Friday, November 4, 2016

11 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself Quickly

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For more details, read this 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself

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Why Cabbage Is Both Good And Bad For Your Stomach

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Though commonly eaten as a vegetable, cabbage has many medicinal properties. Here are some of the good and the bad effects of cabbage on your stomach:

The Good:

  • Cabbages can be Used to Treat the Lack of Stomach Acid

If your body is lacking in stomach acid, it can lead to heartburn, GERD, or acid reflux. Cabbages can help you reduce your discomfort as they strongly stimulate acid production in the stomach. Drinking cabbage juice or fermented cabbage juice from sauerkraut before eating improves your digestion.

  • Cabbage can Help Reduce Stomach Pain and Intestinal Ulcers

Cabbage can aid in stomach pain and in the healing of stomach ulcers. According to a report from the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health website, the average healing time for people with stomach ulcers that drank cabbage juice was decreased compared to those that did not drink cabbage juice.

The Bad:

  • Cabbages Can Cause Bloating

Cabbages are cruciferous vegetables along with broccoli, kale and cauliflower. Cruciferous vegetables contain raffinose which is a sugar that only gets digested in the large intestine where a methane-producing bacteria ferments it. This process produces gas which in turn causes bloating.

Then Should You Eat It Or Not?

At the beginning, just try moderate amounts and observe how your body would react. If the bloating problem is really serious, you may choose other foods that have the same benefits but not such bad effects.

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Why You Should Really Try Congee If You Have An Upset Stomach

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If you’ve heard about the benefits of oatmeal for an empty stomach, then you must definitely check out a bowl of congee, a special type of rice porridge. Not only does it delicious, it’s very easy to digest and will get you back in feet in no time.

Congee Is The New Oatmeal

Congee works in the same way as oatmeal. It isn’t that oatmeal contains any special nutrients that promise an instant cure for stomach disorders, but it’s bland and easy to digest nature can work wonders for your digestive health.

Science Says Yes

In fact, the benefits of rice porridge weren’t just known to the ancient Chinese. As per a study done by Harvard University and published in the journal JAMA:Internal Medicine , porridge is perhaps the key to a long and healthy life, with experts advising a bowl of porridge a day to keep heart disease at bay. As lead author Dr Hongyu Wu of Harvard School of Public Health says, “These findings further support current dietary guidelines that recommend increasing whole-grain consumption. They also provide promising evidence that suggests a diet enriched with whole grains may confer benefits towards extended life expectancy.” Earlier studies have also emphasised on the positive health benefits of whole grain consumption, which includes boosting bone mineral density, lowering risk of diabetes and blood pressure as well as increase healthy gut bacteria, among others.

Here’s a simple congee recipe to get you started.

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Add rice, salt, stock and ginger in a pot, bring the mixture to boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Keep stirring to ensure the rice doesn’t stick.

Simmer until the congee is thick and creamy or if it’s over an hour. Add salt and other garnishing flavours as required and serve while hot. You can check out more recipes online.

Featured photo credit: Dion Hinchcliffe via flickr.com

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If You Always Have Mouth Ulcer, Maybe It's Because You Eat These Foods Too Often

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They’re painful, irritating, and seem to pop up out of nowhere – the mouth ulcer, or canker sore. We all get them from time to time. These pesky lesions make eating, drinking, and even talking pretty uncomfortable. Some people develop mouth ulcers more often than others, particularly women and people under the age of 40.

Mouth ulcers have been linked to several causes like biting your cheek or brushing your gums too hard. But did you know that eating certain foods can actually increase your risk?

Here are some foods to avoid if you want to prevent mouth ulcers

1. Chocolates

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Canker sores may be due to food allergies. And chocolate can cause allergies. If you eat a lot of chocolate and develop a lot of mouth ulcers, chocolate could be the culprit. Difficult to accept, but you may want to reduce your chocolate intake.

2. Coffee

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Do you have a cup of coffee every morning to get your day going? Suffer a lot of mouth ulcers? Could be due to the acidity in coffee. Try a low-acidic brewing method like cold brew. This should reduce the level of acidity in your morning cup.

3. Nuts

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Nuts like peanuts, walnuts, almonds, and cashews may be triggering your mouth ulcers. Nuts, particularly English walnuts, are high in the amino acid L-Arginine, which can lead to canker sores.

4. Strawberries

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Lots of people have strawberry allergies and they don’t even realize it! Try switching the strawberries in your diet for a fruit like watermelon instead.

5. Citrus Fruits

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Do you love oranges, pineapples, lemons, mandarins, and limes? These fruits are really high in citric acid which could be aggravating your gums and leaving behind mouth ulcers. Try cutting your intake and replacing them with fruits like apples and bananas instead.

Other Prevention Techniques

Aside from avoiding the foods listed above, also try to reduce the intake of salty and spicy foods, which can also irritate your mouth. Make sure to eat a well-balanced diet, high in whole grains and alkaline rich foods. Try to keep your stress in check by meditating and practicing other ways to stay calm. Brush your teeth with a soft toothbrush to avoid damaging your gums and cheeks. If you think your mouth ulcers might be because of a dietary deficiency, contact your doctor to establish a personalized nutrition plan.

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How This Ambitious 19-Year-Old Female CEO Started At 16

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Yesterday was one of those days I felt entirely too old. I became acquainted with a female CEO who started her entrepreneurial journey at only 16 years old — while she was still in high school! Today, she’s someone whose successes are bound to inspire many others.

The CEO of SavyDisha Shidham, is an ambitious 19-year-old with many dreams. One of her dreams gave way to Savy, a tool that democratizes your online shopping experience. Savy lets you name your price for any item you love and emails you when your item hits your desired price.

Savy was founded on the tagline: “your style, your price”. They now have 200+ retail partners you can shop from. If you love an item, but it is too expensive simply enter a price you’re willing to pay and your email. As soon as your item hits your price, you’ll be emailed.

Savy aims to cultivate relationships between businesses and site visitors who are “window shopping” or just browsing. Since price is such an important aspect for both businesses and customers, it seems fitting to get the customer’s input.

An Extract from the Young Female CEO’s Interview

Disha is an inspiration for every aspiring entrepreneur. Her story is not just a success story, but also an enlightening one. I took the time to learn from her and to understand how she leveraged various resources as a young entrepreneur.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Disha! So tell me, when did your entrepreneurial journey begin?

You are so welcome Saheed, thank you for having me!

When I was 16, so back in the summer of 2014, I participated in the MIT Launch Summer Program, which is a 4-week entrepreneurship program specifically for high schoolers. Those 4 weeks were truly my introduction to entrepreneurship (my high school didn’t offer classes or any entrepreneurship clubs) and I absolutely loved the idea of building something with your sweat and tears and watching it add value to peoples’ lives. Entrepreneurship was a perfect fit for who I was and who I wanted to be in the future.

What are some resources you came across as a young entrepreneur?

So the MIT Launch Program is obviously one, it gave me a taste of the startup world. My advice to any young entrepreneur would be definitely to start there. After MIT Launch, I decided I wanted to continue with the idea I had developed, so I participated in Catapult Ideas — an incubator for high school startups, which helped hone my startup idea, then called TacBoard, into an actionable and monetizable business.

I would also advise young entrepreneurs, or really any entrepreneurs in general, to reach out to their community. For me specifically, one example of when I did this — I reached out to State Representative Stephanie Kunze, who is part of the Ohio House, and she invited me to the first ever Empower Women Entrepreneurial Event.

From there, I was able to gain contacts to further my startup. I was even able to speak to  Ohio’s Speaker of the House, Cliff Rosenberger, and the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, Mary Taylor, about TacBoard and the issue of increasing diversity in business.

What are the obstacles you had to overcome as a young entrepreneur?

In the beginning, it was difficult to overcome that “young entrepreneur” label — many would just dismiss my company as not really being a serious startup. But in the end, if your company is gaining traction and if you know your market, your naysayers will quickly be proven wrong.

Truly, the most important question, which I’m sure countless entrepreneurs have mentioned, is “do your customers love your product?” It takes a lot of work to get to a place where your customers are raving about your product — but once you get there, no one will be able to dismiss you or your company.

You mentioned to me that you’ve decided to take time before going to college. What made you take the leap?

During my senior year of high school, I was juggling school and my business (which was then called TacBoard) and I often felt like my work was compromised when either school or my business became particularly busy. I hated that feeling of producing subpar work (I’m a perfectionist if you can’t tell already). I knew that the opportunity of school would always be available to me but in a startup, it’s either grow or stagnate, so I knew I couldn’t put my business on hold.

Also, I ended up doing really well in a few programs I participated in: Catapult (which I mentioned earlier) and Draper University (a six-week entrepreneurship program in Silicon Valley run by eclectic billionaire Tim Draper, an investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Skype, and Hotmail). I won Catapult’s Demo Day and placed 5th out of 70 other startups at DraperU’s Demo Day so that validation really strengthened my resolve to take time and not go to college.

Wow, so you’ve pitched in front of a billionaire? How was that experience?

Really nerve-racking. I never considered myself to be a particularly strong public speaker. But ever since that pitch, whenever I’m speaking in front of a crowd I remind myself that I’ve presented in front of a billionaire VC and that he thought I spoke well. It’s all about positive thinking "</p

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Why Couples Who Post Less About Their Relationships On Social Media Are Happier

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Social media is so popular these days that it almost is like having a drug addiction. If you think about it, what would you do on your phone when you’re bored if you didn’t have the apps to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.? It is so important now that it literally has the power to destroy relationships.

Discussing whether or not those relationships were solid is a completely different conversation. Before social media, people had plenty of privacy. Now people have become so involved they no longer know the difference between privacy and what is intentionally being kept a secret. Arguments can get started in a relationship when one person wants to keep the relationship from becoming “official” on social media to keep it private. As a result, the other person may feel that their significant other is trying to keep the relationship a secret.

If you ever feel that you need social media to validate the relationship you are in, perhaps the person you are with is wrong for you.

Live in the here and now

Sometimes couples get so engulfed in social media that they spend more time posting about their relationship that they aren’t really enjoying it in the present moment fully. When they’re out, they’re updating their status on where they are instead of just putting the phone down and enjoying their time with their significant other.

When two people are in a relationship and choose to keep it off social media it allows for the couple to completely enjoy the time they are spending together while getting the most out of the experience they share. Being in this mindset, the couples know they don’t have anything to prove to anyone but to each other. They tend to be happier and much more secure with themselves and with each other.

Seek validation from your partner instead of through social media

Some couples post frequently on social media to create the illusion that everything in their relationship is perfect. Have you ever then seen that same couple in real life and it sometimes seems as though they truly cannot be bothered with each other? It’s true, and it happens more than you’d think. Sometimes people are unhappy in their relationship so they post a picture with their significant other, receive positive comments and a ton of likes, and somehow they can receive the validation that they should be getting from their partner.

If you’re in a relationship with someone and you feel that you may have done this before, don’t beat yourself up over it because truthfully, most of us have probably done it at one point or another. When you’re feeling like you need some validation in your relationship, it’s important to remember that going to your partner and expressing your needs is the best way to do it. Put the phone down, communication is key.

Keep others out of your business

When someone gets mad at their significant other or has a problem, they use their status to broadcast the problem for everyone to know about. In most cases, the person who posts the status will get an obnoxious amount of comments that are really just irrelevant opinions. This opens the gates to letting people in on your personal business.

When this happens, nosey people become involved in your relationship. They act like they care enough about you to find out exactly what’s going on in your relationship just so they can turn around and have something to gossip about. Soon enough everyone knows your business and honestly, we all know that’s how rumors start.

Please keep in mind that a relationship is for two people, and it’s important to keep many things about the relationship private. The good and the bad.

Pressures of social media

The problem with social media is that its initial purpose is now being used by some as a personal diary. Some people can’t seem to wake up and do anything before posting about their personal life]. For example, I have seen posts on social media from a girl I know who likes to make public announcements when her boyfriend isn’t “acting right”. Tons of people swarm in and leave their two cents. This girl has three children. Not only is she embarrassing herself and the father of her children, but also her children. People do not understand the influence social media has on others. When this girl and her boyfriend kiss and makeup, she makes a point to post on social media about how everything is going well and they are doing better than ever. I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to feel the need to constantly update people on what is going on in your personal life.

In closing, everyone knows that not every relationship is always rainbows and butterflies. As you and your partner experience life together you are certainly going to have disagreements and strains on your relationship. As previously stated, when two people come together in a relationship, it is special and it is sacred. Do your best to keep your relationship private. Put your phone away and enjoy the time you have with them.

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