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You’ve always suspected that continued employment in your current office will eventually kill you. Well, this infographic proves that theory correct, in the literal flat line, 6 feet under sense.

The human body is actually designed to withstand stress, say, from a hungry sabertooth tiger or a stampeding woolly mammoth. Since our modern stresses only involve getting rushing work for deadlines or presenting reports, the regular response works against us. As the infographic shows, stress elevates heart rate and if you’re stressed 40 hours a week, then your body’s been reacting like you’re swimming away from Jaws 8 hours a day.

Anyway, the good news is, you can take steps to de-stress. Like take up yoga or other stress relieving activities. If you want to see the infographic in its full glory, then just click the via link below. Enjoy!

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You can also change your diet and take certain foods that can help you fall asleep faster. According to experts, these foods can even improve the quality of sleep.

Here are 5 foods that will help you get more and better quality shut-eye:

Tea – As mentioned, caffeinated drinks will not help you sleep, but decaf varieties can. Chamomile tea or green tea can help people with sleeping problems if they drink a cup of hot tea before bedtime. This is because green tea contains theanine, an element that promotes sleep.

Dairy – Most of us have been told that drinking milk before bed will make us sleepy, but other types of dairy products such as cheese and yogurt can do the same. Dairy products contain tryptophan and a sleep-inducing nutrient: calcium. Calcium helps relieve stress and stabilize nerve fibers including those in the brain, helping you relax and fall asleep.

Low-sugar, whole-grain cereal – Aside from being a healthy snack, this kind of cereal will also help you sleep. You’ll be increasing tryptophan in  your bloodstream and induce sleep by taking in complex carbohydrates.

Banana – Bananas not only contain tryptophan but they are also a great source of potassium and magnesium. These two elements help in relaxing your overstressed muscles. It’s ideal to take a banana with one cup of soy milk or plain milk.

Almonds – Almonds contain magnesium, an element that promotes muscle relaxation and sleep. Because it also supplies protein to the body, it helps maintain a stable blood sugar while you sleep. Almonds when taken before bedtime work by switching your body from alert adrenaline cycle to rest-and-digest cycle.

Via Woman’s Day

Author of How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science Russ Parsons and Fresh Air’s Terry Gross talks about the science of cooking, sharing some fun facts about the food. Did you know why dark meat is dark or why onions make your tear up? Here are some fast fun facts:

What makes dark meat dark? Well, it’s all about the exercise chickens get. Chickens don’t fly often, and they don’t fly all that far when they do. They walk around more often so their leg muscles are more developed. The leg parts also get more blood circulating around them than the breast muscles, leading to darker colored meat.

What is it with onions and their tear jerking effects? Onions are basically like nerve agents. They have tiny vacuoles that contain different chemicals. The vacuoles are disrupted when an onion is cut, releasing the chemicals which then mix with each other. The chemicals continue mixing together until they form a kind of sulfuric gas that either goes up one’s nose or into one’s eyes. The sulfuric gas (aptly called lacrimators) is responsible for irritating you and making you cry.

Here’s a bonus fact for you: what makes chili peppers hot? The burning sensation in your mouth is caused by capsaicin, the active ingredient in peppers.

via [ NPR ]

When looking for a career, people usually choose depending on their hobbies, strengths, and general ambitions. What most people don’t consider is that the career choice they make may suddenly open new possibilities – specifically the possibility of spending a few months of every year with a debilitating depression. Health.com lists the 10 careers (out of the 21 major career fields) with the highest rates of depression.

The high-stress jobs list includes personal care professionals, namely those who work with old people at nursing homes and those who work with children. The stress stems basically from caring for people who are too young or too ill to express gratitude. The next up on the list are food service staff. The low pay, rude and irate customers, harried pace, and exhausting work can make this career a pretty stressful one. Another job that you may have guessed is up on this list is social work. Social workers deal with abused children or families and this can make the job very stressful.

Other jobs on the list include health care professionals (nurses, and doctors, among others), salespeople, maintenance workers, and teachers. Artists, entertainers, and writers are also on the list, so hmm… maybe this calls for a career change.

via [ Health.com ]

What do you do when you have a rare type of blood? Save lives. Apparently, that is what 74-year-old Australian James Harrison decided to do when he found out that he had an antibody in his plasma that effectively battles Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia common in babies.

For over 50 years now, Harrison has been donating his blood to help mothers give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracy. He began donating blood when he was 18 years old and has since then donated as much as 984 times. His blood was deemed so special that he was even insured for a million Australian dollars.

Hailed as the ‘man with the golden arm’, Harrison is a dedicated citizen fighting for a cure for the Rhesus disease, which has inflicted thousands of babies in Australia alone. Harrison is now estimated to have saved the lives of as much as 2.2 million babies.

(via Daily Mail)