Cyza Sector » Health

Lack of Sleep Can Cause Heart Failure!!!

cyza — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:22:41 +0000

This article comes from an email I received in my inbox this morning. It was written and shared by a Professor in my faculty who is very much concern about both health and work (like me). Credit to Prof. Ramlan Aziz for this good email. After reading this article, I told myself that I need to have longer sleeping time starting from tonight. After reading this, I think you will agree.

Please, read the article ok…

Don’t ignore yr good sleep-Ranjan Das, CEO and MD of SAP Indian subcontinent died after a massive cardiac arrest in Mumbai. One of the youngest CEOs, he was 42.

What killed Ranjan Das and Lessons for Corporate India?

A month ago, many of us heard about the sad demise of Ranjan Das from Bandra, Mumbai. He was very active in sports, was a fitness freak and a marathon runner. It was common to see him run on Bandra’s Carter Road . Just after Diwali, on 21st Oct last year, he returned home from his gym after a workout, collapsed with a massive heart attack and died.

It was certainly a wake-up call for corporate India . However, it was even more disastrous for runners amongst us. Since Ranjan was an avid marathoner ( in Feb 09, he ran Chennai Marathon at the same time some of us were running Pondicherry Marathon 180 km away ), the question came as to why an exceptionally active, athletic person succumb to heart attack at 42 years of age.

Was it the stress?

A couple of you called me asking about the reasons.. While Ranjan had mentioned that he faced a lot of stress, that is a common element in most of our lives. We used to think that by being fit, one can conquer the bad effects of stress. So I doubted if the cause was stress.
It was certainly a wake-up call for corporate India . However, it was even more disastrous for runners amongst us. Since Ranjan was an avid marathoner ( in Feb 09, he ran Chennai Marathon at the same time some of us were running Pondicherry Marathon 180 km away ), the question came as to why an exceptionally active, athletic person succumb to heart attack at 42 years of age.

The Real Reason

However, everyone missed out a small line in the reports that Ranjan used to make do with 4-5 hours of sleep. This is an earlier interview of Ranjan on NDTV in the program ‘Boss’ D! ay Out’: Boss’ Day Out: RanjanDas of SAP India .

The Evidence

Last week, I was working with a well-known cardiologist on the subject of ‘Heart Disease caused by Lack of Sleep’. ! While I cannot share the video nor the slides because of confidentiality reasons, I have distilled the key points below in the hope it will save some of our lives.

Some Excerpts:

· Short sleep duration ( <5 or 5-6 hours ) increased risk for high BP by 350% to 500% compared to those who slept longer than 6 hours per night. Paper published in 2009. As you know, high BP kills.

· Young people ( 25-49 years of age ) are twice as likely to get high BP if they sleep less. Paper published in 2006.

· Individuals who slept less than 5 hours a night had a 3-fold increased risk of heart attacks. Paper published in 1999.

· Complete and partial lack of sleep increased the blood concentrations of High sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-cRP), the strongest predictor of heart attacks. Even after getting adequate sleep later, the levels stayed high!

· Just one night of sleep loss increases very toxic substances in body such as Interleukin-6 (IL! -6), Tumour Necrosis Factor-Alpha (TNF-alpha) and C-reactive protein (cRP). They increase risks of many medical conditions, including cancer, arthritis and heart disease. Paper published in 2004.

· Sleeping for <=5 hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart disease. Sleeping for <=6 hours per night leads to 18% increase in heart disease. Paper published in 2006.

Ideal Sleep

For lack of space, I cannot explain here the ideal sleep architecture. But in brief, sleep is composed of two stages: REM ( Rapid Eye Movement ) and non-REM. The former helps in mental consolidation while the latter helps in physical repair and rebuilding. During the night, you alternate between REM and non-REM stages 4-5 times.

The earlier part of sleep is mostly non-REM. During that period, your pituitary gland releases growth hormones that repair your body. The latter part of sleep is more and more REM type.

For you to be mentally alert during the day, ! the latter part of sleep is more important. No wonder when you wake up with an alarm clock after 5-6 hours of sleep, you are mentally irritable throughout the day (lack of REM sleep). And if you have slept for less than 5 hours, your body is in a complete physical mess ( lack of non-REM sleep ), you are tired throughout the day, moving like a zombie and your immunity is way down ( I’ve been there, done that ).

Finally, as long-distance runners, you need an hour of extra sleep to repair the running related damage.

Conclusion

Barring stress control, Ranjan Das did everything right: eating proper food, exercising ( marathoning! ), maintaining proper weight. But he missed getting proper and adequate sleep, minimum 7 hours. In my opinion, that killed him.
If you are not getting enough sleep ( 7 hours ), you are play(!)ing with fire, even if you have low stress.

I always took pride in my ability to work 50 hours at a stretch whenever the situation warranted. But I was so spooked after seeing the scientific evidence last week that since Saturday night, I ensure I do not even set the alarm clock under 7 hours. Now, that is a nice excuse to get some more sleep.

Unfortunately, Ranjan Das is not alone when it comes to missing sleep. Many of us are doing exactly the same, perhaps out of ignorance. Please forward this mail/article to as many of your colleagues/friends as possible, especially those who might be short-changing their sleep. If only we can save even one young life because of this email??? !!!

Being a Muslim, our biological clock follows the time of prayers. That 7 hours of sleep mentioned may not be true. But what we need is quality sleep. Also not to take heavy meals about 3 hours before sleep so that the growth hormones are in optimum environment to repair our body.

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Staying Fit & Healthy

cyza — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:53:08 +0000

Not everybody around us is aware of the importance of staying fit. I’m not saying that there are not at all people that are concern about their health and fitness, but the point here is the number of them is relatively small. Just ask your friend next to you, do he or she play any sports like badminton, soccer, tennis or go to the gym? Or simply do your friends wash his car himself? Do they do gardening? These are simple activities that can help us stay active, fit and healthy. Don’t you agree? We need to at least exercise 3 times weekly for 30 minutes to stay fit and healthy. That’s the important rule that we need to know and practice. This can make our organs exercise and be more active especially the heart.

For those who still have problem in searching your favourite sporting activities, you need to identify at least one and stick on it. It all depends on your initiative and discipline. However, if you still can’t then I would like to share here are some tips that we can apply to stay fit and healthy that could be done within our daily activities or during weekend (from my own experience). It may be difficult for some of us but we need to try our best to do it. Here they are:

Wash your own vehicle yourself. That includes exterior and interior. It will take around 1 hour but it will make you sweat, just like jogging for 20 minutes. Besides saving some money, you get to clean your own car and indirectly you are exercising.
Do massive spring cleaning in and outside of your house without stopping. Clean, mop and swipe rooms, dining and living hall. Wash your bathroom. Do not stop. Do all of this consecutively and you will get a clean house + good sweat which equals to a 30-50 minutes jogging.
Park your car further from your office or work area. This will force you to walk more which is an indirect exercise.
Use staircase instead of lift or escalator. Climbing the stairs can be an excellent indirect exercise.
If you can afford the time, go jogging around your house. Download android or apple pedometer app into your smart phone and witness yourself the burning of your own calorie while you jog. If you are too boring to jog, then listen to some music or radio from your smart phone.

What do you think of the list? Cool…? Haha…

Oh, I would also love to show this link which has 3 videos with 3 new exercises to flatten our belly. Link.

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Just for Laugh

cyza — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:00:04 +0000

How’s your day today? Are you happy? Are you in a good mood? Am I asking you too many questions? OK, I’ll stop.

I have a simple assignment for you. What you need to do is simply spend 1.26 minutes to watch and see what those guys are up to in the video below. Just relax and enjoy…

So, how did you find the video above? Funny? Did you laugh? I hoped you laugh (at least a little). I laughed and smiled looking at how they tricked those poor dudes. Anyway, the message I want to convey is not how to trick people and laughing at them. My main point here is laugh is a healthy exercise and is good for us. Laugh is important to maintain our spirit, emotion and psychological life. My intention just now was trying to make you laugh. I’m not sure if it works. I hope it did work.

If you are sad and not in the mood, you should cheer up your life. Go and meet some friend, chat and have a good laugh. Life will be more meaningful if we can laugh and hear others laughing as well. A parents will be mesmerized and happier listening and watching their kids laughing. A child will also be happier looking at their parents laughing and enjoying their moments together. An employee working in a room alone will not be happier then the one working in a room filled with others. Why? Because chances of the employee sitting alone in a room laughing is slim. If he/she laugh, others may think he/she is crazy!!! That’s why sometimes, since I am alone in my office, I’ll get out and meet my colleagues, chit-chat and laugh with them. There are basically more in laughing.

Following are some interesting facts about laughing which is related to our health. Pretty amazing facts there. I got this in my email yesterday. Thanks to the sender. I highly recommend you to read, comprehend and digest the facts.

KEEP ON LAUGHING!

1. Laughing 100 times roughly equals 15 minutes on an exercise bike? Vigorous laughter increases the heart rate deepens the breathing rate, and uses muscles in the face, stomach, and diaphragm.

Laugh makes us happier and healthier. But don't laugh excessively. Lwa/Getty Images stock

2. Aside from improving our moods, laughter can reduce stress, help fight infection, and reduce pain.

3. The levels of two stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine which suppress the body’s immune system, will actually drop after a dose of laughter.

4. Laughter causes positive changes in brain chemistry by releasing endorphins, and it brings more oxygen into the body with the deeper inhalations.

5. Laughter releases anger, fear, guilt, anxiety and tension.

6. Laughter encourages concentration on “right” attitudes rather than “wrong” attitudes.

7. Higher levels of an antibody (salivary immunoglobulin A) that fights infectious organisms entering the respiratory tract were found in the saliva of people who watched humorous videos or experienced good moods.

8. Researchers found after watching an hour-long video of slapstick comedy that the “natural killer cells,” which seek out and destroy malignant cells, more actively attacked tumor cells in test tubes. And these effects lasted up to 12 hours.

9. The 1998 movie Patch Adams told the real-life story of a nonconformist doctor convinced that fun, play, and clowns are important in improving patients’ quality of life in a grim hospital atmosphere.

10. Planning enjoyable activities for the future will reduce the stressor hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine.

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p/s: Have you downloaded my FREE “230 Make Money Sites” report?

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Latest Cancer Information That You Should Know From Johns Hopkins

cyza — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:30:24 +0000

What is the most important thing in the world to you? Money or health? I think this is not that difficult to think. Of course when we are healthy we want money, lots and lots of money. But can money buy happiness? We are not sure yet. Can money buy health? That depends! Would you want to trade health with money? I think the answer would be a big yes (when you are sick).

Health is crucially important to all of us. That’s why, I’m going to include some of health and living tips in Cyza Sector apart of all my other musings such as make money online, gadget reviews, travels etc. If you ask my wife, she will strongly say that I’m a health cautious maniac. I think I inherit that from my mother. She is a very healthy cautious woman and she takes real care of what she eats and her overall lifestyle. As I get older now, I slowly become like my mother.

For a start, I will share some information about cancer which most of us probably are not aware off. Cancer is a silent killer and it always opt the counter attack strategy. It sound like a soccer game but actually my point is it will attack us suddenly. So, that’s why we need to regularly conduct medical check-up.

What you need to know about cancer treatment

We were always fed with information that chemotherapy is the final resort to cure cancer. Is this really true? Recently, I received an email and learned something entirely new. Oh I’m glad to read it and I strongly think you should read it too. Finally there is an alternative to curing cancer. This method is simpler and what is most important is the discipline and knowledge to eat healthy food. Johns Hopkins revealed that there is an alternative to curing cancer [Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins ]. Read below

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

A cancer chemotheraphy session where chemicals are transfered into the body to kill cancel cells but at the same time healthy body cells also dies

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.

3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

Example of cancer cells growing in a body

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to STARVE the cancer cells by not feeding it with foods it needs to multiple.

What cancer cells feed on:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Note: Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.

b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk, cancer cells will starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes t o nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.

To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water–best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

We need to be wise in choosing the correct food for our diet not just to avoid cancer and other diseases but also the be healthy.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines will become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body’s own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiving and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

Hopefully with this information, we have better comprehension on what we should eat and how to prevent cancer from developing in our body. If you think this article is beneficial, feel free to spread it. Sharing is caring.

1st image credited to northjersey.com/news/health/livingcancer/Cancer_treatments_max_out_insurance_plans_.html

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My Android Pedometer Record for Today

cyza — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:02:50 +0000

Exactly at 6.20 pm today, I jog around my house compound (Zone A). I felt better (Thank God) that I was able to run 5 km straight without stopping. When I was younger I have no problem running/jogging more than that distance. However, I’m older now. I just need to stay fit and healthy. OK, no more nonsense. I just want to record my android pedometer reading.

Here it is:

Steps: 7020

Distance covered: 5.265 km

Speed: 2.43 km/hour

Calories burned: 389.

Estimated time taken: 25 minutes

I think that is better than my previous pedometer reading that I posted here a while ago. This time, it is also interesting because I brought with myself the headphones for my Samsung Galaxy ~~Note~~ Ace. Hence, I can listen to BBC news and other radio station. That’s when I heard the news about Italy cruise ship Costa Concordia aground near Giglio. There were 4000 people on board the ship and 3 fatalities had been reported.

Cyza Sector » Health

Lack of Sleep Can Cause Heart Failure!!!

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Staying Fit & Healthy

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Just for Laugh

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Latest Cancer Information That You Should Know From Johns Hopkins

1st image credited to northjersey.com/news/health/livingcancer/Cancer_treatments_max_out_insurance_plans_.html

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My Android Pedometer Record for Today

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