Dreams help soothe your bad memories
From Scientific American
Every morning, my husband and I (even before we were married) ask each other what dream we had the previous night. It's one of those things that we've gotten used to, and sometimes it brings the first laughs for the day. (For a time we kept a blog to write our dreams that time we lived apart.) According to this article, dreams help us learn and process what transpired in our day. To boost your EQ, it helps to get eventful Zzzs. But I wonder if you can actually induce a sleep with dreams. Aren't there times when you have dreamless sleeps? I suppose those are times when you seem to NOT need the dreams, or aren't emotionally bothered by anything enough to merit a dream. And to dream, we must sleep. Hence the benefits evidenced by this research can be acheived when you can actually get yourself sleeping. Problem is, when stress sets in, for some people, sleeping can be disrupted (ehem, this is my problem). But that is a story in itself.
Weight-loss diets given run for their money
From ABC Science news, Dr Karl
A friend of mine once told me I can try limiting food intake so I can lose the stubborn weight I've gained from pregnancy, that time I've had so little time to find time for exercise. While it seems to make sense that counting calories in what you eat (eating much less than what you need to burn for the day) will be enough to lose weight, this article says it's significantly less efficient that having the same amount of claoric "deficit" brought about from exercise. Dr Karl (popular face/voice in Aussie science) writes about weight loss: "... doing the extra exercise takes off more kilograms than eating less, even though the energy deficit is the same in each case." In short, exercise is still the way to go to lose weight. No shortcuts.
