Benefits of drinking Beer!

Feel guilty about drinking a beer or two? Don’t feel guilty. Contrary to what you might expect, moderate beer consumption is actually good for you. Science has shown that beer can bring many surprising health benefits even though it’s usually perceived as unhealthy. Just remember, we’re talking moderate consumption (one drink per day for women, and up to two for men), not all-night drinking sprees. Here are some remarkable and surprising beer benefits that might change your perception of the drink.

1. It can help reduce risk of heart disease

One eye-opening study involving 200,000 subjects conducted at Italy’s Fondazion di Ricerca e Cura found that people who drank a pint of beer daily had a 31% reduced chance of heart disease. This heart-protecting power of beer stems largely from beer’s natural antioxidants called phenols. However, the study also showed risk of heart disease increased in people who consumed higher amounts of beer.

2. It can help protect against Alzheimer’s disease

Perhaps one of the most remarkable health benefits of beer is its ability to protect against Alzheimer’s. Researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine analyzed several studies and came to the conclusion that moderate beer drinkers were 23% less likely to develop different forms of dementia and cognitive impairment, including Alzheimer’s. The silicon content in beer is thought to protect the brain from the harmful effects of high amounts of aluminum in the body, which are one of the possible causes of Alzheimer’s.

3. It can help lower risk of diabetes

This is another remarkable benefit of moderate beer consumption. According to a 2011 Harvard study of about 38,000 middle-aged men, those who drank one to two beers daily had a 25% reduction in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The alcohol content in beer increases insulin sensitivity, which helps prevent diabetes. Moreover, beer is a good source of soluble fiber that plays an important role in the healthy diet of people suffering from diabetes.

4. It can help prevent kidney stones

A study conducted in Finland established that moderate daily consumption of beer can reduce the risk of developing kidney stones by 40%. This health benefit is attributed to beer’s high water content (about 93%) that helps flush harmful toxins out of the body and keep the kidneys working properly. Also, compounds in hops used in brewing help slow the release of calcium from bones, which in turn prevents build up of lost calcium in the kidney in the form of stones.

5. It can help minimize risk of cancer

Beer contains an important antioxidant known as xanthohumol. Xanthohumol is known to have powerful anti-cancer properties that help fend off cancer-causing enzymes in the body. Specifically, moderate beer consumption helps prevent a certain chemical reaction that can lead to prostate cancer in men. Beer has also been shown to reduce the chances of getting breast cancer in women.

6. It can help reduce cholesterol levels

If you’d like an unorthodox method for cutting your cholesterol levels, indulging in moderate beer consumption may be the way to go. The barley used in brewing of beer contains a type of soluble fiber known as beta-glucans that has been shown to help in lowering cholesterol levels.

7. It can help manage blood pressure

You may also be interested to know that beer can help manage blood pressure. That’s according to a Harvard study that found that women aged 25 to 40 who drank beer moderately were significantly less likely to develop high blood pressure compared to women who drank wine or other alcoholic beverages.

8. It can help strengthen bones

Beer contains decent levels of silicon, an element that is linked with bone health. One study conducted at Tufts in 2009 established that older individuals who drank one or two glasses of beer daily had higher bone density, and thus were less prone to fractures than those who did not enjoy a glass of beer or wine. However, the study also found that consuming more than two drinks increased risk of bone fractures.

9. It can help treat dandruff

Another interesting fact about beer is that it is considered one of the best natural treatments for dandruff. This particular health benefit of beer is attributed to its high yeast and vitamin B content levels. Just rinse your hair with a bottle of beer two to three times a week to get rid of dandruff and make your hair extra soft and shiny.

10. It can help cut down risk of strokes

Studies by the American Stroke Association have shown that people who drink moderate amounts of beer can cut their risk of strokes by – get this – a whopping 50% compared to non-drinkers. Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health explain that moderate amounts of beer daily helps prevent blood clots that block blood flow to the heart, neck and brain, which is a leading cause of ischemic stroke. However, when you drink beer moderately, your arteries become flexible and blood flow improves significantly.

Remember the key to reaping these amazing health benefits of beer is moderate consumption. Overindulgence in beer and other alcoholic drinks can be disastrous to your health.

Want to make money sitting at home? check out these great websites

Whether you’re between jobs, bootstrapping your business, working remotely, freelancing, or even staying home with your baby, there’s almost always a need for some extra cash. Depending on your skills, you can choose one of the following websites and start selling your services immediately, regardless of your location. A computer, Internet connection, and a few hours of your time is all it takes.

Without any doubt, there is at least one thing you know better than people around you. Why not turn it into money, now?

ADVICE & KNOWLEDGE

Savvy — Teach online using video chat and get paid automatically.

Coach.me — Become a digital coach and turn your expertise into extra income.

Clarity — Set your per-minute call rate and share your advice with aspiring entrepreneurs and startups.

Curious — Start creating your online lessons and make money via fees, referrals, and tips.

Skillshare — Design your class and earn revenue based on royalties.

Udemy — Create your own online course and teach anything you like.

SMALL TASKS

Spare5 — Use your spare time to complete quick tasks using your web browser or mobile app, and get paid via PayPal.

Mechanical Turk — Make money by working on simple tasks that require human intelligence.

TaskRabbit — Find simple jobs — both physical (mostly the USA) and virtual ones — choose your rate and schedule.

Supahands — Earn extra money as a virtual personal assistant.

CODE & DESIGN

Crew — Gain access to high quality, handpicked, paid projects to work on.

Toptal — Apply to join an exclusive network of top freelance developers and designers.

Simplilearn — Teach programming, big data, analytics, and digital marketing.

Envato Studio — Apply to join a handpicked community of freelance designers and developers.

Codementor — Set your own rate and help fellow developers.

Envato Tuts+ — Teach code, design, illustration, photography, or web design.

YouWorkForThem — Sell your fonts & stock art designs.

99Designers — Browse open contests, submit your design proposals, win, and make money.

48hourslogo — Check various design contests and connect with business owners needing a new logo, a website, or print materials.

PHOTO & VIDEO

Stockimo — Upload your iPhone photos and turn them into cash.

Lobster — Whether you’re an amateur photographer or a professional, you can sell your social media content here.

Fotolia — Submit your photos and sell across all Adobe platforms.

Bigstock — Sell your images and illustrations.

500px — Join a community of over 5 million photographers and start selling your photos.

Snapwire — Earn money with your photos.

ImageBrief — Set up your portfolio and sell your work.

123RF — Sell your original photos, vector illustrations, or video footage.

Alamy — Sell stock images, vectors and footage.

FreeDigitalPhotos — Sell your images and digital illustrations.

iStock — Sell stock photos, illustrations, video, and audio.

Shutterstock — Sell royalty-free images, footage, vectors and illustrations.

VideoBlocks — Sell your stock video content.

Dissolve — Submit your video clips and start earning.

Pivotshare — Start your channel, upload your videos, and make recurring monthly revenue.

WRITING

Scripted — Choose your areas of interest, write on your own schedule, and receive regular payments.

Textbroker — Get access to thousands of projects to turn your writing skills into cash.

TextMaster — Work from anywhere and create articles, websites, and more.

GENERAL

We Work Remotely — Find jobs that aren’t restricted by a particular geographic location.

Remote OK — Find a job you can do anywhere.

Upwork — Browse freelance opportunities for all types of professionals.

Fiverr — Set your price starting at $5 and sell your gigs in 100+ categories.

Freelancer — Browse jobs matching your skills and apply for work.

PeoplePerHour — Sell your services in design, content, sales, marketing, audio, video, and others.

Guru — Search thousands of jobs in numerous categories.

Nabbesh — Find clients among the top businesses in the MENA region.

The next breakthrough invention! Edible water bottle ball aims to replace plastic bottles

Ooho is a drinking water product created by a startup known as Skipping Rocks Lab. The product is reported to hype up the internet due to making “eating water” possible and getting rid of plastic bottles at the same time.

According to Extreme Tech eating water was made possible by the startup due to the product's packaging. Ooho was seen as a spherical blob which has water encased in it making it a squishy bottle. Yet, the huge surprise is that you could actually eat the whole blob of water with no plastic bottle needed.

Ooho was mentioned to be created through seaweeds used as its membrane. The edible bottle’s membrane was composed through spherification which includes sodium alginate from seaweed and calcium chloride. Each ball was then mentioned to only take 2 cents in order to produce it thus saving money as well.

Moreover, amid Ooho being edible, people are still given the choice whether to eat the membrane or not since it was identified to be tasteless and has an unusual surface when eaten. Yet, people could still throw it away and not eat it because as it was mentioned to be biodegradable it will just break down as a compost on land or ground over a week or so.

Furthermore, the Ooho product aims to be “the global solution to water and drinks on-the-go.” The startup mentioned that they also aim to replace and get rid of plastic bottles as they pose a great environmental issue to the world.

With that said, BGR reported that the downside of the product not becoming global is that it only makes one gulp of water compared to a bottle. Another disadvantage of Ooho was its delicate membrane not being able to toss it anywhere or pack it into someone’s bag pack.

Ooho was first unveiled back in 2014 and is now envisioning global customer targets to reach their goals. The Skipping Rocks Lab’s Ooho product already has 1,000 independent investors willing to help them fund money on their site online. The startup also mentioned that they are now currently working on another seaweed based product that would aid in sustainable packaging solutions.

In Pursuit of Happiness....Never ends well

When most of us think about what makes us happy, we tend to focus on the “things” in life that we crave or long to possess. These things may be concrete consumables or they may be intangible resources, such as “time,” “inner peace,” or “true love.”

It is easier for some of us to create a list of what we want the world to give us than it is to think in terms of what we can give back to the world.

We live in a world of instant feedback and conspicuous consumption. It may be experienced firsthand through the “Buy Now” button on Amazon’s website or Netflix bingeing or through an obsession with reading or creating online reviews of products, films, and life, in general. It seems a little odd that we trust strangers’ opinions when we already know how much we might disagree with our own BFFs about favorite products.

It is amazing how many “things” everyone seems to have in their lives – and how many more things we might desire because we believe that they can make us feel even better about ourselves in relation to how we think others feel about us.

Happiness is a state of being, not a pile of stuff.

The secret to happiness is actually a set of four factors that can easily be mastered by any of us, anywhere. The four practices that can change your life for good are friendliness, cheerfulness, compassion, and gratitude.

Friendliness

Some people can be described as “the type of person who’s never met a stranger.” These are people who meet the world with a pleasant temperament and an openness to new people and new experiences – regardless of who may be placed in their path on any given day.

Friendliness is about offering warmth and good humor to those around you.

It is about being willing to make the first move socially while recognizing that others may be a little slower to warm up. It’s about knowing that the reward for friendliness is not always immediately apparent.

Human beings are social creatures and being kind is a lot more likely to help you build your “tribe” than showing indifference or disinterest to the people that you might someday need for support or assistance.

Cheerfulness

There are plenty of old songs that encourage you to “put on a happy face” or “smile when your heart is breaking,” and, much more recently, Pharrell’s iconic  “Happy,” where I first heard the awesome simile about happiness feeling “like a room without a roof.”

Many of us may feel a little confused about why we are always encouraging people to “lie” to themselves and pretend to feel something they don’t. It is because researchers have found that being able to offer the world a sunny disposition, regardless of your inner mood state, actually encourages you to feel better physically!

Smiles are contagious, too, and if you can find the energy to offer your own smile to the people around you, even if you feel like your inner world is falling apart, you are going to feel magically better when our smile is returned.

In fact, being on the receiving end of someone else’s genuine smile has been proven to be emotionally and psychologically healing. Did you know that simply imagining that you are being smiled at by someone you love is just as powerfully healing as having that person present?

If you need one more reason to be cheerful, how about this...

Research has shown that when patients grimace or frown during medical treatments or procedures, they actually feel MORE PAIN than those who do not. Gritting your teeth and bearing it is not the best option. Letting yourself smile in the midst of struggle is what brings a change in perception and increases your ability to cope.

Be empathetic to those who are seeking assistance from you and offer them extra support by way of an encouraging smile. When you use your warm presence to help them get through difficult times, the pay-off can be huge! For both of you.

Compassion

Offering compassion to others is another charitable act that positively influences the giver. When we accept others’ shortcomings or cut others slack for their own wrongs or missteps, we are actually valuing humanity over someone else’s personal flaws.

Most of us are truly doing the best we can at any given moment. Sure, some days our “best” is far from “enough,” and there are days when we know that we are guilty of giving less where we probably should have tried harder to give more. No one is at 100 percent of their game every day. However, if you accept the shortfall of another, the windfall for you is a happier life. 

For those of you who believe that you always give 100 percent, I challenge you to prove this to yourself by giving others a little compassion when they don’t measure up to your own high standards. That’s what someone who truly gives 100 percent would do, no doubt.

Bring a sense of gratitude to your life

Whatever you have in life and wherever you are, you can always find some reason to be grateful. For instance, today you may be feeling a little anxious, but you showed up – that’s something we all are grateful for.

Acknowledging your own good fortune – no matter how seemingly slight or minimal at the moment – can actually enhance your overall wellbeing.

Researchers have found that being truly grateful for what you have in life can yield some pretty important physical benefits:

• You sleep better and enjoy better relationships! Those are pretty important benefits for graduate students, for sure. And for adults, in general, I expect.

• Not only that, but researchers have also found that a person’s level of gratitude is inversely proportional to their level of depressed feelings or sadness.

• So, the more grateful you are in life, the better the chances are that you will actually enjoy what you have!

Why Bother Being Happy?

• Happy people enjoy less stressful lives.

• Happy people actually live longer, too.

• Happy people are protected against some forms of chronic illnesses.
• Meet the world with a positive attitude
• Smile at and befriend others
• Cut us all a little slack, and
• Be consciously grateful for all that you do have rather than worrying about why you do not.

If you’re hanging around waiting for the world to make you happy, it simply isn’t going to happen.

Plus, you are a lot more fun to be around if you’re feeling good about life! And your family and friends can certainly appreciate that!

You don’t have to win the lottery, earn a 4.0 GPA, find true love, beat Bowser to save Peach, or live a perfect life to find happiness.

You just need to do 4 things:

1. Meet the world with a positive attitude
2. Smile at and befriend others
3. Cut us all a little slack, and
4. Be consciously grateful for all that you do have rather than worrying about why you do not.

I can pretty much guarantee that instilling these 4 practices into your daily life can leave you feeling happy – maybe even like a room without a roof!

Want to live a long life? Keep your family closer to you

Senior citizens who share an intimate bond with family members tend to live longer than those who have just friends around them, claims a new study.

“We found that older individuals who had more family in their network, as well as older people who were closer with their family were less likely to die,” said James Iveniuk, the lead author of the study.

“No such associations were observed for number of or closeness to friends,” Iveniuk, who is also a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, added.

The study was presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) organised from August 20-23, in Seattle, Washington.

The researchers found that older adults who reported feeling “extremely close” on average to the non-spousal family members had about a 6% risk of mortality within the next five years, compared to approximately a 14% risk of mortality among those who reported feeling “not very close” to the family members.

Furthermore, the study found that respondents who listed more non-spousal family members in their network — irrespective of closeness — had lower odds of death compared to those who listed fewer family members.

“Regardless of the emotional content of a connection, simply having a social relationship with another person may have benefits for longevity,” Iveniuk said.

Iveniuk said he was surprised that feeling closer to one’s family members and having more relatives as confidants decreased the risk of death for older adults but that the same was not true of relationships with friends.

Iveniuk noted his findings underscore the substantial importance of familial relationships for longevity.

Why people with anger problems are poor at social interactions

People with anger issues tend to misunderstand the intentions of other people and they also do not take in all the data from a social interaction, such as body language, because of decreased connectivity between regions of the brain that process a social situation, a study says.

People with intermittent explosive disorder (IED), or impulsive aggression, have a weakened connection between regions of the brain associated with sensory input, language processing and social interaction, the findings showed.

In a new study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the scientists showed that white matter in a region of the brain called the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) has less integrity and density in people with anger issues than in healthy individuals and those with other psychiatric disorders.

The SLF connects the brain's frontal lobe--responsible for decision-making, emotion and understanding consequences of actions--with the parietal lobe, which processes language and sensory input.

"It's like an information superhighway connecting the frontal cortex to the parietal lobes," said lead author of the study Royce Lee, Associate Professor at University of Chicago in the US.

"We think that points to social cognition as an important area to think about for people with anger problems," Lee said.

Lee and his colleagues, including senior author Emil Coccaro, MD, Ellen C. Manning Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at Chicago.

For the study, the researchers used diffusion tensor imaging, a form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that measures the volume and density of white matter connective tissue in the brain.

Connectivity is a critical issue because the brains of people with psychiatric disorders usually show very few physical differences from healthy individuals.

"It's not so much how the brain is structured, but the way these regions are connected to each other," Lee said.

This Homemade Juice Can Treat Diabetes, Gastritis And More!

Most of us tend to save up money for the future, as we fear that diseases are inevitable and we know that we will need the money for all the expensive treatments. 

Imagine a situation in which you did not have to spend money on expensive hospitals or better yet, find a way to treat ailments from the comfort of your home! 

That would be wonderful, right? Well, as far fetched as it may sound, there is a possibility of that happening, if you turn to natural remedies! 

Yes, your kitchens holds powerful natural ingredients, which come with certain medicinal properties that can treat, prevent and even cure a number of diseases. 

Did you know that the mixture of potato juice and honey can treat up to 7 disorders? Learn how to make the juice, here. 

Ingredients Required: 

Potato - ½  
Honey - 1 tablespoon 

Method To Prepare And Consume The Juice: 

• Add a few pieces of peeled potato into a blender, along with some warm water, to obtain the juice.
• Collect the juice in a cup, and add a tablespoon of honey, do not strain it.  
• Consume the juice, every morning, after breakfast. 

Have a look at the various disorders treated by this natural juice.

1. Diabetes 

The mixture of potato juice and honey has the ability to regulate the insulin and glucose levels in your bloodstream, thus keeping symptoms of diabetes under control.

2. Gastritis 

This natural juice has the ability to alkalise the acid levels in your stomach and aid in a better digestion process, thereby keeping ailments like gastritis and acidity at bay.

3. Kidney Stones 

The combination of potato and honey aids in flushing out the toxins and excess amount of nitric acid present in the kidneys, thereby helping in the prevention of kidney stones.

4. Liver Damage 

This homemade juice has the ability to detoxify your liver and also aid in a better liver function, thus preventing serious conditions like liver damage.

5. Skin Ailments 

The mixture of potato juice and honey can keep up the health of your skin by providing moisture from within, preventing conditions like skin dryness and psoriasis.

6. Brain Disorders 

As this combination of potato juice and honey is rich in vitamin B6, it can improve brain function and strengthen the nervous system, preventing disorders like depression, anxiety and even ADHD.

7. Cardiovascular Diseases 

The vitamin C and vitamin B6 present in this natural juice can help clear out the cholesterol accumulation in your arteries, in turn keeping your cardiovascular system healthy.