Search Results for: sleep

November 25, 2015 By Jyoti Sawant 16 Comments

Home remedies to remove dark circles under your eyes

Are you a workaholic, stressed out at work or due to other reasons and seldom sleep well at night? Then you must have also noticed dark patches under your eyes at times and wondered what are those dark patches and how can you get rid of them?

Dark circles occur when the skin under the eyes becomes discolored or dark. They are mainly caused due to insufficient sleep, genetics, stress and also aging. Dark circles can appear to both men and women, regardless of their age.

Although dark circles are not a serious problem, people find that it comes in the way of their looks. Of course the market has an abundance of expensive cosmetic products that promises to alleviate the problem but, the chemicals they contain can affect the delicate skin underneath your eyes in a negative way. In order to avoid these harsh chemical based cosmetics to cure the dark circles why don’t you try some simple and easy home remedies to get rid of those dark circles.

The causes of dark circles are:

* Lack of sleep

* Mental or physical stress

* Crying for long period of time

* Too much work on the computer

* Certain medications

Home Remedies for Dark Circles:

Tomato

Is a brilliant home remedy that can erase the dark circles under your eyes as it naturally helps in lightening the skin. Mix 1 teaspoon of tomato juice with a teaspoon of lemon juice and apply it under your eyes. After applying it, leave it on for about 10 minutes and wash it off with water. Repeat this remedy at least 2 times a day. You can also drink tomato juice mixed with some lemon juice and mint leaves in order to

D get rid of dark circles.

Cucumber

Is another home remedy that will not only help in removing the dark circles, but also acts as a soothing agent for the eyes. Cut 2 slices of a fresh cucumber and keep them in the refrigerator for a while. Then place the cucumber slices over your eyes for about 10-15 minutes. You can also mix cucumber juice and lemon juice and apply it under your eyes. It is a natural remedy that will help you get rid of dark circles.

Rose Water

Soak cotton pads in rose water and put them over your eyes and leave them there for some time. You can also use rose petals and milk to make a paste and apply it over the dark circles. Rose water is one of the best home remedies for quick removal of dark circles under the eyes as it lightens the skin and also acts as a natural soothing agent.

Potato:

Grate a raw potato, strain it and extract its juice. Soak a cotton ball in the juice and place it on your eyelids. Apply it properly so that it covers the dark area under your eyes. Leave it for about 15 minutes, and then wash it off with water. Potato is a natural bleaching agent, which makes it one of the best home remedies for reducing dark circles under the eye.

Mint leaves:

A paste made of Mint leaves and tomato juice is another good cure for dark circles. Apply this paste on the area under the eyes. This remedy will eliminate the dark patches of skin.

Orange

Who ever thought that orange juice can also do wonders to remove dark circles but it indeed does? Mix some orange juice with a few drops of glycerin and apply the mixture over the dark circles. It will diminish the dark circles and will also give a natural glow to the area around your eyes.

Turmeric Paste

Make a paste using pineapple juice and turmeric powder. Apply the paste on a regular basis to get rid of the dark circles fast.

Practice Yoga or Meditate

While, yoga and meditation can bring down the dark circles in your face, it also helps in rejuvenating our body and also brings a natural glow on your face while, at the same time, removing the dark circles under your eyes.

So instead of spending loads of money on expensive cosmetics to get rid of your dark circles try these easy home remedies and be rest assured that you will be back to looking beautiful in few days.

November 19, 2015 By Vrushali Athavle 1 Comment

Do you know about NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)?

Are you one of those who know the importance of exercising but still give excuses for not working out regularly? Several research reports have indicated that like “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health”, there is a new saying in the health industry “Sitting is injurious to health” Sitting in one place for a long time can cause serious health issues.

Here is a quick fix for all the people who have sedentary lifestyle and job and do not get time to work out.
NEAT – also known as ‘Non-exercise activity thermogenesis’ include those activities which require to move the smallest muscle of the body due to which some energy expenditure occur. These exercises will not include very minimal movements like those while sleeping or eating and also will not include activities like sports where there is lot of calorie burning. Basically, it includes activities like walking to office, gardening, standing rather than sitting, gardening, doing household chores, carrying grocery bags in hand instead of using a trolley etc.
For more clarity on NEAT let’s take a peek into the various daily examples:

Brush to burn calories:

Instead of lazing around with a brush in your mouth stand near the wash basin with one leg lifted. This will help you strengthen your core and at the same time improve your concentration and balance.

Serve yourself:

Next thing which we usually do is to call out loud for tea/coffee or breakfast from the living room to the person in the kitchen. Instead, go ahead and serve yourself. This will ensure your sluggish metabolism is waking up slowing to burn more calories.

Catch up with some exercise on the way to office:

** Take the stair wherever possible and skip the elevators. This could be your building stairs or railway station stairs if you travel by train or walk up to the office in your building which is on the 7th or 8th floor. If climbing 7 floors seems tiring, climb 2 to 3 floors and take a lift for remaining. Climbing stairs is a great way to burn calories and strengthen your legs.”

** Sitting at the desk for long hours is the most dangerous thing as we just discussed in the beginning of this blog. Here is the solution- get up from your chair every 1 hour, do certain stretches, instead of asking the office boy to fill up your water bottle take a stroll and refill it yourself, talk to your friends and come back to your seat and continue with your work.

Stand up and stretch every time you hit ‘send’ on an e-mail.”

Use “Walk n talk method” i.e start walking while you are on long conversations on call.
(i) While sitting on a chair, raise one heel or both the heels then one leg and then both the legs while seated. This turn outs to be the best exercise for lower body, Similarly stretch out arms and do some free hand arm exercises or pick up water bottles and do some bicep curls which can be some good upper body workouts.
(ii) To strengthen the core, sit on a ball which forces you to balance yourself keeping your core engaged full time. If this is not possible in office, try out this ball method at home while watching television or eating dinner, playing video/mobile games or reading.

4) Get a Pedometer

Pedometer like GOQii band can be best used to motivate you by tracking the steps and kms everyday. To make this more interesting decide on certain weekly targets to completing steps target.
In a nutshell the above proves that there is no way you can say ‘I have a sedentary job’. NEAT exercises help you to shift your sedentary job to a bit active one with very simple efforts. Once you incorporate these activities, lot more will come to your mind.

Let me know “How do you squeeze extra activity into your day?”

October 9, 2015 By TAARIKA ARYA 1 Comment

An “ATTITUDE” of “GRATITUDE”

I vividly remember myself humming these few lines back in school:

“Thank you for the world so sweet,

Thank you for the food we eat,

Thank you for the birds that sing,

Thank you GOD for everything.”

WAIT a second! This is not a religious blog but, simply about being thankful for the good in our lives focusing on the positives rather than the negatives. Seeing the cup of life as “half full” than as “half empty”.

Sadly, I could not continue saying those 4 lines as I grew up. But why should I not feel grateful about things that are around me or happen to me now?

This thought stuck my mind a month back and since then I became serious about being “grateful” in life and making it a lifelong habit. Of course, it was going to be something beyond these few lines considering the amount of experience I’ve had or the number of things that I should be grateful for. Best thing about it was that it was doable and it required no inventory.

Just 5 min of your day, but in turn provides great rewards in happiness, healthy, mind-fullness, career, personality, deeper relationships. The benefits are endless but, doing so takes a bit of practice (talk about HABITS !) .

Speaking about its benefits on Health & Well-Being (since that’s my forte), here are some of the ways it affects us:

HAPPINESS:

Experts say that practicing gratitude can increase health and happiness levels by about 25% ! And we all know that to achieve optimum health we need a healthy body, but we also need a healthy mind. Like muscle building, your mind also takes a while to build up and get strong. For this essentially practicing gratitude certainly helps.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE:

Gratitude also turns what we have in to enough, shrinking away our worries, negativity, comparisons. You end up with a more positive outlook towards your goals and your life.

SLEEP :

It improves sleep quality, time required to fall asleep and increases sleep duration. Just thinking about a few things we should be grateful for induces melatonin (sleep-inducing hormone) and knocks us out. Gratitude and positive emotion in general are among the strongest relaxants known to man. A safe and free sleep aid!

INCREASES LONGEVITY:

Indirectly of course. Gratitude is strongly related to a positive emotion and we all know that the optimists live a few years longer than the pessimists! So, gratitude —-> positive emotion —-> extra months / years on earth!

STRESS:

Gratitude reduces feelings of envy, makes our memories happier and lets us experience good feelings. All of this helps us bounce back from stress. Whenever I am under this funk , feel down or demotivated, all I do it’s : grab my journal and start counting my blessings !

YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXERCISE !

While there is no strong evidence that supports this, it should not surprise you if being grateful for your health would increase the tendency to want to protect it by exercising more. (Start practicing and let me know if it works for you! )

In a nutshell: Gratitude is no one-stop-shop , but it is a massively under utilised tool for improving the quality of life . You will be amazed to realise that all the goodness we take for granted.

Now you should be asking me, HOW can I bring more gratitude in my life???

Well, while there are many ways to practice this, one way that I follow and find the most practical is: Maintaining a gratitude journal.

All it requires is noting 1 or more things ( I write 3 everyday ) you are grateful for on a daily basis . No fancy notebook or App required. The real work goes on in your head. But if using a tool is helpful, go for it.

Here are a few handful of apps / websites that specialise in Gratitude:

Thankfulfor.com ( http://thankfulfor.com/) , Gratittude Journal for Iphone , Gratitude Plus for Ipad , Treater for IOS and Android .

I have picked up a few examples from my journal to give you an idea about how can you start:

I am grateful for being able to sleep on a clean white bed sheet.
I am grateful for the comfortable shoes I am wearing right now.
I am blessed to have access to technology.
I am lucky have my own bedroom space.
I am grateful for a day off!
I really enjoyed the lunch today.

Start off with small and simple things and gradually get deeper and complex. All of this takes less than 5 mins a day. It’s that simple! Trust me, once you start, you will want to go on and on and start falling short of space!

Keep a few things in mind, before you made a decision to go ahead:

Be genuine, No false praises, Be as specific as possible, Try to actually “feel” that feeling of gratitude.

So do you have 5 minutes to change your life forever ?

Thought so!

Go ahead and let’s make GRATITUDE PRACTICE a daily habit!

(WARNING: This exercise is super powerful and can make you feel really good. You might also find yourself smiling while filling up your journal.)

October 6, 2015 By Vrushali Athavle 2 Comments

How to push yourself to wake up early for morning workouts?

In one of my previous blogs “What time is the best time to exercise?” I explained the importance of morning workouts. I got a lot of queries saying “We totally agree that morning workouts are really effective, but the major issue is, how to push ourselves to wake up early for the workouts?

This concern from users set me thinking and I decided to write a blog addressing these issues and come up with ways to push yourself for morning exercise. I would say don’t give up on morning workout at all, if the only issue is how to wake up early.

Morning workouts boost’s up your metabolism and keeps it elevated for several hours, you psychologically feel healthy as you start your day in a healthy way, and fixed morning exercise schedule, ensures that you sleep too on time.

I remember an old saying which I would like to quote here. “For every lock there is a key, we just need to find out which is the correct key for the lock by some trials and errors”.

Here are few quick tips which you can try and find out for yourself which works for you:

Dress up yourself in sports outfit and sleep

This doesn’t really mean you need to wear your shoes, socks, athletic outfit and sleep but at least keep everything ready a night prior so that in the morning you don’t waste time looking out for the stuff. Instead of wasting time in finding your workout clothes like your trousers and t-shirt, water bottle, napkin, shoes and sock, spend those 15-20 mins in getting your sleep.

Make a fitness freak friend

If you forget to set up your alarm or you happen to shut off the alarm clock and sleep, your exercise buddy will make sure to wake you up. Schedule sessions with a friend who is dedicated and will make sure that you wake up for the session. You don’t need a friend to really wake you up but, the fact that he/she will be waiting for you for the session will make you feel responsible to reach for the workout.

Put your alarm clock far away

Instead of keeping the alarm clock next to your bed while sleeping, keep it far away. Increase the volume of the alarm and keep it in the next room. This will make sure that you get up from the bed to shut it off. Just imagine now, if you keep it on snooze, what would happen? How many times will you get up from bed and go to shut it off. It will be a workout in itself Lol! On a serious note, once you wake up and get out of the bed, your chances of waking up and going for the workout increases rather than just putting off the alarm from your bed. If your

alarm allows you to set up a song in it, it would be a great idea to play either a song which will make you dance on it’s moves or set up song from your workout playlist to help you get in to the mood for exercise.

Feel the morning beauty:

The National Sleep Foundation data says that “When your eye senses light, it sets off a chain reaction in your brain that leaves you feeling alert and energized”. This tip I use it for myself and my daughter too. Once I wake up I immediately walk to the balcony and breathe in the fresh air. The beautiful morning weather, cool breeze, chirping of the birds certainly wakes you up completely and gets you ready for the morning workouts. If it’s still dark when you wake up, make use of a light box that simulates natural light.

5.Get enough sleep the night before.

Make sure you get 7-8 hours of sound sleep. Many a times you wake and keep wondering for yourself “I slept early yesterday, don’t know why I still feel sleepy, should I complete my sleep or wake up?” The answer to this is, if you have completed 7 to 8 hours of sound sleep, just tell yourself that your body is ready for the workout. It’s just dedication and will power which is now pulling you back.

Due to hectic and stressful life, people want to spend the last few hours before hitting the bed either in watching television or surfing and chatting on laptops and mobiles. I understand these are few ways for relaxing yourself but the light emitted from these devices is actually hampering your sleep cycles keeping you awake for a longer time. Instead of this, read books, play with your kids, listen to light music or do some meditation or simple Yoga moves to relax your body and get better sleep.

To conclude, the best sleep routine would be “Keep your alarm in the next room near an open window so that you get up from the bed to shut the alarm. The open window will expose you to the beautiful morning weather which will open your eyes. Your snooze option will again make the alarm ring. If you set up a nice song, I am sure this time the alarm with your favourite song in it, will make you show some of your best moves and totally wake you up. Keep all the workout gears ready at night and place it just next to the alarm clock. This will further make sure you get geared up for the workout.

Try this and let me know if it worked for you or share if you have some other awesome ideas. I am waiting to hear!