Make Your Smart Phone the other Travel Companion

When traveling, your Smartphone/mobile device can be a real friend to you when you're on vacation and/or business trip.


These are tips I use to put my Smartphone to work when traveling. They've saved me a lot of headaches and even made my journeys more pleasurable.


1. Put your passport info in your Smartphone. Take a picture or video of your passport(the information). Incase your passport is lost or stolen, you'll still have your passport information with you. This can save you time and some headaches for accessing that information and replacing your passport.
2. When traveling overseas, keep the contact information of the embassy or consulate offices in your smart phone. For example:, as a U.S. citizen visiting a foreign country, I'll keep the contact information of the U.S. embassy in that foreign country. Put it somewhere in your mobile device where you can access it quickly and easily, i.e. speed-dial or favorites.
3. Before you leave on your trip: make some maps of the areas or places you plan visit and put them in your smart phone. This can help save on your data plan. Particularly in places where there is limited to no internet service. Its great when sightseeing.
4. Inventory checklist. Take pictures or even video of items you have when traveling. If something gets lost or stolen in transition, you'll have visual proof of it. This is especially helpful when traveling with valuables such as expensive jewelry and electronics(camera, laptop, tablet, works of art, etc.) Record the serial numbers or any other identifiable markings of items into your Smartphone.
5. Pocket Ambassador. When traveling to foreign countries-particularly for the first time-have some information about the local customs and culture(s). Depending on where you're going; the kind of clothing you wear and bodily gestures you display can make all the difference between a pleasant experience and a disaster. Remember, something that may seem perfectly normal to you, may not be socially-acceptable somewhere else. Its also a good idea to have some language lessons in your Smartphone(video or audio recordings). You can fill your downtime(sitting in the airport, on the plane)studying the material so you won't be completely "foreign"…in the foreign country you're visiting. Not that you will be fluent in the language and a culture-expert, but it helps to have some familiarity with the local culture/customs, and some basic language knowledge. Depending on your Smartphone, there maybe...an app for that. I highly recommend this  for business travelers.
6. Perhaps the most important tip: before you leave. Call your carrier to make sure you have cellular service in the country of your destination. I can't count the frustrated or sad faces I've seen when a traveler discovers they can't make a call on their mobile device. But this is not a laughing matter, incase of an emergency. This is where it helps to know your plan. For business travelers and frequent flyers, I recommend a plan that allows to call anywhere in the world. For the vacationer, a pre-paid plan or calling cards should be suffice.(Footnote: it helps to have an unlocked phone in my opinion)


The take-away benefit of these tips is having information with you when you travel. Whether you're traveling overseas or domestic, these little details can help you avoid a lot of headaches if a problem occurs. They may even enhance your travel experience in using your Smartphone or mobile device in a whole new way.

How Lonely You Feel Could Impact Your Sleep

Feeling lonely at night? It just might be the cause of you not getting enough sleep.  According to a study from the Dept. of Health Studies at the University of Chicago; a cause for restless sleep or lack of sleep may be linked to how lonely a person is. Lead author Dr. Kurina, PhD. Says, "The relationship between loneliness and restless sleep appears to operate across a range of perceived connectedness.

In the study, Dr. Kurina and her co-researchers compared the degree of loneliness reported by a close-knit population of 95 adults in rural South Dakota by measuring their sleep cycles. Although none of the individuals were socially isolated, their perceived notions of loneliness varied, Higher loneliness scores were linked to significantly higher levels of fragmented and restless sleep. The total amount of sleep and the degree of daytime sleepiness were not impacted.

"Loneliness has been associated with adverse effects on health," Kurina said. "We wanted to explore one potential pathway for this, the theory that sleep -- a key behavior to staying healthy -- could be compromised by feelings of loneliness. What we found was that loneliness does not appear to change the total amount of sleep in individuals, but awakens them more times during the night."

These recent findings, - which appeared in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP-were similar to a 2002 study published by the American Psychological Society.  It compared the loneliness reported by college students with their measured quality of sleep. The lonelier the students felt, the more their sleep was broken-up during the night.

The similarities among the studies help point out that loneliness and social isolation are two distinct concepts, Kurina said. Loneliness reflects perceived social isolation or feelings of being an outcast, the often-painful discrepancy between a person's desired and actual social relationships.

"Whether you're a young student at a major university or an older adult living in a rural community, we may all be dependent on feeling secure in our social environment in order to sleep soundly," Kurina said. "The results from these studies could further our understanding of how social and psychological factors 'get under the skin' and affect health."

Scientists Find That Giving Support Offers Health Benefits -To the Giver

It really is better to give than to receive.  This is the theory being explored by a group of life scientists at UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.

For their research, the scientists studied 20 heterosexual couples in good, stable relationships.  The 20 women in the couples underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans while their boyfriends were just outside the scanner receiving painful electric shocks. At times, the women could provide support by holding the arm of their boyfriends, while at other times, they had to watch their boyfriends receive shocks without being able to provide support (each woman instead held a squeeze-ball). At still other times, the boyfriends did not receive a shock, and the women could either touch or not touch them.

So what's happening inside your head? The scientists discovered that when women gave support to their boyfriends in pain, the women showed increased activity in reward-related regions of the brain, including the ventral striatum and septal area. In addition, the more reward-related neural activity these women showed, the more connected they reported feeling with their boyfriends while providing support. Under conditions in which no support was provided, these regions showed decreased activity.

Senior study author and UCLA professor-Naomi Eisenberger explains; "The ventral striatum is the region of the brain that is typically active in response to simple rewards like chocolate, sex, and money.  The fact that support-giving also activates this region suggest that support-giving may be processed by the brain as a basic type of rewarding experience. "

The findings suggests that support-giving may have stress-reducing efforts for the person who provides the support. 

According to Eisenberger, the benefits of providing support might also apply when a loved one is experiencing a stressful event, including an emotionally painful event.  "Giving support to those we are close to, such as family members or children, may increase their likelihood of survival and, therefore, the likelihood that our genes will get passed on," she said. "Because of the importance of support-giving for the survival of our species, it is possible that over the course of our evolutionary history, support-giving may have become psychologically rewarding to ensure that this behavior persisted."

Currently, the life scientists are conducting further research on how giving to others may reduce our stress responses and ultimately contribute to better health.

Details of the study are published in the online edition of Psychosomatic Medicine, a peer-reviewed health psychology journal.

Paralyzed Man Gets Bionic Arm

Another great story of how science-fiction becomes science fact.

Tim Hemmes had been a quadriplegic for seven years since his motorcycle accident.  But with the help of a robotic arm, Hemmes was able to overcome his paralysis simply by thinking about it. Mounted next to his wheelchair, he used a robotic arm to give his girlfriend a high-five. A seemingly simple act to most of us, but a milestone for Hemmes and the medical/science community.

The Pennsylvania man is among the pioneers in an ambitious quest for thought-controlled prosthetics to give the paralyzed more independence — the ability to feed themselves, turn a doorknob, hug a loved one. 

At the University of Pittsburgh, researchers equipped the participants with electrodes that tap into the brain's electrical signals which control movement. Bypassing the broken spinal cord, the electrodes relay those signals to the robotic arm, thus making the arm move and controlled by the participant's thoughts.

Although Hemmes' progress is encouraging, scientists say they are years away from commercial use, but there are many teams investigating a variety of methods to use the technology.  At the University of Pittsburgh, monkeys learn to feed themselves by thinking a robotic arm into motion. At Duke University, monkeys use a virtual arm on a computer and provides feedback which allows them to distinguish the texture of what they touched.

As for Hemmes; the emotional robotic touches he demonstrated have inspired researchers to recruit volunteers for soon-to-start year-long experiments. And hopefully one day, all disabled/paralyzed individuals will be able to overcome their limitations and experience a better quality of life through robotic aids.

Depression Increases Risk of Stroke

Depression is already known to be a probable cause for other health ailments such as heart disease, diabetes, even cancer, but now it may also be linked for an increased risk of stroke.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham
and Women's Hospital discovered that individuals who suffer from depression have a significantly increased risk of a stroke by as much as 45%. And the risk of dying from that stroke increases by 55%.

In the study, Harvard School of Public Health researcher/author An Pan and his colleagues found that depression contributed to the increased risk of stroke; and dying from it almost as much as smoking and obesity.
 
A possible connection may be due to hormones in the nervous system which are affected by depression and can increase the risk of stroke. Another factor is inflammation which is common to both depression and stroke. Lifestyle is also a contributing-factor such as smoking, healthy diet, and being overweight.
 
In addition, Pan says the treatment for depression might be another cause for the increased risk of stroke. Antidepressant medications may increase the risk of stroke in a number of ways. The body's chemical pathways can be affected, causing side effects such as weight gain. This results in the increased risk of stroke. Pan emphasizes that in spite of these findings, there's still a lot of information we don't know so we don't want to send the wrong message that patients should stop taking their anti-depressant medication(s).

Results of the study suggest to doctors that when screening for stroke, they should not only consider the typical risks (i.e. heart disease, and diabetes), but they should also ask about the patient's mental state. "We think that in the future, depression should be considered as a risk factor for stroke," says Pan. "We still need more evidence to see whether such screening is beneficial for patients, but our study provides convincing evidence to support more research."

Men Can and Do Care

From a cultural perspective, we're led to believe that women are natural caregivers; particularly when it comes to children, but according to a recent study, this belief may change the minds of some.

A recent study by Northwestern University has revealed compelling evidence that men are in fact biologically wired to care for offspring. For the first time, the study shows conclusive evidence that fatherhood lowers a man's testosterone levels.

The effect is very similar to what is observed in other species in which males help take care of their offspring. Testosterone boost behaviors and other traits that help a male compete for a mate. After succeeding and becoming a father; mating-related activities might conflict with the responsibilities of being a father. As a result, the body will reduce the production of the hormone, allowing for more nurturing instincts to kick-in.

"Raising human offspring is such an effort that it is cooperative by necessity, and our study shows that human fathers are biologically wired to help with the job." said, study co-author- Christopher W. Kuzawa. Kuzawa is the associate professor of anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern. 

In the past, similar studies were small and not conclusive. The new study takes a novel approach by following a large group of men who were not fathers and seeing if their hormones changed after becoming fathers.
The study followed a group of 624 males ages of 21.5 to 26 years old for 4.5 years in the Philippines. Titled, "Longitudinal Evidence That Fatherhood Decreases Testosterone in Human Males", the study was published Sept. 12, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Benefits of Tai Chi

 

If yoga isn't quite your thing, you may want to consider Tai Chi(TIE-Chee). Tai Chi is an ancient Chinese martial art which involves slow, gentle movements. It's described as "meditation in motion" because it promotes serenity through the movements by connecting the mind and body. In many Asian/far-eastern countries, Tai Chi is used to reduce stress as well as help with a variety of other health issues.

Tai Chi exercises consist of a series of postures or movements in a slow, graceful pace. Each movement flows into the next without pause, thus keeping your body in constant motion. There are more than 100 movements and positions with Tai Chi, many of which are named after animals or nature because of there relation to the movements. Tai Chi has many different styles such as yang and wu, but all forms of Tai Chi include rhythmic patterns of movement that are coordinated with breathing to help you achieve a sense of inner-peace and balance. The concentration of the exercises forces you to live in the present moment, while setting aside distressful and distracting thoughts.

The research

Recent research studies have discovered the benefits of tai chi go beyond just stress reduction, but include:

• reducing anxiety
• Improved balance, flexibility, and muscle strength
• Reducing falls in older adults
• Improving sleep quality
• Lowering blood pressure
• Improving cardiovascular fitness on older adults
• Relieving chronic pain
• Increasing energy, endurance, and agility
• Improving overall feelings of well-being

So who can do tai chi?

That's one of the best benefits. Tai Chi is inexpensive, requires no special equipment. It can be done indoors or outside; in a group or alone. This is probably why it is growing in appeal to more people. Although Tai Chi is relatively safe, you should still consider talking with your doctor before starting a Tai Chi exercise program. This is particularly important if you have any joint, back/spine, or heart issues; if you are pregnant, have any fractures, or severe osteoporosis.

How to get started

You can find a Tai Chi class in many communities today. Facilities such as:

• YMCA
• YWCA
• Health Clubs
• Community education centers
• Senior centers
• Wellness centers

There are also many tai chi videos, books, and DVD's available to buy or rent, but it's recommended to seek the guidance of a qualified instructor in order to gain the full benefits and learn the proper techniques.

Maintaining the Benefits

Like all exercise/fitness programs, results are not instant. While you may get some benefits from a typical 12-week class, you will enjoy the longer, bigger benefits if you continue tai chi for the long term and become more skilled. Essentially, it should be incorporated as part of your life-style for better, healthier living.