Increase Your Happiness

Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions.

A recent study at Harvard Law on happiness states that we increase our happiness by interacting with people.

The so called "Happiest place on Earth" shown on the Oprah show in January of 2011 is found in a city of California.
What studies found that brought this group of people happiness are simple features such as: No cars, wider sidewalks, locally owned businesses, parks, no drive-throughs at fast-food restaurants.  All of this leads to one thing, "Interaction!"

What are the happiest jobs in America, and how much do they pay?

1.  Travel Agent
2.  Clergy
3.  Special Education Teacher
4.  Fire Fighter
And guess what?  They all pay less than 50k a year.

There is a saying, "Money does not buy happiness."
Coming from a family of money- living across the street from former Utah Jazz coach, Jerry Sloan, and next door neighbors with Mark Yule, owner of Mona-Vie, a multi-billion dollar company- it sure is nice to have the money stability factor.  From experiences of being both rich and poor- living off government funding when I was first born- having a lot money comes responsibility, as well as more stress.
As I noted in a previous post, stress is the factor that cuts off our brains potential to bring out memory.  It also blocks our levels of seratonin, the enzyme that is released creating so called "happiness", or a state of mind that everything is okay.  There are also many wealthy people who are extremely happy because their job is to interact with many people to build and market their business.  Unfortanetely with government issues, this dream is diminishing over time to many people.  Now less than 1% of America makes over half a million dollars a year.

The key to happiness is not necessarily what job you have or how much money you make, but it is with your own attitude as well as INTERACTING WITH OTHERS.

Effects of Sleeping Patterns

Did you know that regular sleeping habits can actually make your day less stressful?

Just by going to bed early and waking up early can result in a more productive day

I'll give you an example.  When you have an assignment, or a project, or anything on your to-do list that hasn't gotten done and you are starting to feel tired, GO TO BED.

Studies show that going to bed then, and waking up earlier to do that thing, you will be able to be more effective.  Let's say your project will take you two hours.  Go to bed, and wake up two hours earlier.  You get the same amount of sleeping time, but with the added energy provided from sleep, you will be able to finish your project even faster.  Amazing right?  Most people call that common sense; although, naturally, we put off that feeling of going to bed on time to wake up early because somehow we feel we won't have the time so we sacrifice our sleep instead.

Sleep is the only time in our day where we grow and produce energy

Not once throughout the day does our body re-cooperate unless we are sleeping.

Sleep provides more energy than food, daily excercise, and caffeine, (which by the way really doesn't give your body evergy).
The next time you come across the two way path of sleep or staying up, GO TO BED.  You might know you have to get your project done, but your body does not.  You might think because it's a Friday night that you can throw off your sleep schedule.
Your body does not recognize the difference from a Monday to a holiday to a Friday night.  Regular sleep will keep you supplied with more energy.  It's not how much sleep you get, it's when you get your sleep.

The power of Creatine and Glutamine

If you are doing the same workout routines and you seem to only achieve mediocre results, why not try my two recommendations to power up your workout?


Creatine Monohydrate
This is one of the least expensive supplements at roughly 10-25 cents a serving.  Creatine is one of the vital binding enzymes in the energy production of your cells.  Creatine, a molecule with a similar phosphorylation potential as ADP, is used to store high-energy phosphates.  Each of our cells is coated with signaling molecules.  Every creatine molecule has a specific "code" for turning on the cell to respond, or in this case activate the cells to produce new myofibrils found inside your muscle tissue for muscle development.  With my choice, I have found the best results from the monohydrate powder, not pill.  Either one works, but I would recommend staying away from the pill form.  Although the pill form is more concentrated, it does not release as fast due to the shell made of starch and other elements.  Remember, creatine is meant for quick use.


L-Glutamine
Like creatine, glutamine is cheap in cost compared to all of the other "name brand supplements" that "supposedly" help you gain muscle and burn fat..  Be sure your glutamine has an "L" in the name, or the supplement is junk.  Glutamine is one of the seven essential amino acids and is naturally found in muscle tissues.  They are called essential for a reason- because only they, "the essentials", have specific shapes to bind to the receptor to promote your muscle development.  Like creatine, this enzyme turns on a kinase which activates the g-protein linked receptor which directly turns on the amino acid receptor to promote a speedy recovery to the re-building of your muscles.  This is also used as a joint recovery supplement.

We know that creatine and glutamine are two of the seven essential amino acids.  The difference between them is glutamine is known as a muscle relaxer (inhibitor) which cause the muscles to loosen and heal.  Creatine is a muscle stimulator which causes your muscles to fire an action potential with the energy created through glycolosis fermentation, the same way sugar is turned into energy.  It is the fastest pathway used to create atp.  When we work out, we use up norepinephrine (stress hormone).  Our body naturally gets rid of this and does so by producing seratonin, the counter-acting enzyme.  This is why working out is great for stress relief.  The thing with creatine and glutamine is they are counter-acting amino acids.  One tells the muscles to relax, while the other tells the muscle to tighten up.  This is why, from physiology, it says take creatine before and glutamine after.  Now if you are taking creatine after to put back the energy your muscles are looking for, hold off on the glutamine.  The best example I can think of to have this make sense is if you decide to take a sleeping pill with caffiene.  They would counter-act each other and be defective.  Another example from Chemistry, which most people who clean know that HCL (hydrochloric acid) and bleach are very strong bases and can clean pretty much anything.  But when mixed together they counter-act each other and produce ammonia gas which does not clean and is very harmful to the body.

Retaining Memory

Last week I talked about how to retrieve memory.  In order to retrieve memory, we first have to have it, right? Here are some ways to first input memory into our brain.

Your brain as well as your muscles have what is called memory.  Each functions off of previous things it has done.  We remember scenarios from our past because of things we see, food we eat, or smells from an object we pass by.  All of these things draw out information-  We have to first figure out how our brain learns.

There are three basic ways of learning: listening, visual, and touch

Think about the things you remember from a previous time and how it was easy for you to remember.  Do you remember things by looking at pictures, or by taking detailed notes?  Do you learn better when you build an object or perform an experiment?

All of us learn differently, which way do YOU learn?