic areas. Children who are good at reading, writing or math also tend to be facile at the other two areas and to grow into adults who are skilled at diverse intellectual tasks [see “Solving the IQ Puzzle,” by James R. Flynn; Scientific American Mind, October/November 2007].
Most studies show that smarter brains are typically bigger—at least in certain locations. Part of Einstein’s parietal lobe (at the top of the head, behind the ears) was 15 percent wider than the same region was in 35 men of normal cognitive ability, according to a 1999 study by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario. This area is thought to be critical for visual and mathematical thinking. It is also within the constellation of brain regions fingered as important for superior cognition. These neural territories include parts of the parietal and frontal lobes as well as a structure called the anterior cingulate.
But the functional consequences of such enlargement are controversial. In 1883 English anthropologist and polymath Sir Francis Galton dubbed intelligence an inherited feature of an efficiently functioning central nervous system. Since then, neuroscientists have garnered support for this efficiency hypothesis using modern neuroimaging techniques. They found that the brains of brighter people use less energy to solve certain problems than those of people with lower aptitudes do.
In other cases, scientists have observed higher neuronal power consumption in individuals with superior mental capacities. Musical prodigies may also sport an unusually energetic brain [see box on page 67]. That flurry of activity may occur when a task is unusually challenging, some researchers speculate, whereas a gifted mind might be more efficient only when it is pondering a relatively painless puzzle.
Despite the quest to unravel the roots of high IQ, researchers say that people often overestimate the significance of intellectual ability [see “Coaching the Gifted Child,” by Christian Fischer]. Studies show that practice and perseverance contribute more to accomplishment than being smart does.
Size Matters
In humans, brain size correlates, albeit somewhat weakly, with intelligence, at least when researchers control for a person’s sex (male brains are bigger) and age (older brains are smaller). Many modern studies have linked a larger brain, as measured by magnetic resonance imaging, to higher intellect, with total brain volume accounting for about 16 percent of the variance in IQ. But, as Einstein’s brain illustrates, the size of some brain areas may matter for intelligence much more than that of others does.
In 2004 psychologist Richard J. Haier of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues reported evidence to support the notion that discrete brain regions mediate scholarly aptitude. Studying the brains of 47 adults, Haier’s team found an association between the amount of gray matter (tissue containing the cell bodies of neurons) and higher IQ in 10 discrete regions, including three in the frontal lobe and two in the parietal lobe just behind it. Other scientists have also seen more white matter, which is made up of nerve axons (or fibers), in these same regions among people with higher IQs. The results point to a widely distributed—but discrete—neural basis of intelligence.
The neural hubs of general intelligence may change with age. Among the younger adults in Haier’s study—his subjects ranged in age from 18 to 84—IQ correlated with the size of brain regions near a central structure called the cingulate, which participates in various cognitive and emotional tasks. That result jibed with the findings, published a year earlier, of pediatric neurologist Marko Wilke, then at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and his colleagues. In its survey of 146 children ages five to 18 with a range of IQs, the Cincinnati group discovered a strong connection between IQ and gray matter volume in the cingulate but not in any other brain structure the researchers examined.
Scientists have identified other shifting neural patterns that could signal high IQ. In a 2006 study child psychiatrist Philip Shaw of the National Institute of Mental Health and his colleagues scanned the brains of 307 children of varying intelligence multiple times to determine the thickness of their cerebral cortex, the brain’s exterior part. They discovered that academic prodigies younger than eight had an unusually thin cerebral cortex, which then thickened rapidly so that by late childhood it was chunkier than that of less clever kids. Consistent with other studies, that pattern was particularly pronounced in the frontal brain regions that govern rational thought processes.
The brain structures responsible for high IQ may vary by sex as well as by age. A recent study by Haier, for example, suggests that men and women achieve similar results on IQ tests with the aid of different brain regions. Thus, more than one type of brain architecture may underlie high aptitude.
Low Effort Required
Meanwhile researchers are debating the functional consequences of these structural findings. Over the years brain scientists have garnered evidence supporting the idea that high intelligence stems from faster information processing in the brain. Underlying such speed, some psychologists argue, is unusually efficient neural circuitry in the brains of gifted individuals.
Experimental psychologist Werner Krause, formerly at the University of Jena in Germany, for example, has proposed that the highly gifted solve puzzles more elegantly than other people do: they rapidly identify the key information in them and the best way to solve them. Such people thereby make optimal use of the brain’s limited working memory, the short-term buffer that holds items just long enough for the mind to process them.
Starting in the late 1980s, Haier and his colleagues have gathered data that buttress this so-called efficiency hypothesis. The researchers used positron-emission tomography, which measures glucose metabolism of cells, to scan the brains of eight young men while they performed a nonverbal abstract reasoning task for half an hour. They found that the better an individual’s performance on the task, the lower the metabolic rate in widespread areas of the brain, supporting the notion that efficient neural processing may underlie brilliance. And in the 1990s the same group observed the flip side of this phenomenon: higher glucose metabolism in the brains of a small group of subjects who had below-average IQs, suggesting that slower minds operate less economically.
More recently, in 2004 psychologist Aljoscha Neubauer of the University of Graz in Austria and his colleagues linked aptitude to diminished cortical activity after learning. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that detects electrical brain activity at precise time points using an array of electrodes affixed to the scalp, to monitor the brains of 27 individuals while they took two reasoning tests, one of them given before test-related training and the other after it. During the second test, frontal brain regions—many of which are involved in higher-order cognitive skills—were less active in the more intelligent individuals than in the less astute subjects. In fact, the higher a subject’s mental ability, the bigger the dip in cortical activation between the pretraining and posttraining tests, suggesting that the brains of brighter individuals streamline the processing of new information faster than those of their less intelligent counterparts do.
The cerebrums of smart kids may also be more efficient at rest, according to a 2006 study by psychologist Joel Alexander of Western Oregon University and his colleagues. Using EEG, Alexander’s team found that resting eight- to 12-hertz alpha brain waves were significantly more powerful in 30 adolescents of average ability than they were in 30 gifted adolescents, whose alpha-wave signal resembled those of older, college-age students. The results suggest that gifted kids’ brains use relatively little energy while idle and in this respect resemble more developmentally advanced human brains.
Some researchers speculate that greater energy efficiency in the brains of gifted individuals could arise from increased gray matter, which might provide more resources for data processing, lessening the strain on the brain. But others, such as economist Edward Miller, formerly of the University of New Orleans, have proposed that the efficiency boost could also result from thicker myelin, the substance that insulates nerves and ensures rapid conduction of nerve signals. No one knows if the brains of the quick-witted generally contain more myelin, although Einstein’s might have. Scientists probing Einstein’s brain in the 1980s discovered an unusual number of glia, the cells that make up myelin, relative to neurons in one area of his parietal cortex.
Hardworking Minds
And yet gifted brains are not always in a state of relative calm. In some situations, they appear to be more energetic, not less, than those of people of more ordinary intellect. What is more, the energy-gobbling brain areas roughly correspond to those boasting more gray matter, suggesting that the gifted may simply be endowed with more brainpower in this intelligence network.
In a 2003 trial psychologist Jeremy Gray, then at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues scanned the brains of 48 individuals using functional MRI, which detects neural activity by tracking the flow of oxygenated blood in brain tissue, while the subjects completed hard tasks that taxed working memory. The researchers saw higher levels of activity in prefrontal and parietal brain regions in the participants who had received high scores on an intelligence test, as compared with low scorers.
In a 2005 study a team led by neuroscientist Michael O’Boyle of Texas Tech University found a similar brain activity pattern in young male math geniuses. The researchers used fMRI to map the brains of mathematically gifted adolescents while they mentally rotated objects to try to match them to a target item. Compared with adolescent boys of average math ability, the brains of the mathematically talented boys were more metabolically active—and that activity was concentrated in the parietal lobes, the frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate.
A year later biologist Kun Ho Lee of Seoul National University in Korea similarly linked elevated activity in a frontoparietal neural network to superior intellect. Lee and his co-workers measured brain activity in 18 gifted adolescents and 18 less intelligent young people while they performed difficult reasoning tasks. These tasks, once again, excited activity in areas of the frontal and parietal lobes, including the anterior cingulate, and this neural commotion was significantly more intense in the gifted individuals’ brains.
No one is sure why some experiments indicate that a bright brain is a hardworking one, whereas others suggest it is one that can afford to relax. Some, such as Haier—who has found higher brain metabolic rates in more astute individuals in some of his studies but not in others—speculate one reason could relate to the difficulty of the tasks. When a problem is very complex, even a gifted person’s brain has to work to solve it. The brain’s relatively high metabolic rate in this instance might reflect greater engagement with the task. If that task was out of reach for someone of average intellect, that person’s brain might be relatively inactive because of an inability to tackle the problem. And yet a bright individual’s brain might nonetheless solve a less difficult problem efficiently and with little effort as compared with someone who has a lower IQ.
Perfection from Practice
Whatever the neurological roots of genius, being brilliant only increases the probability of success; it does not ensure accomplishment in any endeavor. Even for academic achievement, IQ is not as important as self-discipline and a willingness to work hard.
University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman examined final grades of 164 eighth-grade students, along with their admission to (or rejection from) a prestigious high school. By such measures, the researchers determined that scholarly success was more than twice as dependent on assessments of self-discipline as on IQ. What is more, they reported in 2005, students with more self-discipline—a willingness to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain—were more likely than those lacking this skill to improve their grades during the school year. A high IQ, on the other hand, did not predict a climb in grades.
A 2007 study by Neubauer’s team of 90 adult tournament chess players similarly shows that practice and experience are more important to expertise than general intelligence is, although the latter is related to chess-playing ability. Even Einstein’s spectacular success as a mathematician and a physicist cannot be attributed to intellectual prowess alone. His education, dedication to the problem of relativity, willingness to take risks, and support from family and friends probably helped to push him ahead of any contemporaries with comparable cognitive gifts.
Note: This article was originally published with the title, “High-Aptitude Minds”.
We repeatedly see models plastered on magazines with a good looking body with no imperfections. We all want a body like that but as we get older our bodies will start to bulge here and there in places that we do not want it to. These bulges are what we call cellulite and it forms from the toxins and fats we consume over a long period of time. It starts out by invading the connective tissue and then hardening to form the lumps that can be seen. Once people discover they have this hideous looking problem, they will often try to find ways to get rid of cellulite.
One of the techniques that people often utilize to eradicate cellulite is buying lotions and creams. This however, does not work as there is no quick magical cure for cellulite. There is only one technique that works at removing the cellulite and restoring your body to its prime condition and that is cellulite exercise.
Cellulite exercise basically consists of getting your muscles into tip top shape. The best way to do this is through weight bearing exercises. Once you begin building up your muscles in problem areas, the cellulite will eventually go away. You will then be able to see your skin tightening as your muscles stretch and smooth out the dimples.
The first thing you should do is to start massaging the areas on your body that are affected by cellulite. This helps increase your circulation to that area which in turn promotes the fat removal from your system. The best way to massage these areas is by gently rubbing the area with a body brush while you are in the shower.
One exercise you can execute is performing leg lifts while down on your knees. You will need to kneel down on the floor and then place your hands on the floor as well. Next you will lift one leg up until it is parallel with your back. You will have to maintain this position for at least five seconds and then you can relax that leg. You should try to aim at conducting 3 sets of this exercise with 15 repetitions for each leg.
Another exercise you can execute is to do some more leg lifts but this time you will be lying down on your stomach. Simply lie down on your stomach and rest your hands under your head. Next you will need to lift your leg up and hold it in that position. Then you will take your foot and rotate it three or four times. After that, you should then rest it back on the floor. You should try to aim at conducting 3 sets of this exercise with 15 repetitions for each leg.
A further exercise you can execute is to tighten your leg and buttock muscles while you are sitting on a chair. To do this you will need to sit on a stable chair that has no rollers. Then you will want to place a pillow between your legs. Your goal will be to try and squeeze the pillow as hard as you can for one minute with your leg muscles and also with your buttock muscles. You should try to aim at conducting 3 sets of this exercise with 5 repetitions for each leg.
Many older adults, when they find out that they now have cellulite, always try to cover it up because it is so ugly and embarrassing. They will often try to find a quick cure that will rid them of this bulging fat in the form of potions and lotions but these are ineffective and do not work. The only way you can successfully get rid of cellulite is to increase your circulation to carry out some of the toxins and to do some exercises that will flatten out your skin. Curing cellulite and getting back to the body you love is as simple as spending a few minutes each day working on the problem areas.
Now, the question is: Are vitamins included? What are the vitamins recommended for pregnant women? What will be the effects? Here’s the real truth about the vitamins pregnant women can and can’t get away right now.
Vitamins Essential for Moms-To-Be
1. Vitamin C
This vitamin is essential in the manufacturing of your baby’s blood vessels, bones, and the whole skeletal system. Vitamin C helps display collagen, a protein responsible for producing your baby’s skeletal foundation. Vitamin C is also known as skin food because it feeds your skin as well as your baby’s skin with the right nutrients to help build healthy skin. As an antioxidant, it crapper also help you and your child fight free radicals or retard the oxidation process.
Since your body can’t produce vitamin C, unlike most animals, and it can’t store it either, it is important that you get your regular cater of vitamins from supplements and foods rich in vitamin C, such as citrus foods, vegetables, and fruits.
2. Foliate
Foliate, a B vitamin, is another nutrient necessary for the production of healthy red blood cells. And not everybody gets enough.
Foliate is found primarily in fresh fruits and vegetables, and people who eat a lot of canned or pre-packaged foods crapper become deficient. Pregnant women who springy alone and don’t want to cook for one are especially at risk for anemia caused by bedded deficiency.
Health experts suggest that a few servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day are the best bet for prevention. If you can’t bear Brussels sprouts, consider taking a daily nutritional supplement with 400 micrograms, the Daily Value of folic acid (the supplemental form of foliate).
3. Vitamin A
A daily intake of vitamin A between 10,000 and 15,000 IU (international units) may also provide healthy bones, skin, and eyes to your baby as well as healthy cells needed to build your baby’s internal organs.
However, meaningful women should speak with their doctors before supplementing their diet with vitamin A. Studies show that excessive intake of vitamin A crapper bring about relationship defects, such as ear and receptor abnormalities, microcephaly or small head, cleft lip and palate, hydrocephaly or enlargement of the fluid-filled paces in the brain, mental retardation, or heart defects.
Statistics show that meaningful women who consume more than 10,000 IU of vitamin A crapper lead to relationship defects in 1 of every 57 infants. Also, excessive intake of vitamin A during pregnancy crapper cause higher risks of miscarriage.
4. Vitamin D
When researchers in a certain study measured levels of vitamin D in pregnant women, they saw that the more vitamin D in the blood, the better the insulin was at delivering glucose to the muscles. So vitamin D is an important nutrient for many other reasons as well, such as helping produce healthy teeth, tissue, and bones for your baby and may help your body derail diabetes. Studies show that diabetes in pregnant women can be very risky and may even cause birth defects or morbidity.
Though vitamin D is produced when your skin is exposed to sunlight, a more reliable year-round source is milk. Four 8-ounce glasses of fat-free milk everyday crapper get you to the Daily Value of 400 IU. Alternatively, you crapper supplement your diet with 400 IU of vitamin D.
5. Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 facilitates the formation of hemoglobin, the red blood cell component that carries oxygen through the bloodstream. During pregnancy, more hemoprotein is required to supply your child with oxygen. And the fetus also uses this vitamin to build its own blood supply.
Your body needs vitamin B12 to create red blood cells. This vitamin is found in chicken, red meat, dairy products, eggs, and fish, but not in plant foods. Most people get plenty, but super-strict vegetarians who don’t eat some non-vegetable foods are at risk for a deficiency of vitamin B12 and anemia. The solution is to take a regular nutritional supplement that contains at least double the Daily Value of B12 (six micrograms).
Keep in mind that baby’s health depends on the mothers way of getting the proper amount of vitamins, so meaningful women can’t afford to skimp. Hence, meaningful women should make sure that they get enough of the nutrients every day.
What does recreation really mean? While on a recent trip to Lake Tahoe over the Labor Day weekend, I had the pleasure of renting a speedboat and going around the whole lake. As I was enjoying myself with the wind in my hair and sun in my eyes, I was thinking of you guys and what the word “recreation” really means. So in the middle of the lake, I stopped the boat to make this short video clip so I could share this important idea with you. Check it out.
Ray Stendall AKA “The Catalyst”
http//:www.yourgreatmind.com/blog
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