Happiness and Health: Or is it a question of survival?

Early risers are happier, healthier and slimmer, says study Posted on: 16 Sep 2011, 02:28 PM London: People who get up early in the morning are likely to be happier, healthier and slimmer than those who do not, says a study. The researchers from London's Roehampton University have found those who watch more TV are more likely to skip breakfast. It could be since they snack in the evening when watching TV, making them less hungry when they wake up in the morning, daily reported. In the study, experts quizzed 1,068 adults to see if they were morning or evening people. They found that morning people tend to be happier, thinner and more conscientious than evening people. They are also more likely to eat breakfast. Joerg Huber, the researcher, said: "These findings bear out the consensus that there are morning people and evening people, and that morning people tend to be healthier and happier, as well as having lower body mass indices." (Agencies) Tags: Early risers are slim healthy and happy, Early risers are slim and trim, Early risers are more fit, Early risers are healthier, rise early to look slim and happy, Study done on early risers health, Research on early risers health ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quit smoking to be happier and healthier Posted on: 15 Dec 2011, 01:12 PM Some smokers have concerns that their quality of life may deteriorate if they stop smoking but research shows that those who kick the butt feel more satisfied and healthier than those who continue with the habit. A new research by Megan Piper from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and her team looks at whether quitting smoking can improve psychological well-being. "Our findings suggest that, over the long-term, individuals will be happier and more satisfied with their lives if they stop smoking than if they do not," says Piper. Positive experiences of quitting smoking, including improved well-being, could be used by clinicians to educate and motivate individuals to stop smoking, reports the journal Annals of Behavioural Medicine. The authors assessed quality of health, positive versus negative emotions, relationship satisfaction and stressors among 1,504 smokers taking part in a smoking cessation trial. They were assessed at one year and three years, according to a university statement. The authors found that smokers who quit successfully, long-term, see some noticeable. Tags: Quit smoking, how to quit smoking, effects of smoking, latest on smoking, why should you quit smoking --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Working women have unhealthy children, says survey Posted on: 06 Nov 2011, 04:41 PM ShareThis « Previous Next » Working women have unhealthy children Working women have unhealthy children New Delhi: Most of the working mothers have unhealthy children with problems like obesity, while kids whose moms work part time are better off, a lifestyle study by Assocham said. As many as 56 percent of working women have children with problems such as overweight which may aggravate into lifestyle diseases like cardio-vascular disorder and fatty liver when they grow into adults, it said. The problem was far less with the women who take up part time assignments. Only 28 percent of these women have kids with unhealthy physical attributes. On the other hand, homemakers' kids are a lot healthier as they are less into junk foods like pizza, burgers, pasta and aerated drinks, the study done by Assocham Development Foundation said. The study was done on 2,000 students in 25 schools in different cities, including the metropolis Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh. "One in five kids in the metropolitan cities is overweight and they are more likely than normal weight children to grow up to be obese adults and suffer from obesity-related conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and fatty liver disease," Assocham said in a statement quoting its Health Committee Chairman B K Rao. Rao, who is also chairman of the Critical Care Medicine Department in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said: "A healthy diet plays a preventive role in relation to nutrition-related conditions such as overweight, obesity and dental disease and osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus, later in life." The chamber said that the canteens in schools have a role to play. "With child obesity levels rising and physical activity declining, it is important that canteens provide healthy and nutritious food," it said. These comments also reflect concerns in a public interest litigation filed recently seeking ban on sale of junk food in Delhi school canteens. Working parents tend to spend more of their food budget eating out and on fast foods. They may also have less regular family meals, the chamber said. Over 67 percent of children mostly eat crisps or sweets between meals and 75 percent mostly drink sweeten drinks, while a total of 81 percent watch television or use the computer for at least two hours a day. Changes in the children's physical activity, time spent unsupervised or watching television, the survey said. The study found that children of working mothers have more freedom to eat unhealthy fast food and watch television for hours and have less time to prepare more nutritious. It also observed that pressure of job leave women short of time to prepare healthy family meals, so their children will have TV dinners more often. Mother who work part-time or are able to work more flexible schedules have children that are more likely to have healthy diet and exercise behaviours. About 60 percent parents liked their children to carry home-cooked food to school on all six days, though 51 percent of them also give Rs 20-40 to their children to buy canteen food. Also, around 46 percent children spend Rs 50 every day at canteens with burgers and noodles selling the most 45 percent and 40 percent, respectively. (Agencies) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Divorced women in dire straits: Survey Posted on: 20 Dec 2010, 08:16 PM ShareThis « New Delhi, Dec 20 (Agencies): Approximately 80 percent of divorced or separated women in India live below the poverty line, with a monthly income of less than Rs.4,000, a survey said. Conducted between October 2008 and September 2009, the survey to determine the economic rights and entitlements of divorced and separated women involved interviewing 405 women across the country. Most of them belonged to middle class and lower middle class backgrounds. Divorces and separations are increasing in India. Yet not much attention is being given to the way separated and divorced women live, often with their children, and what their rights and entitlements are," Advocate Kirti Singh, who headed the survey, said Monday at a conference to share the findings. The survey found that in most parts of India the majority of separated or divorced women belonged to the 23-32 age group. "Seventy-five percent of these women live in their natal homes because they have no economic support, and they are not always welcome there. Eighty percent of them have their children staying with them," Singh said. The survey said that only 1.7 percent of the respondents were earning a "handsome" amount of Rs.35,000 per month. The majority, approximately 80 percent, earn less than Rs.4,000 per month and live below the poverty line. Another significant finding was that almost half the number of women surveyed had not asked for maintenance. The reasons ranged from ignorance to lack of resources for legal action. A shocking 83 percent of those surveyed said they opted out of the marriage because of cruelty or domestic violence in their marital homes. Tags: Divorced, women, dire, straits, Survey ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Home Nation World States Business Sports Entertainment Lifestyle Special India Vs West Indies Women Home » Lifestyle News » Jobless men, not women more prone to divorce Search Go Jobless men, not women more prone to divorce Posted on: 22 Jun 2011, 08:17 PM ShareThis « Previous Next » Unemployment may doom divorce for men Unemployment may doom divorce for men Washington: It's quite painful even to think about the possibility of losing your job. But for men, the pang of unemployment can be more severe as their wives are most likely to divorce them, a new study has found. However, in the case of a woman, whether she has a job or not has no effect on the likelihood that her husband would decide to leave the marriage, the Ohio State University study found. The study also found that despite more women entering the workplace, the pressure on husbands to be breadwinners largely remains, a Science website reported. In addition to upping the chances their wives would leave them, unemployed men themselves were more likely to initiate divorce - even if they reported being happy in their marriage - than guys with jobs. Unlike unemployed men, unemployed women were less likely to initiate divorce than their employed counterparts, the researchers said. Employed women were more likely to initiate a divorce than women with jobs, but only when they were highly unsatisfied with the marriage. "These effects probably emanate from the greater change in women's than men's roles," the researchers wrote in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Sociology. "Women's employment has increased and is accepted, men's non-employment is unacceptable to many, and there is a cultural ambivalence and lack of institutional support for men taking on 'feminised' roles such as household work and emotional support." A woman's unemployment status or decision to enter the work force is not a violation of any marriage norms. Instead, the researchers found that employment provides women with financial security, which enables them to leave a marriage when they become highly unsatisfied with their husbands. The study, which was led by Liana Sayer of Ohio State University, was based on data from more than 3,600 couples that had been collected from three waves of the US National Survey of Families and Households. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Working moms happier than stay-at-home moms Posted on: 13 Dec 2011, 12:49 PM ShareThis « Previous Next » Working moms happier then stay-at-homes Working moms happier then stay-at-homes Washington: Moms who hold jobs are healthier and happier than those who stay at home during their children's infancy and pre-school years. Researchers analysed the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development Study, beginning in 1991 and involving interviews with 1,364 mothers shortly after childbirth, including subsequent interviews and observations for a decade. "In many cases, the well-being of moms working part time was no different from moms working full time," said Cheryl Buehler, professor of human development and family studies, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, who led the study. For example, mothers employed part time reported better overall health and fewer symptoms of depression than stay-at-home moms, The Journal of Family Psychology reports. There were also no reported differences in general health or depressive symptoms between moms employed part time and those who worked full time, the study said. The analysis found that mothers employed part time were just as involved in their child's school as stay-at-home moms, and more involved than moms who worked full time, according to a California statement. Part time mothers appeared more sensitive with their pre-school children and they provided more learning opportunities for toddlers than stay-at-home moms and moms working full time. Particularly in tough economic times, employers looking for cost savings hire part-time employees because they typically do not receive the same level of benefits, such as health insurance, training and career advancement, the authors pointed out. "Since part-time work seems to contribute to the strength and well-being of families, it would be beneficial to employers if they provide fringe benefits, at least proportionally, to part-time employees...," said study co-author Marion O'Brien, professor and Buehler's counterpart. (Agencies) Tags: Working moms are happier than stay at home moms, Working moms are much happier, Working is better for mother’s health, Study done on working moms health ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generosity is key to a happy marriage- The Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2072540/Generosity-biggest-key-happy-marriage-sex-really-important-too.html Generosity could be the biggest key to a happy marriage (but sex is still really important, too) By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 5:55 PM on 10th December 2011 The flowers a man gives to his wife and the back rubs she doles out in return could be the key to a happy marriage. Couples with above-average generosity in their marriages reported that they were five times more likely to be 'very happy' in their relationship, according to a new study. A fulfilling sex life ranked as the single biggest indicator of whether married couples were happy, but high levels of generosity also contributed to good times in the bedroom. This means generosity could be a key to sexual satisfaction and general happiness. Couple in love Say it with flowers: Giving gifts and affection generously makes couples five times more likely to have a happy marriage, according to a new study Experts say the generosity can be as simple as couple making coffee, giving flowers or physical attention. But whatever one spouse is giving, the other has to actually want. '(It's) signaling to your spouse that you know them, and are trying to do things for them that are consistent with your understanding of them,' Bradford Wilcox, one of the study's researchers, told MSNBC. But if, for example, your spouse loves almond mochas, and you get her black coffee instead, it doesn't count so much toward generosity, Wilcox added. However, sex was still a more consistent indicator of of happy marriage. Men and women who reported a good sex lives were 10 to 13 times more likely to say they were 'very happy' in their marriages than those who reported mediocre sex. Generosity still seems a proven path to a happy marriage. Coffee cup Meeting needs: Generosity has to be sensitive for it to work. If your lover enjoys a fancy mocha and you buy black coffee, it doesn't count About 50 percent of women and 46 percent of men with high levels of generosity in their marriages reported being 'very happy.' By contrast, just 14 percent of couples who did not have high generosity were happy. The researchers compiled a list of five elements most likely to make a marriage happy: Sexual satisfaction was first, followed by a sense of commitment. Generosity and a positive attitude toward the couple's children were important, as well. Women also need social support from friends and family and men need spirituality within the marriage, the researchers found. The survey examined 1,400 straight couples with children between the ages of 18 and 46. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2072540/Generosity-biggest-key-happy-marriage-sex-really-important-too.html#ixzz1gJApJuV2

speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen

Read and learn to be happy


This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.



"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.

Happiness or what?????

We all want to be happy but do we ever attain that state of being? I think happiness is relative when looked at in reference to others.

Prerna Gupta says'

Is happiness really an attainable state for the human mind? I recently read an article in the NYTimes, titled Enlightenment Therapy, about a professor who gave up a tenured position and decided to devote his life to meditation. He spent years practicing and teaching Zen meditation, yet he was never able to attain that elusive state of infinite happiness the eastern religions promise as the reward for such devotion. When Zen meditation failed, he turned to anti-depressants and psycho-therapy, but nothing seemed to work. And now he finds himself visiting a therapist like a regular white-collar American. He is doomed, it seems, to that familiar state of discontentment, loneliness and depression many of us suffer throughout our lives.

How many of us promise ourselves that we'll be happy just as soon as we achieve this or that success and get this or that material possession? And for how many years have we been convincing ourselves that the watering hole is just on the other side of that sand dune? The eastern ascetics will tell us that we need only to detach ourselves from these fleeting pleasures in order to attain happiness. Yet I find it hard to believe that these lonely old men who have spent years in silent isolation are truly happy. On the contrary, many of them seem as consumed by the search for wealth and power as the most "attached" among us. The search for happiness through renunciation of everything human seems misguided somehow; happiness is after all a human condition, created by human impulses in a human brain. Everyone is different, but companionship is a pretty basic requirement for most humans to be happy.

But if there is no happiness to be found through participation in society, and none found through asceticism...then where the hell is it? Perhaps happiness does not exist at all, but is simply a mirage we create for ourselves so we can always strive for more. It is obvious why we might have evolved the propensity to seek happiness, as this unending desire incentivizes us to keep working for more money / status / progress, increasing our chances of survival as a species. Yet by that token it would seem maladaptive to ever actually attain a state of constant happiness, at least while one is capable of being a productive member of society. In that case maybe we should abandon the search for happiness altogether, and just resign ourselves to a life fraught with duality.

It might be true, but I just can't accept it. I have to believe that I am capable of attaining infinite bliss, of sustaining that amazing sensation of ecstasy I glimpse every now and again while wrapped in my lovers arms or surfing a perfect wave in the pacific ocean. I must believe happiness is real, and that I am in fact getting closer to enlightenment every day of my life. If not, then what's the point of it all? What is there to live if not for eternal sunshine? Or, perhaps, if not for the search of it.

Let the businessman seek it in money, the celebrity in fame and the swami in solitude. But I will not seek it thus. For I have found my happiness in simple pleasures and need now only to find a means of sustaining my immersion in those. I live for love, food, music and natural sunshine.