How much sleep is enough?

I chose this topic because I enjoy sleeping...a lot. And I see that others can do well with just few hours on their back...so a question popped up: how much sleep is it needed for our body?

The following table will show us the necessary number of hours to be slept in order to function well the next day.

Age and condition	Average amount of sleep per day
Newborn	up to 18 hours
1–12 months	14–18 hours
1–3 years	12–15 hours
3–5 years	11–13 hours
5–12 years	9–11 hours
Adolescents	9–10 hours
Adults, including elderly	7–8 (+) hours
Pregnant women	8 (+) hours

It is said that less than 7 hours and more than 11 hours is not good for our health:

Researchers from the University of Warwick and University College London have found that lack of sleep can more than double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, but that too much sleep can also double the risk of death. Professor Francesco Cappuccio said, "Short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor for weight gain, hypertension, and Type 2 diabetes, sometimes leading to mortality; but in contrast to the short sleep-mortality association, it appears that no potential mechanisms by which long sleep could be associated with increased mortality have yet been investigated. Some candidate causes for this include depression, low socioeconomic status, and cancer-related fatigue. …In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around seven hours per night is optimal for health, and a sustained reduction may predispose to ill health." From Wikipedia.

I think that we should definitely sleep around 8 or 9 hours per night in order for our body to restore its energy levels.

A good night's sleep is often the best way to help you cope with stress, solve problems, or recover from illness. Sleep is prompted by natural cycles of activity in the brain and consists of two basic states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep, which consists of 4 stages.

To read more about the stages of sleeping click here: http://www.revolutionhealth.com/conditions/sleep/sleep-basics/what-happens/index

But not only is the quantity of hours important but also the quality of it. More information about our sleeping you can see in this video: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/271.3/popup/index.php?cl=2108703&t=em&sid=0

After reading this stuff and seeing the importance of sleeping I’ll think twice when I want to say no to sleep and yes to studying or working. I think that life and health are more important than anything..be that work. So we should leave our problems at our bedroom‘s door and have a good and long enough sleep.

Eurovision- European contest

At the 54th edition of the Eurovision, 42 countries sent their participants to amaze the citizens of Europe with their great songs. What is the point of this contest? Is it an undercover battle between countries? Is it a way to unite us being a part of something that it’s called Europe? Is it just a song contest?

I think it is a little bit of all...but at the end the song that wins is the one who conquered all Europe. I like this battle between countries using music..lyrics..emotions. It’s a pity that the song that wins isn’t the best one...is just the one which has more friends :) But at the end, it doesn’t matter which wins, matters the struggling of all participants to do their best and the interest of all European citizens upon this contest.
More information about Eurovision you can find on the official site: www.eurovision.tv .

I was thinking “why not doing it at an International level?”. All the countries from the entire world gather to sing and enjoy. It’s bad that it is so competitive...it should be less competitive and more like a global peace statement.

Romania is represented by Elena Gheorghe with the song The Balkan girls. You can listen to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSLBjcooWCg

You can take a look on all the songs that will participate tonight in the first semi-final:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWOqQJYmh9o

I like the Turkish one ;) hihihi

Let’s sing and dance with all the participants and vote for the one you like!

Yes or No for fast-food restaurants?

I don’t know how I stand when we talk about fast-food restaurants..I can’t condemn them nor approve of them.
Everybody is eating from fast-food even if we all know that the food is not good for our health. But some of us are hiding the fact that we are going to fast food places and say that we don’t.

Do fast food restaurant have a bad image? I think that lately in Romania, people started to be aware of their health and there is a trend here to check the ingredients and to choose a healthier product. We can not name them healthy products because nowadays nothing is natural..healthy:)

But in the way of a healthy life style, stands a piece of paper (or plastic in Romania :) ) called money. Not so many people afford buying eco products and we still don’t have an ecological thinking and behaviour. We are searching for cheaper products....and by cheap we understand also not healthy. So the balance between health and money is leaning towards money in our society, at least for now. So I think that Romanians are looking for cheap stuff, more now during the recession. Fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC have a bad image because fast food means a lot of calories, weight problems, heart diseases etc. But nevertheless they are full all the time....people are aware of these things but they still want to have cheap meals and socialize in the same time.

In Romania, the most visited ones are the two restaurants mentioned earlier. It seems somehow that KFC is chosen for the chicken wings and crispy stripes- thought to be actually meat not as in McDonald’s where we have mincemeat-. I think that’s why KFC is more crowded sometimes. But in the same time McDonald’s is preferred because of its hamburgers, menus and shakes.

Their image is not so bad as in other countries. I had the chance to visit one McDonald’s from Denmark and the disappointment was big. All the fast food restaurants there are completely dirty. You can’t stay there because of the greasy stuff on tables, chairs and floor. The fast food restaurants are considered to be cheap so only poor people go there. The same image they have in Greece, USA and more others. But in Romania is not like that. It’s a place where especially youngsters gather and chat..have a snack.

I think the fast food is good, cheap and not healthy. I approve of them because the food is quickly cooked, it is cheap, tasty and..how can u say no to a Big Mac or Crispy stripes?! Sometimes we need this unhealthy food to remind us of living and not care about so many things that burden us.

But in the same time I think is not good because we can have serious health problems. The restaurants avoid saying the ingredients of their products. And I am wondering why? Everybody knows that they are full of shit..let’s be honest and tell the truth. If you think about Big Mac, how many ingredients do u think it has? Mincemeat, tomatoes, pickles, bread, mayonnaise, lettuce, onion..hm like 7..? But, in fact, it has only 67 ingredients. What do you think about this? Do we know the ingredients? No and actually I don’t think that we will understand them because of their scientific names as xanthan gum, monosodium glutamate and so on.

If you want to read more about the most used 10 ingredients in fast-food please click here: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/10-ingredients-fast-food.htm .
Not only fast food have these ingredients, also salami and other “mezeluri”- meat products have them. And we are still eating them. I think that they should be more opened about it because we will still go and eat a hamburger.

So do I say yes or no to them?
I say both: let’s go there but not all the time, just once a month or something. I think that eating so rare we will not have severe health problems. But we should pay attention to what we are eating. Not only fast food is unhealthy. Thinking about eating “mici” (like meatballs), drinking Coke, colored sweets etc..these are the enemies because they are a part of our life and we eat them all the time.

Stay healthy! Eat products with fewer chemicals in them!

P.S. Tell me are u against fast food or not? Tell me why...(I will also make a poll).