Getting Lots of Sleep Boosts Your Brain Power

Scientists have discovered that getting lots of sleep boosts your brain power, and that even having naps of only an hour or two can be beneficial.  It seems that the more hours that people spend awake, the more slow and sluggish their brains become.  There may even be a link between the tendency of older people to sleep less and poorer memory in the elderly.

US scientists have shown that memories are embedded in the brain in a certain stage of sleep and that sleep is needed to clear out the brain's short term memory storage and create space for new information to enter.  A recent study undertaken by the University of California at Berkeley shows that sleep not only cures a person of any effects of prolonged wakefulness, but also at a neurocognitive level moves you on beyond where you were before you slept.

Read the whole news article on sleep boosts your brain power

Is Willpower Better than Nicotine Patches When Trying To Quit Smoking?

New research has shown that willpower maybe a better aid to stopping smoking than nicotine patches and gums.  A research team at Sydney University reviewed 511 studies on stopping smoking and they showed that most ex-smokers had given up smoking without the help of nicotine replacement therapies.

It seems that studies that commend the use of nicotine replacement therapies are more likely to have been funded by the drug companies than other studies.The Australian research team also stated that governments were also involved in the medicalising of quitting smoking and implying that giving up smoking is harder than it actually is. The review of the studies showed that between two-thirds to three-quarters of ex-smokers had given up without using stopping smoking aids and that they had found it easier than expected.

Other experts have disagreed with this research and say that the studies on nicotine patches and nicotine gum had been robust and that relying on willpower alone to quit smoking was not particularly successful.

Read all of this news article on willpower versus nicotine replacement therapies to help quitting smoking

Need Help for Nail Biting or Hair Pulling?

Biting your nails or persistently pulling out your hair are very distressing habits.  They can be painful, cause physical injury and be damaging to your appearance.  Nail biting and hair pulling are habits and are a sign that the person is stressed and anxious.  The habit inevitably leads to further stress as having bald patches, chewed down, painful-looking finger nails and no eyebrows or lashes, can lead to isolation and have a detrimental affect on someone's family and social life.

So what can be done about these self-harming habits?  Hypnodude has written a very informative Hub on how to break yourself free from the habit of nail biting or hair pulling. In the Hub he provides a very clear description of both habits - onychophagia and trichotillomania - and steps that you can follow to free yourself fromm your habit of nail biting or hair pulling.

Read on to learn how to use self-hypnosis to cure yourself of nail biting and hair pulling

Is Being Addicted to the Internet Linked to Depression?

Researchers at the University of Leeds have discovered that spending a lot of time surfing the internet is strongly linked to depression.  They questioned around 1300 people between the ages of 16 and 51 to look at their dependency on the internet and how depressed they were.

In general, they found that the longer people spent online the more depressed people tended to be.  One of the reasons put forward for the internet addiction was that surfing the net was a substitute for more normal social activities.  Although the research proved that there was a correlation between internet addiction and depression, the researchers don't know which comes first.  Does the depression occur due to the amount of time spent on the net, or are depressed people more likely to spend hours internet surfing?

Read the whole news article on depression and internet addiction