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Health Benefits of Moderate Sunlight exposure Outweigh the Harmful Effects of UV Radiation on the Skin.

I'm really glad about this report about the benefits of sunlight and
how it helps to douse this fear of "skin cancer"...

Skin cancer prevention campaigns may be steering people away from
healthy doses of sunlight, which is now thought to protect against
high blood pressure, heart disease and possibly stroke, a group of
British scientists say.

In a provocative presentation to a Melbourne conference this week,
Martin Feelisch, a professor of clinical and experimental sciences at
the University of Southampton, questioned whether it was time for a
"radical rethink" of the advice given to people about how much time
they should spend in the sun.

Professor Feelisch said recent epidemiological studies suggested that
the health benefits of moderate sunlight exposure outweighed the
harmful effects of UV radiation on the skin.

In particular, a recent study conducted with colleagues at the
University of Edinburgh found that a dose of UV equivalent to about 30
minutes of sunshine during the summer in southern Europe lowered
people's blood pressure.

The research, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology,
suggested UV radiation triggered natural stores of nitric oxide in the
skin which dilate small blood vessels. The mechanism was independent
of Vitamin D in sunlight which is already known to improve bone and
muscle health. This means it cannot be substituted with a vitamin D
supplement.

Several other studies have also shown that people with mild
hypertension tend to have lower blood pressure in summer compared to
winter, and that the further you live from the equator, the more
likely you are to suffer from high blood pressure and heart disease.

Professor Feelisch said given high blood pressure was a major risk
factor for heart disease and stroke, which accounts for 30 per cent of
deaths globally each year, health authorities should start focusing
more on the benefits of sensible sun exposure.

"We have to balance the benefits with the detrimental effects for the
greater good of the entire population. The current public health
advice is dominated by concerns about cancer," he said.

"That may be very important for a high risk group but that high risk
group are the minority of the population. Many others would probably
very likely tolerate higher than currently recommended exposure
levels, provided their skin gets gradually used to this, and their
health would benefit from that."

Professor Feelisch said it was possible that public health campaigns,
such as the "Dark side of tanning" television advertisements which
have been running in Victoria for five years, were scaring people into
hiding from the sun.

"Everybody is so scared to expose themselves to natural sunlight or
slap on sunblock lavishly even if they go outside for 15 minutes," he
said at the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress. "That is
cutting precisely the bit that is required to keep us healthy."

But head of the Australian Cancer Council Professor Ian Olver said
current public health advice was sophisticated in Australia, balancing
the pros and cons of sunlight for Vitamin D and emphasising high UV
index times when people are more likely to burn.

"If the UV index is three or above, the sun is intense enough to burn
you and therefore you need to take some protection measures. If it's
less than three, you can probably safely go out in the sun. So for
vitamin D, early in the morning or late in the afternoon, it might be
fine to go out without protection but in the middle of the day, it
usually isn't."
(http://www.theage.com.au/national/health/skin-cancer-fears-blinding-people-to-health-benefits-of-sunlight-say-scientists-20141118-11p8we.html)

10 Things You Should Never Share with Your HR

Some staff have the habit of being regular at Human Resources
confiding in one person or the other, but you should be careful what
you say so you don't shoot yourself in the foot. It is now confirmed
that there are just some things about you that "HR doesn't want to
know".

According to Susan M. Heathfield, a Human Resources Expert,

"Before you share a secret about yourself with HR at your workplace,
know your HR staff:

In too many workplaces, these are the ten things that you should never
share with HR.

10 Things Never to Share with HR

1) You participate in some activity that is illegal even if it takes
place totally outside of work. Your HR person may feel compelled to do
something or say something about it. HR doesn't want to make a
decision about whether he or she is legally obligated to report you to
the police. And, it will deeply affect their opinion of you and your
place in your organization.

2)You are considering whether to be a full time mum while on your
maternity leave.
The key is that HR will make decisions deemed in the best interests of
the employer if they are uncertain about your reliability or
commitment. Don't give them the information that makes them feel they
need to make decisions – that may be adverse for you.

3) You need favorable treatment, time off, privileges from the company
because of an event that isn't true. It will always come back to haunt
you.


4) You lied about something during the hiring or interview process
before you were offered the job.

Companies need to be consistent in their practices, so if your
organization has that policy, no matter how much you are valued or
liked, you may find yourself without a job. The best advice? Never lie
during the hiring process by omission or commission. You don't want to
spend the next ten years at work trying to cover up your untruths.
But, never tell HR if you did.

5)Your significant other, partner or spouse might be transferred to a
job in another city that is not commutable from the current location.
This is more career busting than telling your employer that you are
job searching, because the employer will perceive that you have less
control over the outcome. (And you know to never tell HR that you are
job searching outside of your company. While you may think telling HR
will help improve your job or company, the time to encourage and
participate in improvement is before you've started looking.)

6) You are moonlighting in a second job if your current job is full
time. When you tell HR that you are working a second job, you
communicate all sorts of messages that you may not mean. The result?
HR wonders about your commitment to the company.

7) You sued your former employer for harassment, ADA accommodation, or
civil rights violations. HR departments live in fear of lawsuits -
even the good, ethical, painstakingly fair departments.
So, you have nothing to gain but suspicion from letting HR staff know
about any previous lawsuits. HR staff also regards the fact that you
share this information with them as potentially threatening to them
and your employer. If you're job searching, even though it's illegal,
employers do discriminate (secretly) when they know that you have sued
employers in the past.

8) You have medical issues that might cause disruption to the
workplace flow when you need to take time off, go on disability, or
seek extensive medical treatment. If you share your medical condition
or information in too much detail, you may find that your employer
begins to work around you as if you are not there. The employer is
trying to protect their productivity, profitability, and work load;
your absences would adversely affect the workplace.


9) You received a DWI or DUI or where arrested for crimes such as
fraud, tax evasion, stealing...
Yes, I know, activities and events that occur outside of the workplace
are your own personal business and should be separate from decision
making at work. So, keep them that way.

Unless an event threatens to flow over into your work place - in which
case, always tell HR before they are blindsided - your personal
business is private. But, if you drive a company vehicle for business
and you received a DUI, best come clean. If you work in the accounting
department and you were just charged with embezzling thousands of
dollars from your church, you risk a lot either by telling or not
telling. Know your company, but I am an advocate for truth.

Employers are smart also to do comprehensive background checks. If
you're applying for a job, if you have a felony on your record, reveal
it when asked on the application.

10) Your personal life, in general, is in a shambles. Items like, you
are afraid of your stalker ex-boyfriend, you filed a lawsuit against
your neighbor, or you haven't spoken to your sister in five years,
don't belong at work. They consciously or unconsciously cloud the
workplace opinion about you as a person. These conclusions can
adversely affect your career and opportunities. And, the employer
making decisions may never recognize that he or she is making
decisions about you based on what is known about your personal life.

Don't give your employer any more information than is necessary for a
friendly, cohesive, team oriented workplace. Trust me. There are
really many pieces of information that HR doesn't want to know. (My
caveat: something that threatens to flow over into work or the
workplace should be shared with HR. For example, the stalker
ex-boyfriend who used to mock you on Facebook and on your cell phone,
but has now started to show up at places where you are, should be
shared as a potential workplace safety issue.)

No matter how good and competent you think your HR department is, all
of these ten things provide information that you should keep to
yourself. Play by the same rules as professional HR departments. If it
didn't happen here, and it won't affect your current work or
workplace, keep the information where it belongs - home. To echo so
many of my colleagues in HR, I just don't want to know all of this."

http://humanresources.about.com/od/HR-Roles-And-Responsibilities/a/10-things-you-should-never-tell-hr.htm?nl=1

A Child's Emotional Health Is a Greater Contributor to Future Satisfaction Than Academic Achievement- Happiness Expert

After investigating the factors in a person's life that can best
predict whether they will lead satisfied lives, a team headed by one
of the UK's foremost "happiness" experts, Professor Richard Layard,
has come up with an answer that may prove controversial.

Layard and his colleagues at the Wellbeing research programme at the
London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance conclude
that a child's emotional health is far more important to their
satisfaction levels as an adult than other factors, such as if they
achieve academic success when young, or wealth when older.

The authors explain that evaluating the quality of a child's emotional
health is based on analysing a range of internal factors in a person's
early life, including whether they endured unhappiness, sleeplessness,
eating disorders, bedwetting, fearfulness or tiredness.

The academics claim that their study, What Predicts a Successful Life?
A Life-course Model of Well-being, published in the latest edition of
the Economic Journal, offers "a completely new perspective on which
factors contribute most to a satisfying life".

The study claims to challenge "the basic assumption of educational
policy in recent years – that academic achievement matters more than
anything else". This claim appears to be an implicit criticism of
former education secretary Michael Gove, who instructed schools not to
focus on "peripheral" issues such as children's moral, social and
cultural development in favour of academic excellence.

Gove's successor, Nicky Morgan, has pledged to reverse this approach.

Layard and his team analysed data from about 9,000 people who were
born over a three-week period in 1970.

Many people have assumed income is the most important factor in an
adult's life satisfaction. But the academics say their data makes
clear this is far less important than emotional health – both in a
child and in an adult. "Income only explains about 1% of the variation
in life satisfaction among people in the UK – one sixth of the
fraction explained by emotional health," they note. Or, to put it
another way, money really cannot buy you happiness.


The economics of happiness or wellbeing is now a growing and respected
discipline within economics that is starting to influence politicians.

David Cameron has stated: "It's time we admitted that there's more to
life than money and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB –
general well-being."

The authors' conclusion:

"By far the most important predictor of adult life-satisfaction is
emotional health, both in childhood and subsequently. We find that the
intellectual performance of a child is the least important childhood
predictor of life-satisfaction as an adult."

Read more about the study:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/08/happiness-childhood-emotional-health-richard-layard?view=classic

I don't think there's anything controversial about these findings that
a number of us will be able to relate to.

That's why you hear about a CEO who commits suicide because he was
unable to get over some past guilt or childhood abuse.

Emotional wellbeing is extremely important.

(photo-credit: wikimedia.org)

6 Tips To Help You Improve Your Teeth Brushing Experience

Brushing your teeth properly should take a little less than 2 minutes,
though some people may spend longer, or less. Spending less than a
minute to brush isn't enough time to clean your teeth.

Here are some tips to help you improve your "teeth brushing skills":

1)While brushing your teeth, use short gentle movements and avoid
using too much pressure.

2) Concentrate on parts of your teeth that are not easy to reach,
especially the areas between your teeth, eating surfaces(molars,
premolars), and your upper and lower gums.

3) A good brushing technique is nothing without an effective
toothpaste. Getting the right toothpaste to buy is so important
especially when being faced with a market that is flooded with various
types and brands. There are toothpastes that help prevent toothaches,
tartar and gingivitis, while others are specially for sensitive teeth.

Your dentist may recommend a type of toothpaste for you if need be.

Also make sure you use the required amount of toothpaste for brushing.
Most manufacturers suggest a "Pea size" amount.

4) Your Toothbrush: what type of toothbrush should you use or what is
the best toothbrush shape available?
Have this in mind when choosing a toothbrush;

go for toothbrushes with soft bristles, these are tender and will not
bruise your gums but will still get the job done.

Select toothbrushes with small heads because they can easily get to
those "hard to reach" areas or corners.

5) How often should you change your toothbrush? You should change your
brush atleast every 3 months, even if it's not showing any signs of
wearing out.

You should also replace your toothbrush after being treated for any
mouth or respiratory infections.

6) How often should you brush your teeth?
Always brush twice a day as recommended by dentists all around the
world. First thing in the morning (before eating) and last thing at
night (after eating).

Caring for your teeth isn't rocket science and also take time to visit
your dentist at least twice a year for regular checkups to maintain
your "toothpaste" smile.

Most Minor Cosmetic Procedures Safe, Study Concludes

(HealthDay News) -- Minimally invasive cosmetic procedures are nearly
risk-free, a new study says.

Researchers examined the results of more than 20,000 of these
procedures -- such as fillers, neurotoxins and the use of laser and
energy devices -- performed by 23 dermatologists at eight centers
across the United States.

Minor complications, such as bruising, swelling, redness, bumpiness or
skin darkening, occurred in less than 1 percent of patients. There
were no major complications.

Complication rates for fillers were 0.52 percent, the study found. The
complication rate for fillers was slightly higher than for energy
devices and neurotoxins. This is because fillers are slightly more
invasive, according to the researchers.

The findings were published Nov. 5 in the journal JAMA Dermatology.

"The message for patients is that if you are thinking of getting one
of these procedures, you are not indulging in something drastic or
high-risk," study leader Dr. Murad Alam, a professor of dermatology at
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at
Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said in a university news release.

"The take home is these procedures are very safe and can be mixed and
matched to give the individual a significant cosmetic benefit, rather
than getting one big cosmetic procedure that might be risky," Alam
added.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about cosmetic surgery.

(http://consumer.healthday.com/cosmetic-information-8/botox-health-news-73/briefs-emb-11-5-4pmet-cosmetic-surgery-safety-jama-derm-northwestern-u-release-batch-1453-693417.html)