المدونات
في 13 ساعات
Some fun lunch ideas for kids could be peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with apple slices and carrot sticks , peanut butter and banana tortilla, juice, apple sticks and cheeses slices.
microwave dinner
When I feel in need of a nap, I use the couch in my office. I used to close the curtains of the glass wall that looks out over the newsroom, but one day it dawned on me that leaving the curtains open sends a clear message to the newsroom that not only is there no stigma - at least at The Huffington Post - attached to napping, it's the best thing we can do to recharge ourselves.
‘I think my bad habits started at Cambridge University. I grew up with a mother who treated sleep as something sacred... And then at Cambridge I wanted to experience everything,' said Arianna Huffington
The couple relocated to Washington DC, where they became glamorous power brokers and, after the pain of a stillborn child when Arianna was 36, went on to have two daughters, Christina, now 26, and Isabella, 24.
When ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, the famously driven founder and editor of The Huffington Post, collapsed due to sleep deprivation, she resolved to overhaul her accelerated lifestyle. She tells Jane Mulkerrins how getting eight hours a night has changed her life
Sleep deprivation has also been proven to be one of the biggest variables in our mental and cognitive performance. In just two weeks of getting six hours of sleep a night, the performance drop-off is the same as in someone who has just gone 24 hours without sleep. For those getting just four hours, the impairment is equivalent to that of going 48 hours without sleep.
As it turns out, naps are great for us even when we are getting good sleep at night. According to David Randall, author of Dreamland, even a short nap ‘primes our brains to function at a higher level, letting us find solutions to puzzles more quickly and recall information more accurately'. While chronic poor sleep can have long-lasting effects on our health, naps can help mitigate some of those effects, at least in the short term.
Back in 2007, the Greek-born, U.S.-based journalist and entrepreneur was working habitually long hours building The Huffington Post, her recently established news website, while touring prospective colleges with her eldest daughter Christina.
‘Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep,' said one study co-author Brice Faraut. Short of time travel, a nap may be the closest we can get to a second chance at a good night's sleep. Rather than reach for our fifth cup of coffee or third doughnut to deal with the usual post-lunch lull, consider a 20-minute nap. In fact, Medankepo.com if you're deciding between the two - caffeine or nap - the science is clear that naps trump caffeine.
Getting enough sleep really is a matter of life and death… An article based on findings by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, provocatively titled Sleep or Die, discussed the connection between a lack of sleep and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and obesity - the incidence of death from all causes goes up by 15 per cent when we sleep fewer than five hours per night. Even when it doesn't kill us, sleep deprivation makes us dangerously unhealthy. A lack of melatonin, the hormone that controls our sleep and wake cycles, is linked to higher rates of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers.
And when we're not well rested, it shows. An experiment in the UK tested the effects of sleep deprivation on a group of 30 women. Their skin was analysed and photographed after they slept for eight hours and then again after sleeping six hours for five nights in a row. Fine lines and wrinkles increased by 45 per cent and redness increased by eight per cent. In other words, we wear our lack of sleep on our faces.
‘After Christina had fallen asleep, I'd fire up the computers and the BlackBerrys and respond to all the "urgent" emails, attempting to squeeze a full day's work into what should have been my sleep time,' recalls Arianna, 65.
After the US college tour, she flew to Portland, then to Los Angeles, then home to New York, where she promptly collapsed in her office, coming to in a pool of blood, with a broken cheekbone and requiring five stitches under her eyebrow.
Sara Mednick, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, compared the beneficial effects on memory and problem-solving of 200 milligrams of caffeine (about a cup of coffee) to a long nap. The two were equal on perceptual learning, but naps outscored caffeine in word recall and motor learning.
Arianna's previous meeting - with the U.S. ambassador to Spain - is running a little over. This is, after all, a woman so well-connected she has Oprah on speed dial, along with the Obamas, the Clintons and the Dalai Lama. So I take a tour of the offices while Arianna finishes.
I learn that skimping on sleep may eventually affect us so badly that those of us who don't end up dead - through cancer, heart disease or fatal accidents caused by exhaustion - will be overweight, stupid and depressed, our brains, metabolisms and moods ravaged. We might also be prime candidates for Alzheimer's.