Rules On Living A Content and successful Life!

Successful living is a state where the mind and body are in perfect sync. In this state, one is able to make use of all of the available resources to live happily and with satisfactory results as far as life, work and relationships go. This does not mean that there are absolutely no problems. It simply means that you look at the problems and challenges as opportunities for growth, and solve them to live to the best of your abilities. So, what are the rules for successful living? Here is our list!

1. Believe and understand:  

Believing in your abilities is one side of the coin. Understanding your limitations is the other side. So, once you have both things in place, it becomes easier to plan your actions in a realistic manner. When you believe in your competence and understand your limitations, you will either take on those tasks that will be commensurate with your skills, or you will equip yourself with higher skills so as to take on even more varied activities and tasks.

2.  Simplify: This is an often repeated and extremely underrated term. To be more organised, you do not merely need the latest modular fittings in your home and office. One of the aspects of simplifying is decluttering. When you declutter, you are effectively removing all those things that do not serve you. If these things were to remain in front of you, they will only serve to expend your energy with thoughts of wastage and wastage of time as well, since you will be working your way through chaos to get to your core.

3. Moderation :   Simplification and moderation go hand in hand. Superfluous acts may give instant gratification, but they do not serve you in the long run. They strip you of self-control and can even alienate you from your relationships as you get closer to things rather than people. So, it is good to have a healthy dose of everything in your life for true balance and successful living.

4. Perspective: If problems are bogging you down, then there are chances that your perspective is all wrong. Being more open and looking at the big picture are two sure shot ways of ensuring that the problems come and go without affecting your equilibrium.

Being in the moment and putting your family first is a part of creating a balanced situation in life where judgements, material wants and egos will not matter.
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Beware carrying handbags

HANDBAGS, Briefcases and Gym Bags.. Carry on suitcases from toilet floors on top of beds for packing.. ....
Have you ever noticed girls who set their handbags on public toilet floors, then go directly to their dining tables and set it on the table? Happens a lot!

It's not always the 'restaurant food' that causes stomach distress. Sometimes 'what you don't know will hurt you!'

Read on.


Women carry handbags everywhere; from the office to public toilets to the floor of the rooms to the kitchen tables.

We, at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake, we set out to test the average woman's handbag.

It turns out handbags are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked.

Microbiologist Amy Karen of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the handbags tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria.

Pseudomonas can cause eye infections; staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections and salmonella and e-coli found on the handbags could make people very sick.

In one sampling, four of five handbags tested positive for salmonella, and that's not the worst of it. 'There is faecal contamination on the handbags' says Amy. Leather or vinyl handbags tended to be cleaner than cloth handbags, and lifestyle seemed to play a role.

People with kids tended to have dirtier handbags than those without, with one exception.

The handbag of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all.

'Some type of faeces or possibly vomit,' says Amy.

So the moral of this story is that your handbag won't kill you, but it does have the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you eat. Use hooks to hang your handbag at home and in toilets, and don't put it on your desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop.

Experts say you should think of your handbag the same way you would a pair of shoes.

'If you think about putting a pair of shoes on your countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your handbag on the countertops.'

Your handbag has gone where individuals before you have walked, sat, sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated, emptied bowels, etc!

Do you really want to bring that home with you?

The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a handbag will help. Wash cloth handbags and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather handbags.

Fasting ramps up human metabolism, study shows

A study by the G0 Cell Unit and Kyoto University researchers suggests that fasting, which puts the body in 'starvation mode,' leads to fuel substitution, antioxidation, increased mitochondrial activation and altered signal transduction.

Fasting may help people lose weight, but new research suggests going without food may also boost human metabolic activity, generate antioxidants, and help reverse some effects of aging. Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and Kyoto University identified 30 previously-unreported substances whose quantity increases during fasting and indicate a variety of health benefits.

"We have been researching aging and metabolism for many years and decided to search for unknown health effects in human fasting," said Dr. Takayuki Teruya, first author of the paper and a technician in the OIST G0 Cell Unit, led by Prof. Mitsuhiro Yanagida. "Contrary to the original expectation, it turned out that fasting induced metabolic activation rather actively."

The study, published January 29, 2019 in Scientific Reports, presents an analysis of whole human blood, plasma, and red blood cells drawn from four fasting individuals. The researchers monitored changing levels of metabolites -- substances formed during the chemical processes that grant organisms energy and allow them to grow. The results revealed 44 metabolites, including 30 that were previously unrecognized, that increased universally among subjects between 1.5- to 60-fold within just 58 hours of fasting.

In previous research, the G0 Cell Unit identified various metabolites whose quantities decline with age, including three known as leucine, isoleucine, and ophthalmic acid. In fasting individuals, these metabolites increase in level, suggesting a mechanism by which fasting could help increase longevity.

"These are very important metabolites for maintenance of muscle and antioxidant activity, respectively," said Teruya. "This result suggests the possibility of a rejuvenating effect by fasting, which was not known until now."

Metabolites Give Clues to Mechanism and Health Effects

The human body tends to utilize carbohydrates for quick energy -- when they're available. When starved of carbs, the body begins looting its alternate energy stores. The act of "energy substitution" leaves a trail of evidence, namely metabolites known as butyrates, carnitines, and branched-chain amino acids. These well-known markers of energy substitution have been shown to accumulate during fasting.

But fasting appears to elicit effects far beyond energy substitution. In their comprehensive analysis of human blood, the researchers noted both established fasting markers and many more. For example, they found a global increase in substances produced by the citric acid cycle, a process by which organisms release energy stored in the chemical bonds of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids. The marked increase suggests that, during fasting, the tiny powerhouses running every cell are thrown into overdrive.

Fasting also appeared to enhance the metabolism of purine and pyrimidine, chemical substances which play key roles in gene expression and protein synthesis. The finding suggests fasting may reprogram which proteins cells build at what time, thus altering their function. The change may promote homeostasis in cells, or serve to edit their gene expression in response to environmental influences.

When metabolized, purine and pyrimidine also boost the body's production of antioxidants. Several antioxidants, such as ergothioneine and carnosine, were found to increase significantly over the 58-hour study period. Antioxidants serve to protect cells from free radicals produced during metabolism. Products of a metabolic pathway called the "pentose phosphate pathway" also stay the harmful effects of oxidation, and were similarly seen to increase during fasting, but only in plasma.

Newfound Health Benefits of Fasting?

The authors suggest that these antioxidative effects may stand as the body's principal response to fasting, as starvation can foster a dangerously oxidative internal environment. Their exploratory study provides the first evidence of antioxidants as a fasting marker. In addition, the study introduces the novel notion that fasting might boost production of several age-related metabolites, abundant in young people, but depleted in old.

"Recent aging studies have shown that caloric restriction and fasting have a prolonging effect on lifespan in model animals...but the detailed mechanism has remained a mystery," said Teruya. "It might be possible to verify the anti-aging effect from various viewpoints by developing exercise programs or drugs capable of causing the metabolic reaction similar to fasting."

The findings expand on established ideas of what fasting could do for human health. The next step would be to replicate these results in a larger study, or investigate how the metabolic changes might be triggered by other means.

"People are interested in whether human beings can enjoy the effects of prevention of metabolic diseases and prolonging life span by fasting or caloric restriction, as with model animals," said Teruya. "Understanding the metabolic changes caused by fasting is expected to give us wisdom for maintaining health."

Learning new vocabulary during deep sleep Date:

Left panel: In the sleep laboratory, the electrical activity of the brain is recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Right panel: During deep sleep, slow oscillatory high-amplitude waves emerge in the EEG. These waves are generated by the brain cells' rhythmic alternation between highly active phases (red: "up-states") and passive phases (blue: "down-states").

Sleeping time is sometimes considered unproductive time. This raises the question whether the time spent asleep could be used more productively -- e.g. for learning a new language? To date sleep research focused on the stabilization and strengthening (consolidation) of memories that had been formed during preceding wakefulness. However, learning during sleep has rarely been examined. There is considerable evidence for wake-learned information undergoing a recapitulation by replay in the sleeping brain. The replay during sleep strengthens the still fragile memory traces und embeds the newly acquired information in the preexisting store of knowledge.

If re-play during sleep improves the storage of wake-learned information, then first-play -- i.e., the initial processing of new information -- should also be feasible during sleep, potentially carving out a memory trace that lasts into wakefulness. This was the research question of Katharina Henke, Marc Züst und Simon Ruch of the Institute of Psychology and of the Interfaculty Research Cooperation "Decoding Sleep" at the University of Bern, Switzerland. These investigators now showed for the first time that new foreign words and their translation words could be associated during a midday nap with associations stored into wakefulness. Following waking, participants could reactivate the sleep-formed associations to access word meanings when represented with the formerly sleep-played foreign words. The hippocampus, a brain structure essential for wake associative learning, also supported the retrieval of sleep-formed associations. The results of this experiment are published open access in the scientific journal Current Biology.

The brain cells' active states are central for sleep-learning

The research group of Katharina Henke examined whether a sleeping person is able to form new semantic associations between played foreign words and translation words during the brain cells' active states, the so-called "Up-states." When we reach deep sleep stages, our brain cells progressively coordinate their activity. During deep sleep, the brain cells are commonly active for a brief period of time before they jointly enter into a state of brief inactivity. The active state is called "Up-state" and the inactive state "Down-state." The two states alternate about every half-second.

Semantic associations between sleep-played words of an artificial language and their German translations words were only encoded and stored, if the second word of a pair was repeatedly (2, 3 or 4 times) played during an Up-state. E.g., when a sleeping person heard the word pairs "tofer = key" and "guga = elephant," then after waking they were able to categorize with a better-than-chance accuracy whether the sleep-played foreign words denominated something large ("Guga") or small ("Tofer"). "It was interesting that language areas of the brain and the hippocampus -- the brain's essential memory hub -- were activated during the wake retrieval of sleep-learned vocabulary because these brain structures normally mediate wake learning of new vocabulary," says Marc Züst, co-first-author of this paper. "These brain structures appear to mediate memory formation independently of the prevailing state of consciousness -- unconscious during deep sleep, conscious during wakefulness."

Memory formation does not require consciousness

Besides its practical relevance, this new evidence for sleep-learning challenges current theories of sleep and theories of memory. The notion of sleep as an encapsulated mental state, in which we are detached from the physical environment is no longer tenable. "We could disprove that sophisticated learning be impossible during deep sleep," says Simon Ruch, co-first-author. The current results underscore a new theoretical notion of the relationship between memory and consciousness that Katharina Henke published in 2010 (Nature Reviews Neuroscience). "In how far and with what consequences deep sleep can be utilized for the acquisition of new information will be a topic of research in upcoming years," says Katharina Henke.

Decoding sleep

The research group of Katharina Henke is part of the Interfaculty Research Cooperation "Decoding Sleep: From Neurons to Health & Mind" (IRC). Decoding Sleep is a large, interdisciplinary research project that is financed by the University of Bern, Switzerland. Thirteen research groups in medicine, biology, psychology, and informatics are part of the IRC. The aim of these research groups is to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in sleep, consciousness, and cognition.

The reported study was carried out in collaboration with Roland Wiest who is affiliated with the Support Center for Advanced Neuroimaging (SCAN) at the Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Inselspital, University of Bern. Both research groups also belong to the BENESCO consortium, which consists of 22 interdisciplinary research groups specialized in sleep medicine, epilepsy and research on altered states of consciousness.

To sleep, perchance to heal: Newly discovered gene governs need for slumber when sick

This is an image of a fruit that fly has been infected with bacteria, showing nemuri expression (green) in the brain -- a single neuron and its projections on either side of the brain.

Humans spend nearly one-third of their lives in slumber, yet sleep is still one of biology's most enduring mysteries. Little is known about what genetic or molecular forces drive the need to sleep -- until now. In a study of over 12,000 lines of fruit flies, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a single gene, called nemuri, that increases the need for sleep. These findings are published today in Science.

The NEMURI protein fights germs with its inherent antimicrobial activity and it is secreted by cells in the brain to drive prolonged, deep sleep after an infection.

"While it's a common notion that sleep and healing are tightly related, our study directly links sleep to the immune system and provides a potential explanation for how sleep increases during sickness," said senior author Amita Sehgal, PhD, a professor of Neuroscience and director of Penn's Chronobiology Program.

Without the nemuri gene, flies were more easily aroused during daily sleep, and their acute need for an increase in sleep -- induced by sleep deprivation or infection -- was reduced. On the other hand, sleep deprivation, which increases the need for sleep, and to some extent infection, stimulated nemuri to be expressed in a small set of fly neurons nestled close to a known sleep-promoting structure in the brain. Overexpression of nemuri increased sleep in bacteria-infected flies and led to their increased survival compared to non-infected control flies.

In response to infection, NEMURI appears to kill microbes, most likely in the peripheral parts of the fruit fly body, and increases sleep through its action in the brain. Several molecules like NEMURI, which is an antimicrobial peptide (AMP), have multiple functions that help combat infection, but its sleep-promoting role may be just as important for host defense, the researchers suggest, given that increased sleep during sickness promotes survival in the flies.

What's more, the authors note that cytokines such as interleukin-1 (IL-1), an immune cell molecule, are implicated in human sleep. IL-1 can function in the same pathway as AMPs, and it accumulates after prolonged wakefulness and appears to promote sleep. In mammals, cytokines can induce production of AMPs, but AMPS may also affect the expression of cytokines. Given this interwoven relationship, the researchers conclude that NEMURI is a working link between immune function and sleep.

"The NEMURI protein is a genuine driver of keeping sleep on track under conditions of high sleep need like when we're sick," said first author Hirofumi Toda, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Sehgal's lab. "In the next phase of our work, we plan to investigate the mechanism by which NEMURI drives sleep."

Julie Williams and Michael Gulledge, both from Sehgal's lab, are also co-authors on this paper. This work was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health (R01GM123783 402).