I have never been much of a napper… until I came to college. The constant running around to classes, meetings, tutoring, getting food, doing laundry, and finding time for the gym is a lot harder when your own your own without your parents help and I think it makes students very tired and much more in need of sleep than at home where half of the tasks are already done for us.

Most people are able to take a nap for thirty minutes and be up for the rest of the day… other people (like me) can nap for up to four hours and wake up STILL TIRED. Since I have began napping on a regular basis it got me wondering why this could happen. As I looked into the topic online I found information that there are different stages of sleep doing this to us. In this article it states the different stages: stage one, stage two, stage three, and REM sleep. The longer you sleep the deeper you get in the stages. As we begin to try and fall asleep we are in stage one, this stage lasts for about one to ten minutes depending on hour tired we are and how much we need sleep at that time. This is where you are technically sleeping but can easily wake up to being fully awake again. Within this stage is where your breathing begins to slow, your eyelids are shut but may open a bit, your eyeballs can roll around, and the feeling we receive every so often when we jump and it wakes us because we feel as if we are falling (fun fact: this usually happens mostly to people with bad sleep patterns.) The next stage is stage 2 following the first stage. This is where you begin to feel completely asleep leading to a deep sleep in the next stage. This occurs for around twenty minutes depending on the the person. It can be difficult to wake up during this, definitely not as easy as stage one. Most functions in your body start to slow down and we spend most of our time in this “light sleep” stage. Next comes stage three, which begins approximately thirty five- forty five minutes after initially passing out. If you are in this stage of sleep you usually will not wake up for any minor disturbances because you are so deeply sleeping. This is when you feel uncomfortable or confused if you wake up during this stage. Often times if you set an alarm early for work or school for example, you may wake up feeling as if you don’t know what day it is or why you are waking up. The final stage is called REM sleep, which is the point in our sleep where we dream most, about ninety minutes after being passed out. it stands for “Rapid Eye Movement” and lasts for about ten plus minutes. Like the name, our eyes move rapidly for this period of time and our functions that slowed down begin to pick up again.

Throughout these stages of sleep our brain waves flow differently as we get deeper into sleep and fall into light sleeps during the night. Each of the four stages are different depending on the person and the times can range immensely depending on how tired and how much sleep is needed every night.

Throughout everyone’s life we all reach high and low points of being overwhelmed. Whether its from school work, family life, expectations, or employment, we have all been there. At times it can be hard to handle and can make us want to stop whatever we are doing, but other times it can push us to our limit to get done what is causing the stress. When I am stressed it makes me want to either sleep, workout, or just struggle through whatever it is that may be making me stressed. As I looked into stress for this blog I discovered that there are multiple forms of stress not just one overwhelming feeling we wish would go away.

Most of the time, we consider stress to be a negative thing brought about to us, but in certain situations it can come from positive occurrences. According to the psychologist’s in this article there are three major types of stress: acute stress, episodic stress, and chronic stress.

Acute stress is one of the most common forms because it is caused by what goes on in daily life. It is considered “acute” because it usually only occurs for a short period of time. It can bring excitement and jitters inside because it usually comes when we are worried about something that is considered exciting. The example the article used is riding a roller coaster because you are scared about the risks but at the same time are extremely thrilled to be riding it. Short period feelings of anger or anxiety can be considered acute stress. The physical follow-up problems along with this can be something as little as a headache and can range to dizziness or heart palpitations. Episodic stress is basically a continuous version of acute stress. This usually occurs if you are the type of person that likes to please everyone and everything so you put a lot on your plate until its unattainable. This type of stress comes along with longer periods of anxiety or worries than acute stress and can lead to more serious problems such as heart diseases. Chronic stress is very much different than acute stress and can be a lot riskier. This comes about from much larger conflicts rather than lots of homework, it is more like worries about bills, marriage, extreme illnesses, or politics. This type of stress does not necessarily go away and it can be health damaging and can sometimes result in self harm, PTSD, stroke, or heart attack. Some symptoms of chronic stress are pounding heart, stomache/ headaches, tension, difficulty it attention span and sleep.

At times, it seems as if your stressors are impossible to beat but it is important to know what is causing your brain the stress in the first place. It is difficult to stop acute stress because it is so commonly brought about and goes away so quickly. The best way to stop episodic stress is to learn how to say no to certain tasks and know your limits. And for chronic stress try to fix the situation when it is small and obtainable before it becomes life threatening.

Me being the silly person that laughs at everything, I often wondering if there were actually benefits of laughter that are good for our health because after all, everyone always feels better after a good laugh.

Laughing is by far the most contagious thing over any sickness. If you hear people laughing you usually will begin to laugh with them, or at least find out why they are laughing causing you to soon laugh as well. When people laugh with one another it brings them together and uplifts any mood. It is common sense that if you are feeling down and someone makes you laugh you will most definitely be happier, but what are the deeper gains from this amusement?

Not many people realize the powerful effect laughing has on each individual. It strengthens our immune system, lessens high stress levels (which could be causing our immune system to weaken in the first place) , energizes us when we may be tired,  and distracts us and lessens our pain. After a good laugh it is proven that it can keep your body relaxed for up to about forty five minutes. As laughter works on lowering stress levels, it increases our immune cells and protects our bodies from disease and illness. Our bodies contain endorphins, which are the chemicals that promote wellness and it is extremely crucial that they are released. Laughter releases these endorphins allowing us to feel good and diminish some pain. It can also be beneficial in the cardiovascular region of the body as it assists with blood flow and overall movement around the heart, preventing heart attacks and any other major or minor cardiovascular issues. Another thing laughter aids with is lowering a persons blood pressure.  Whether you are at a high or average blood pressure level, using laughter as your medicine will drastically lower your risk of a stroke. In this article, it describes how laughter is beneficial socially, mentally, and physically, it also goes into depth on all of the health boosts i just wrote about.

This website provides information on the T-cells in our body that help fight off sickness. By laughing on a daily basis you are activating these T-cells allowing them to do their ill prevention job.

Everyday life can become super stressful and almost unmanageable. It’s amazing that something as little as a laugh can be a cure – all without any prescribed medicine. By smiling, you are promoting laughter and relieving stress already. Less muscles are used to smile rather than to frown so it is an easy therapeutic task. If you are ever feeling overwhelmed, studies show that laughing with others works better than laughing alone, so put your self in a situation with a group of people to feel less of a burden. In the article I previously cited, it gives a list of ways to be surrounded by laughter to feel better if you’re feeling down physically or mentally. Some easy ones are being around friends, family, or pets, watching tv, reading books, and making time for activities you enjoy or find humorous.

Growing up I was always told to “eat my fruits and vegetables”, I never thought anything of it and just did as I was told. As I got older and began to care about my health and eating correctly I wondered if there were any negative aspects of eating too much fruit or vegetables. They are definitely not bad for you, but could a larger serving end up being worst than unhealthy foods?

After researching this topic online I found a few different responses and how it affects the bodies health. One research study found in this article  says that fruit does have lots of sugar but it is not bad sugars. It will not necessarily make you gain weight and it is very good in multiple ways for the body. The nutrition in fruit can be beneficial to blood pressure, insulin, and lipid levels. Besides the higher sugar levels, fruit has many anti-oxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Here is a website I found that contains all the fruits, which are most beneficial, what vitamins we can get out of them, and how is the best way to eat them to get the most nutrition out of it.  Eating dry fruit daily is good for the body to get the vitamins it needs, it contains iron, calcium, zinc, selenium, and manganese. Combining dry fruits with regular fruit is also another way to get vitamins and absorb the iron inside the stomach.

Vegetables are by far one of the best foods for a persons health. They are extremely low in calories, but packed with vitamins. Along with fruits, vegetables also have many antioxidants, which are immunity building chemical compounds that fight off stress and diseases. They provide fibers that open up passages in the body helping it avoid problems with clogging such as blood clots. There isn’t really such thing as too many vegetables a day because there are so many nutritional gains from eating them.

It is important to eat fruits and vegetables everyday for the nutritional value of course, but without them it can lead to deficiencies in our bodies, diseases, digestive issues, cardiovascular problems, and weight issues. Avoiding fruits and vegetables can cause us to lack energy, struggle with skin health, and blood clotting problems because the vitamins provided assist with all of this. They are filling foods that are better than anything else to eat and are perfect for a weight loss diet. Eating fruits and vegetables are crucial for the bodies digestive system as they have fiber in them, which is a carbohydrate speeding up the waste in your intestinal system as it passes through your body. Without fiber in our daily diet it can cause blockages inside our bodies slowing down the digestive system after we eat. If you struggle with heart problems it could be due to overeating certain ingredients and under eating important health ingredients. By indulging in fruits and vegetables, it can balance out what you are missing and what you need in your daily diet.

Overall, eating fruits and vegetables as we have all been told to do so since we were little is extremely important for so many health reasons and to keep our bodies on track.

Many people have been drinking diet sodas for a number of years now its nothing new. It is known to be much better for you in the weight loss aspect, but overall is it good for a person to drink?

Here you can see that it has zero grams of fat, zero carbs, and zero calories, so of course many people who enjoy drinking soda will go right for this because it has just about the same taste without the excessive amount of fat, carbs, and calories. It also says in all caps: “LOW SODIUM” which, is a great advertisement to get those who can’t have much sodium to drink this diet soda. Diet soda is often recommended to people with diseases such as diabetes, or weight problems because it will not negatively affect them with mass amounts of sugar. It also can be beneficial for our dental hygiene because large amounts of sugar can damage our teeth.

On the other side, diet soda can be horribly bad for you. The ingredients may not include real sugar, but there are artificial sweeteners that are much worst in the long run vs. real sugar. One of the main artificial sweeteners used is called Aspartame, which is commonly thought as the ingredient that “causes cancer”. As we learned in class about the topic of correlation vs. causation, this definitely is a topic people often wonder whether aspartame and cancer correlates or if it directly causes it. It has yet to be definitely proven that it causes cancer, but there are links that tie the two together. Here is an article I found that describes a little more about aspartame and some trials done with its influence of cancer.  Diet soda may help us consume less calories by drinking it rather than regular soda, but the sweetness can trigger our brain to crave more sugary foods, allowing us to eat excessive calories that we missed from the diet soda.

Many of the artificial sweeteners have been proven to be sweeter than actual sugar, creating the diet soda to taste the same. The most common ones are: aspartame, acesulfame-K, saccharine, sucralose, neotame, and advantame. In this article, It lists these exact artificial sweeteners and how much sweeter they are compared to sugar itself. It discusses studies shown using these sweeteners and their effect on the brain. Specifically, one study done in California, research was done on drinking water with sugar vs. sucralose. The results show that sugar activated areas of the brain that sucralose did not. Based off this study it shows that artificial sweetener may taste extremely similar, but it does not give off the full effect of regular sugar and doesn’t energize the brain as much as sugar. It doesn’t trigger dopamine to be released like eating sugary foods does. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and when it is released it affects our behavior, movement, attention, and overall energy levels. It is important that dopamine is released each day and by eating certain foods that can happen, but diet soda does not do the trick because the sugars are not real or natural in any way.

I was never much of a coffee drinker besides the typical iced coffee with cream and sugar from Dunkin Doughnuts or Starbucks every so often. As I approached senior year of high school the caffeination was extremely helpful and it became habit forming to the point where I became a typical “daily coffee drinker”. As many coffee drinkers do know after a while we get immune to the amount we drink a day to the point where it does nothing and you need more. This began happening to me so I tried other things like drinking it black and soon was introduced to espresso shots! At the place I worked at over the summer there was an espresso machine, so this is where I would always drink them. They are extremely bitter and hard to get used to but once you do it is great because you get the energy of drinking coffee in just one sip, which is really convenient. I often wonder why they are so much stronger than a cup of coffee and what would happen if I put them in coffee, so of course, I tried it. It was very strong and gave me almost instant energy. I researched the difference and why one is stronger than the other and it is due to the amount of caffeine in both. As many of you know, caffeine is a compound that activates the central nervous system in the body. High levels will stimulate it more than lower levels, which is why espresso is stronger because there are more milligrams of caffeine in it than in regular coffee.

Coffee itself is not bad for you, although many beg to differ. What is bad for your health is if you have to much because high caffeine levels can cause lots of temporary problems with your body. If you consume more than 250-500 milligrams of caffeine it could lead to symptoms such as restlessness, increase in heartbeat, anxiety, and more depending on how much you have.

Caffeine is not too harmful as long as it is not abused or over used. It is important to realize that the caffeine in coffee and espresso is considered a drug and will give side effects to those who over dose on it. People have different tolerances and it can be built up by having it every day.

Overall, drinking coffee or espresso shots is not a problem and can actually be good for your health for multiple reasons. Caffeine can be dangerous on certain levels but also can be good because it does block Adenosine, a neurotransmitter, allowing the brain to release other neurotransmitters. Here  is a link that explains the process of how caffeine helps the body release these neurotransmitters. It also increases a persons metabolism, which is good to stay away from getting sick easily.

It is easy to get hooked on caffeine because it is much easier to get things done with full energy, and there is nothing wrong with it as long as it is not abused. After every energy high, there will be a crash and its so easy to just get more coffee but important to stay in the recommended daily caffeine level.

Ever since I was around eight years old I always had an interest in fashion and what is in/out. My favorite thing to do was and still is going shopping with my mom. Every saturday we would either go to the mall or boutiques in my home town.

Over the years trends change and what was in style last season might be completely out this season.  I often wonder how this can happen, who sets the trends, and why do some disappear so quickly. It also confuses me how somethings that were so “in” decades ago can magically just come back in 2016.  For example: Juicy Couture track suits were such a popular fad in the earlier 2000’s and over the years Juicy still existed but the popularity faded out. This was mainly because Liz Claiborne bought over Juicy and her stuff is sold in JC Penny’s, which is less expensive than where Juicy was originally sold. After a couple of years Juicy Couture was removed from high end department stores such as Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus due to this. Now in 2016, they are making a come back and are now back in Bloomingdales for a similar price to what they used to be.  I have yet to see anyone wear one, but have no doubt that they will soon be as popular as ever this fall and winter.  Another interesting trend back in style are flare jeans. They were extremely popular before I was born in the late 1900’s, and are back in style and sold in almost any store containing jeans like American Eagle, Abercrombie, Bloomingdales, and much more. They are popular for going out with wedges, sandals, or even flip flops.

I am always curious as to how these trends find their way back and what makes something popular to wear. After reading this  article based on the science behind fashion, I realized it has a lot to do with strategizing. Algorithms are used to find patterns that may not have been used for a while to create a trend people will be interested in, for example: tie dye. Analyzing historical data and social media is crucial for planning the next seasons successful line of clothing. Another factor in the process is price. Price is major when deciding what fabrics to use, where to sell and whom will buy it. It is important that extremely expensive items are sold in stores that people who spend lots of money on clothes will look at. Also inexpensive clothes should be put in inexpensive stores to create a balance for the production process. If too much inexpensive clothes are put in high end stores then people will be more interested in that rather than the expensive goods. Merchandisers can also do something called statistical analysis on a product based on its size, color, and other factors written on the tag to see if it is a good seller or not.  It is difficult to create trends especially when people have so many different tastes such as preppy, or edgy, which is why there are so many stores to satisfy everyone and their fashion wants.

Science is seen everywhere throughout our daily life.  Whether it be in our hobbies, studies, health, or what we consume, it plays a major part and we would not be where we are today without the knowledge and understanding of science.

After thinking of topics to write this blog about I decided to look into the good and bad aspects of pre-workout and the main purpose of athletes using it.  Growing up with two typical “gym tan laundry brothers” I always watched them trying new powders and supplements and wondering if they are actually safe and healthy for your body. Marketing can be extremely persuasive on humans and sway their decision to buy something solely based on the appearance of the container and the benefits, rather than the importance of health and what it can do to a persons body. I often questioned the point and the side effects thinking it cannot be that good to put a powder in your drink to get a rush of energy just to burn off the calories shortly after. Some say it is the exact same thing as any caffeinated beverage like coffee just in a different form, others say it could be extremely damaging to your health down the road. For those who are unsure of what pre-workout is exactly, here is an article describing the process and point of using it. I, myself do not take pre-workout on a daily basis but there has been many times where I tried my brothers before working out with them. my lips would instantly begin to itch and tingle as one of the major side effects. There are many chemicals and ingredients formed together in these supplements and powders to give the quick energy booster it is known for. The ingredient creating my lips to tingle every time I try it is called Beta Alanine. Beta Alanine is an amino acid already in our bodies, but when it is combined with another amino acid called Histidine it forms muscular carnosine, which works to fight off the muscles that create discomfort, especially during a workout. One additive in a majority of pre workouts is Niacin. Niacin is a B vitamin most importantly used for fueling your body and reenergizing it. It also serves a purpose in lowering cholesterol levels and protects the body against heart diseases. There are many other chemicals and ingredients in pre workout but these two are examples of how it could be considered harmful from the uncommon chemicals used to create it, yet beneficial for the vitamins provided and aid to fulfill a good workout.

The chemicals in pre workout are questionable to athletes health but is so commonly used because of the instant energy rush it gives you, which is tremendously helpful for a workout especially if you are tired and do not want to be there after a long school or work day. Whether or not to use pre workout will forever be a controversy that some are totally for and some are against until it is proven that it is hazardous towards humans health.

INITIAL BLOG POST:)

Hi, my name is Justine Barth, i’m from Bucks County, PA and i’m looking forward to spending the semester in this class with you all. My reasoning for taking SC 200 is mainly due to the fact that I needed a science general education course and this seemed to be the best for me since I am most definitely not a science person. When I was picking my classes, my advisor recommended this course and it seems interesting so here I am! Most of my classes taken in high school were the basic “note taking and test taking” classes with little critical thinking about the actual world so i’m excited to try this for a change. After attending class today some of the topics we discussed such as family generations and the making of a human really interested me rather than a typical science class like chemistry would do. I never imagined myself in a science major and I don’t think anything can change that. There wasn’t a single science class that I genuinely enjoyed or excelled in but i’m hoping this class will be different! I am currently in the Division of Undergraduate Studies and am trying to get into the Business as soon as possible. I’m not exactly sure what I want to do when I am out of college but hopefully something along the lines of fashion marketing/merchandising. I am very girly so that type of stuff intrigues me. If you are very different than me here is a link to my favorite store that got me into fashion: Bloomingdales