20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Hygiene

Cleanliness is serious business;
1. Hygiene comes from the name "Hygieia," the Greek goddess of health, cleanliness and ... the Moon. Ancient Greek gods apparently worked double shifts.
2. The human body is home to some 1,000 species of bacteria. There are more germs on your body than people in the United States.

3. Not tonight dear, I just washed my hands: Anti-bacterial soap is no more effective at preventing infection than regular soap, and triclosan (the active ingredient) can mess with your sex hormones.

4. Save the germs! A study of over 11,000 children determined that an overly hygienic environment increases the risk of eczema and asthma.

5. Monks of the Jain Dharma (a minority religion in India) are forbidden to bathe any part of their bodies besides the hands and feet, believing the act of bathing might jeopardize the lives of millions of microorganisms.

6. It's a good thing they're monks.
7. Soap gets its name from the mythological Mount Sapo. According to legend, fat and wood ash from animal sacrifices there washed into the Tiber River, creating a rudimentary cleaning agent that aided women doing their washing.

8. Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs rubbed urine on their skin to treat cuts and burns. Urea, a key chemical in urine, is known to kill fungi and bacteria.

9. In a small victory for cleanliness, England's medieval king Henry IV required his knights to bathe at least once in their lives -- during their ritual knighthood ceremonies.

10. That's their excuse, anyway: Excrement dumped out of windows into the streets in 18th-century London contaminated the city's water supply and forced locals to drink gin instead.

11. A seventh grader in Florida recently won her school science fair by proving there are more bacteria in ice machines at fast-food restaurants than in toilet-bowl water.
12. There's no "five-second rule" when it comes to dropping food on the ground. Bacteria need no time at all to contaminate food.

13. The first true toothbrush, consisting of Siberian pig-hair bristles wired into carved cattle-bone handles, was invented in China in 1498. But tooth brushing didn't become routine in the United States until it was enforced on soldiers during World War II.

14. Please don't squeeze the corncob. In 1935, Northern Tissue proudly introduced "splinter-free" toilet paper. Previous toilet paper options included tundra moss for Eskimos, a sponge with salt water for Romans, and -- hopefully splinter-free -- corncobs in the American West.

15. NASA recently spent $23.4 million designing a space-shuttle toilet that would defy zero gravity with suction technology at 850 liters of airflow per minute. That's a lot of money for a toilet that sucks.

16. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. campaigned for basic sanitation in hospitals. But this clashed with social ideas of the time and met with widespread disdain. Charles Meigs, a prominent American obstetrician, retorted, "Doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen's hands are clean."
17. Up to a quarter of all women giving birth in European and American hospitals in the 17th through 19th centuries died of puerperal fever, an infection spread by unhygienic nurses and doctors.

18. TV kills! University of Arizona researchers determined that television remotes are the worst carriers of bacteria in hospital rooms, worse even than toilet handles. Remotes spread antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus, which contributes to the 90,000 annual deaths from infection acquired in hospitals.

19. It is now believed President James Garfield died not from the bullet fired by Charles Guiteau but because the medical team treated the president with manure-stained hands, causing a severe infection that killed him three months later.

20. What on earth made them think manure-stained hands were remotely acceptable to treat anyone?

The "Suryanamaskar"

Here is our yoga expert Juhi Garg, who will address all your queries about yoga and also write on yogic exercises.

Given below is the sought-after Suryanamaskar, which is often also, considered the shortcut to great body and mind. Dedicate around 10 seconds daily to each pose, and you would be done with the complete sequence in 2 minutes, giving your entire body and mind, both a good workout. It is preferable to do suryanamaskar early mornings in the open while facing the sun to absorb the immense energy this source provides. Pregnant women must avoid though.

Instructions:

1. Stand straight facing the sun with both hands folded

2. Raise your hands over the head. Bend backwards with the hands too going backwards. Remember to bend from the lower back and not strain the neck too much.

3. Now along with your hands, get your upper body to bend forward towards your knees. Attempt at making your hands go down to your feet, touching them and head being closest to your knees. Again, bend from the lower back to avoid overstretching any of your muscles.

4. Bring the right leg backwards with the knee touching the ground. Left foot to be bent at the knee between the hands. Hands to be in front of the body with the palms on the ground. Look up.

5. Now arch up your body completely from the hips. Keep the feet together and palms on the ground. Head to be between the hands looking downwards.

6. Bring the body on the ground with the feet, knees, palms, chest and forehead touching.

7. Raise your upper body with the lower firmly on the ground. Bend the upper body backwards as much as comfortable with the back forming a curve.

8. Repeat step 5

9. Repeat step 4 with the left leg going backwards.

10. Repeat step 3

11. Repeat step 2

12. Repeat step 1

Six mantras that help you overpower stress at your workplace

Stress is an everyday part of life, and while there are many types of stress, there are also healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with stress. Stress can directly affect your health and wellbeing. This makes dealing with stress an important issue for all of us. Here are a few useful tips that can help you combat stress in a very effective manner.

Finding out the true cause of your stress is a very important thing. Until you know its cause you can’t devise ways of coming out of it. Stress management is of such high concern as being stressed can bring in multiple problems both to your professional and personal life.

 

1  For discovering new ways of managing stress you must find the exact cause of your stress and how you react to it. Managing stress is a very important aspect for any human being. Keeping a record of the activities that make you feel stressed out can help you in beating stress to a great extent and in a very effective way.

2  Sharing your reasons for getting stressed out with your near and dear ones can also help a lot. By telling them about your stress you will feel very relieved. They can even suggest new methods of dealing with stress.
 
3  One of the main reasons of stress could be overwork. If your overload yourself with work even then you feel stressed. Doing much more than what you actually can could prove very harmful to your health. By overworking you not only harm yourself but your work as well. The quality of your work can be greatly affected if you overdo your work. 

 

4  Many people jump from crises to crises, and at the end of the day they have not really done what is important to them. This can be due to a lack of goals, inability to say no, not delegating effectively. One of the main reasons for stress is when people fail to plan their work. Plan to do those things that are important to you, and then make sure that you do them and you can keep at bay from stress.

 

5  Exercising regularly can also help you get rid of stress at a very fast pace. Meditation and yoga are also very effective tools when it comes to reducing stress. Try squeezing in some physical activity in your daily routine. This could prove to be a very great stress buster. Workouts like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or taking a stroll during your freetime at work can also help a lot.

 

6  Your attitude plays a major role in your happiness at work. Being cheerful and mingling well with your colleagues can also help in overcoming stress to a very great extent.

Abdominal Breathing

Let’s try an exercise together. Begin by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. Are you:

· breathing rapidly or slowly?
· taking deep breaths or shallow breaths?
· feeling the breath in the center of your chest, or down around your abdomen?

Most people tend to breathe in a slightly abnormal way, they tend to hold in their stomachs, make little use of their diaphragm, and breathe using the muscles of their upper chest, neck and shoulders. This is not the most effective way to get the needed oxygen to our brain and muscles. If you watch babies or animals breathe, you will notice that they breathe with their whole bodies, their bellies rise and fall with each breath. For some reason, we stop doing this when we outgrow diapers. No one really knows why.

The good news is that we can relearn how to breathe properly – learning to breathe using our abdomens. This can help us control our feelings of stress. In fact, abdominal breathing is the single most effective strategy for stress reduction! A person’s normal breathing rate is 8-12 breaths per minute. But if someone is stressed, or having a panic attack, they tend to breathe faster (up to 20-30 breaths per minute) and more shallowly. Although we may seem to be breathing more when this happens, we are not actually get much oxygen in, and the breathing is not as effective as it could be.

Abdominal breathing means breathing fully from your abdomen or from the bottom of your lungs. It is exactly the reverse of the way you breathe when you’re anxious or tense, which is typically shallow and high in your chest. If you’re breathing from your abdomen, you can place your hand on your abdomen and see it actually rise each time you inhale. You’ll find that abdominal breathing will help you relax any time you are feeling anxious.

To practice abdominal breathing, follow these steps:

1. Place one hand on your abdomen right beneath your rib cage
2. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose into the bottom of your lungs. Your chest should move only slightly, while your stomach rises, pushing your hand up.
3. When you’ve inhaled fully, pause for a moment and then exhale fully through your mouth. Purse your lips and imagine that you are blowing on a hot spoonful of soup. As you exhale, just let yourself go and imagine your entire body going loose and limp. It should take you twice as long to exhale as it did to inhale.
4. In order to fully relax, take and release ten abdominal breaths. Try to keep your breathing smooth and regular throughout, without gulping in a big breath or exhaling suddenly.