How much water you need depends entirely on an individual’s lifestyle, activity levels, eating habits, and even surrounding climate. The best way to figure out what you need is to pay attention to your body’s many signals.
Dehydration actually sets in before you start feeling thirsty, and is often indicated by, oddly enough, feeling slightly hungry. If you find yourself feeling like a snack, try having a glass of water first, and see what happens.
For people who struggle in the mornings, having a couple of glasses of water right when you wake up will help boost your blood pressure to normal levels. It will also help clean out your system and get your metabolism started early.
Not staying hydrated can lead to negative health effects described in this helpful infographic:
Animation has captivated audiences for over a hundred years. From classic forms like hand drawn and stop-motion, to cutting-edge techniques like motion graphics and CGI, animation has a long history of creating style and poetry unachievable through live action filmmaking.
It is a tool for educating, a place for experimentation and play, and a way of telling personal stories that reach the viewer with powerful visual metaphors.
Research shows that those who eat less are generally healthier and live longer than those who eat more. Intermittent fasting is based on this principle. Basically, it’s a technique that incorporates a weekly fast into your routine. This method is great because it allows you to reap the benefits of fasting without leaving you feeling weak or deprived.
I can understand that this idea might not sound very appealing, but the fact is there’s ton of health benefits to fasting, and it really isn’t as horrible as it sounds.
Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, modern science has confirmed there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, research presented at the 2011 annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans showed that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.
HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormone,” plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don’t overtrain and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training. Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:
Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health
Improving biomarkers of disease
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone”
Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage
From a fat-burning perspective, intermittent fasting is a powerful tool. When you’re in a fed state, the body has to produce insulin to keep your blood sugar at a safe level. Insulin’s main job is to shuttle excess glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream over to the muscle, liver or fat cells for storage. But insulin doesn’t only take sugar out of the blood – it also increases fat storage.
Now, if a person were to eat small, infrequent meals every day, this release of insulin would not be a big deal. The problem is many experts have led people to believe that eating five or six meals a day is the only way to eat for weight loss. Now let’s think about this logically for a second. Do you think the best way to lose weight is to cause your body to constantly release a hormone that favors fat storage? I didn’t think so!
Metabolism
Another rumor is that fasting and/or eating infrequent meals every day will slow down your metabolism. This simply isn’t true.
To make this point clear, all you have to do is think back to our primitive ancestors. They rarely (if ever) ate the same amount of food on consecutive days. Their caloric intake was dependent on what was available on that particular day. And they would be forced to fast intermittently because sometimes food was simply unavailable.
Furthermore, evolution takes, minimally, thousands of years, and even though our world has changed drastically, our bodies have not had time to evolve from this primitive lifestyle. As a matter of fact, it has only been within the last 50 to 100 years that our bodies have been exposed to a consistent caloric intake. The truth is, being in a consistently fed state is not natural to the body’s physiology. This is precisely why eating less leads to better health and a longer life.
Telomeres
So, how does intermittent fasting work? There are a lot of different things that happen in the body on a cellular level when you’re in a fasted state, but one I can single out has to do with the length of your telomeres. You can compare telomeres to the plastic casings at the end of a pair of shoelaces. Just as the plastic casings protect the end shoestrings, telomeres protect the ends of your chromosomes. The length of these guys is important. Basically, the shorter your telomeres, the shorter your lifespan.
It just so happens that intermittent fasting is a way to increase the length of your telomeres. Actually, simply eating less can also help your telomeres stay nice and long. Animal studies have shown that animals who ate about 30 percent fewer calories also lived about 30 percent longer than the animals that ate more. So the next time somebody says you should eat five or six meals a day, I suggest you think twice before following their advice.
Blood Sugar Issues
Now some of you might be thinking, “I have issues with my blood sugar, so I can’t fast.”
If you have issues with your blood sugar, you should first work on improving the quality of your foods before introducing fasting. Once you get your blood sugar under control by reducing the amount of refined sugars and processed foods you eat, you can try eating less to see how you feel.
How Long is a Fast?
I want to be clear about what I mean when I say “fast.”
The benefits of fasting come after about 18 hours, but this doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to go without food all day long. To give you an example of what a fast might look like, let’s say you stop eating after dinner at 7 p.m., you go to bed and wake up at 7 a.m. Right there you have already fasted for 12 hours. In this scenario, if you wait to eat your first meal at 1 p.m. you will have successfully completed an 18-hour fast. Not too bad, right?
Intermittent Fasting Calculator – It lets you plan your caloric intake with respect to a certain macro nutrient ratio you want.
The color of your urine is a great indicator for overall bodily health. Primarily, it will tell you if you are dehydrated, but once in a while a truly odd pee color can tip you off to more serious health problems.
It’s a good idea to make it a habit of taking a quick look at your urine.
Running is a high intensity exercise that has lots of mental and physical benefits.
Many injuries can be avoided by warming up, running correctly with proper form, choosing the right running shoes and stretching before and after running.
Corporate control is prevalent in all areas of our modern lives. The following infographics illustrate that the products we consume, the media we watch, and the banks we use come from surprisingly few sources.
10 mega-corporations control practically all of the consumer goods the average American buys on a daily basis. (via Reddit)
Corporate Control in the media: 6 corporations control 90% of the media in the United States. (via Frugal Dad)
NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn’t own AOL, so Huffington Post isn’t affiliated with them. – Business Insider
Financial Control: The nation’s 10 largest financial institutions hold 54% of our total financial assets; in 1990, they held 20%. (via Mother Jones)
The gap between animal and human intelligence is closing. Where we once believed that animals and humans were not comparable, we are now learning that isn’t necessarily the case.
This infographic tells the story of animal intelligence and the human like traits that they exhibit.
Animal Intelligence and Human Connection Infographic
Animal Intelligence Videos
Crow Problem Solves and Uses Tools
Crow Uses Physics to Crack an Acorn and Caution When Crossing
Technological advances continue at an exponential pace. Our brightest minds and unstoppable doers bring about a new way of living. It is quickly becoming apparent that the only thing holding back the human race is the human race itself.
As we embrace new ways of thinking and new ways of doing; we will find new ways of co-existing. From the economy to medicine; technology is changing all facets of the human world.
The time to let go of outdated self-serving enterprises is here; this is the time to accept ideas that encompass values beyond profit, power and persecution.
Technological Advances
Robotics
Today we have robots that can self-replicate, re-assemble after being kicked apart, shape-shift, swarm, create emergent effects, build other robots, slither like a snake, jump to the tops of buildings, walk like a pack mule, and run faster than a human. They even have their own internet. Put it all together and you realize that we’re in the midst of a robotic revolution that’s poised to change virtually everything.
Humans are creators. The rise of robotics in the workplace leads to more free time for humans to create and experience. As robots continue to take the place of humans in areas of life that are menial and dangerous; the human experience will evolve.
Waste to Biofuel
“Energy recovery from waste” — a process that typically involves the production of electricity or biofuels (like methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels) by burning it. Cities like Edmonton, Alberta are already doing it — and they’re scaling up. By next year, Edmonton’s Waste-to-Biofuels Facility will convert more than 100,000 tons of municipal solid waste into 38 million litres of biofuels annually. Moreover, their waste-based biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% compared to gasoline. This largely overlooked revolution is turning garbage (including plastic) into a precious resource. Already today, Sweden is importing waste from its European neighbors to fuel its garbage-to-energy program.
Waste management plus a new source of energy; this kind of thinking and problem solving is what the future holds.
Gene Therapy
Though we’re in the midst of the biotechnology revolution, our attention tends to get focused on such things as stem cells, tissue engineering, genome mapping, and new pharmaceuticals. What’s often lost in the discussion is the fact that we already have the ability to go directly into our DNA and swap genes at will.We can essentially trade bad genes for good, allowing us to treat or prevent diseases (such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis) — interventions that don’t require drugs or surgery. And just as significantly, gene therapy could eventually give rise genetic enhancements (like increased memory or intelligence) and life extension therapies.
The future of healthcare is only limited by the desire for profits in our current social structure. As our socio-economic views change; the way we approach health care will follow suit.
Digital Currency
The idea of digital currency is slowing starting to make the rounds, including the potential for Bitcoin, but what many of us don’t realize is that’s it’s here to stay. Sure, it’s had a rough start, but once established and disseminated, electronic cash will allow for efficient and convenient online exchanges — and all without the need for those pesky banks.
The rise of the Bitcoin is a sign of the changing times.Value is derived by humans, the true value lies within humans. It has always been this way but we often believe that money holds value on its own. Currency is the exchange of human worth in physical form and the value correlates to the stock put into yourself. This change is still murky as economics pushes the gears that make this current world turn. But these outdated policies and practices will give way to new and improved systems. That is how our current system came into being in the first place.
Concentrated Solar Power
A recent innovation in solar power technology is starting to take the world by storm. It’s called concentrated solar power (CSP), and it’s a massively distributed system for extracting solar energy with mirrors and lenses. It works by focusing the incoming sunlight into a highly concentrated area.The result is a highly scale-able and efficient energy source that is allowing for gigawatt sized solar power plants. Another similar technology, what’s called concentrated photovoltaics, results in concentrated sunlight being converted to heat, which in turn gets converted to electricity. CPV plants will not only solve much of the world’s energy needs, it will also double as a desalination station.
Organic Electronics
Thanks to the rise of the nascent field of organic electronics, it’s likely that we’ll rework the body’s biological systems and introduce new organic components altogether. Already today, scientists have engineered cyborg tissue that can sense its environment.Other researchers have invented chemical circuits that can channel neurotransmitters instead of electric voltages. And as Mark Changizi has suggested, future humans will continue to harness the powers of their biological constitutions and engage in what Stanislas Dehaene calls neuronal recycling.
These are only some of the technological advances that will change humanity. I’m excited for the present day advancements and the future we are all building together. How about you?
This dope infographic traces the career of the mythical graffiti artist Banksy by highlighting the artist’s most significant artworks including “Pulp Fiction” and “Street Maid”.
Thehistorical timeline of Banksy’s career also includes locations and notes on what happened to some of his street art after their creation.
This space exploration infographic gives an in-depth look at all the missions we have ever sent out into space. How many billions of miles do you think we’ve explored?
