Land Of Sheep

Let’s face it. Most of us get hangovers from time to time. Hangovers suck and we need to know how to deal with them. Don’t you just want to punch the people and doctors who recommend things like, “limit yourself to two drinks”. I mean, who actually does that 100% of the time? What about, “you’re dehydrated, just drink some water”, as if that is the magic cure. I’ve researched and tried a lot of things for hangovers. Here is what actually works!

1. Take aspirin or ibuprofin before drinking. Don’t take Tylenol!

Alcohol consumption causes an increase in the body’s natural production of prostoglandins. Prostoglandins increase the body’s sensitivity to pain. Alcohol also increases inflammation. Aspirin and ibuprofin both work by decreasing the production of prostoglandins and decreasing inflammation. If you take this medicine before and/or during drinking, the effects will be much better because you will stop these problems before they start. Don’t take Tylenol because Tylenol and alcohol taken together can be toxic to the liver. Tylenol works by increasing the body’s pain threshold, so it’s not an anti-inflammatory anyway.

2. Drink a lot of water and electrolytes.

This is no big secret but it’s important not to overlook this one. If you can remember, drink a lot of water and/or fruit juices. Gatorade is perfect. Alcohol is a major diuretic which is why you urinate so much while drinking. You won’t notice those dehydrated cells until morning. It’s not a nice feeling. Drinking water before going to bed is the key. You should drink water when you wake up anyway, but by then a lot of the damage will have already been done. Prevent dehydration in the first place rather than needing to rehydrate in the morning.

3. Drink on a full stomach

Drinking on a full stomach does two important things. One thing is that it slows down the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, and another thing is that it protects your stomach lining. Alcohol is very harsh on the stomach lining, and thats why it can cause such a horrible upset stomach the next day.

4. Drink caffeine

This one may surprise you but it’s a really good hangover tip. A lot of people say to avoid caffeine and alcohol together because they are both diuretics and you will wake up incredibly dehydrated if you drink both together. Caffeine is a diuretic so it is doubly important to drink a lot of water before going to bed if you take caffeine. Here’s the upside that most people don’t know about. Alcohol dilates the blood vessels and caffeine constricts them. The dilated blood vessels can cause a bad headache, and the caffeine helps to take the blood vessels back to normal size. I’ve tried this a lot and my friends and I all find that caffeine is one of the most helpful components for preventing/curing hangovers.

5. Vitamin B6 and magnesium

There have been some professional studies done that show that taking vitamin B6 and magnesium will help with hangovers.

6. Take gravol the next day if you have a really upset stomach

The gravol will help you sleep and it will really help to take the nausea away. It will make you really tired though, so think twice about taking it if you need to get up and work. Hopefully you don’t!

7. Tylenol 3 or aspirin 292 for really bad hangovers.

If you have a really bad hangover, Tylenol 3 or aspirin 292 work amazingly well. Unfortunately, your doctor likely won’t prescribe them to you for this reason. Just keep it in mind if you have any of these meds left over from surgery or something like that.

8. Drink clear liquor like vodka instead of colored ones like red wine.

Congeners are present in colored alcohols and are known to cause hangover symptoms in some people.

I hope this advice helps. Let me know! I’d also love for you to share any of your own hangover secrets.

Most people wait until they already have a headache before doing anything about it. By then, they are in reaction mode and need to wait until the medicine kicks in before they get any relief. Here are 7 simple things you can do to drastically reduce the frequency of your headaches.

1. Take 2 low dose slow release aspirins every day. (81 mg each)

That’s right. It’s a good idea to take aspirin before you get a headache (unless you have some other health reason why you can’t take the aspirin). Prostaglandins are naturally produced hormones that increase the body’s sensitivity to pain. If someone kicks you in the leg for example, your body will naturally produce more prostaglandins, which will make you more aware of the pain. Aspirin, among doing other things, lowers the body’s production of prostaglandins. Prostaglandin production is increased before a person notices a headache. Taking aspirin is a preemptive strike against a headache.

2. Do relaxation techniques before feeling stressed.

Stress and tension in the body are major causes of headaches. The stress and tension need to build up for a while before you will get a headache. Don’t allow this to happen. Practice deep breathing, meditation, listen to relaxing music, do yoga, or something else to get you feeling relaxed. Do this a few times a day whether you think you are stressed or not. Don’t wait until you get a headache before you realize you are stressed and tense.

3. Drink a lot of water

Everyone knows that dehydration causes headaches. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until you have a headache to realize that you need to drink water. Don’t go overboard with this but make sure you are drinking several glasses of water throughout the day.  If you wait until you are dehydrated, it will take a long time to get back on track.  First you have to wait until the water you drink gets to all your cells, and by the time it takes for the water to reach the cells, your body has already sent out a lot of pain signals that won’t go away for quite a while.  If you find drinking water boring, put a slice of lemon in it. You can also mix a bit of fruit juice into the water for some more flavor. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables as well since they have a high water content.

4. Stabilize your blood sugar

Blood sugar fluxuations cause all kinds of hormonal changes in the body. Hormone fluxuations can easily cause headaches. Eat several small meals per day. Eat foods that are high in protein and low in simple sugars.

5. Get enough sleep and get regular sleep.

Getting proper and regular sleep keeps your hormones balanced. Being overtired, sleeping at different times, and sleeping too much will give rise to major hormone fluxuations which can often lead to headaches.

6. Have more fun.

Laughing, hanging out with your friends, and having a lot of fun is great for headache prevention. Enjoying your life increases the body’s natural production of endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers. Just because endorphins are natural, don’t underestimate how strong they are. They bond to the same receptor sites as morphine and heroin. High levels of endorphins are extremely pleasurable for their own sake, and also very helpful in preventing headaches. A lot of endorphins are released when laughing uncontrollably or during an orgasm.

7. Get plenty of exercise.

Endorphins are released during and after exercise. Exercise also helps regulate the body’s natural production of hormones, helps to rid the body of headache causing toxins, and helps to relieve stress.

Search engines like Google try to help us find the most relevant and highest quality material on the internet.  Since there is so much information on the internet, search engines need to make complex algorithms, essentially software, that sifts through, organizes, and ranks this information.

How does this software “know” how to rank the highest quality material first?  The short answer is that the software doesn’t know how to do it.  The algorithm designers at Google, and other search engine companies, come up with criteria that is supposed to rank the best and most relevant material first.

No one knows exactly how the search engine works, but we do know several things.

We know that if a website has many other websites linking to it, then it will be ranked higher.  The idea here is that if more people link to a website, then more people probably like it, and therefor it has a higher chance of being of high quality.

We know that if an article has a lot of keywords about a certain topic, then it will be found more easily on search engines if someone happens to type those same words into the search box.

These brilliant algorithms, which are based upon much more then the above two examples, are not fool proof.

Google tends to overweight old websites.  One reason is that a website that has been around for a long time will probably have many more links than a relatively new website, even if the new website has much better information.

Also, many people on the internet are very knowledgeable about how to make websites popular on search engines.  They may write uninteresting articles but their search engine knowledge allows these articles to appear at the top of search results, far ahead of much better articles.  This happens all the time.  For many searches, the website you would be most interested in could very well be buried in the 30th page of a search result.  It’s rare that someone would sift through all of those results.  Most people click on websites listed in the first or second page of a search result, and then stop.

When you are searching for new websites, make sure you use different ways to find them.  Google is useful but don’t rely on that only or you could really be missing out.

Take a look at forums,

social news networking sites like www.digg.com

social bookmarking sites like www.delicious.com.

Sometimes good websites travel faster up the ranks on those sites than they do on Google.

Parents tell their children things like, “You might not want kids now but you’ll regret not having them when you’re older”.  This giant generalization turns out to be rather untrue.  Ironically, a lot of what our culture and parents tell us we should do might turn out to be the decisions we regret most.

Here are 4 decisions that people regret most:

1.  Marrying the wrong person

Around two thirds of marriages nowadays will end up in divorce.   Of the ones that stay together, a good % suck big time.  Being married to someone you find limiting, irritating, and or sexually undesirable is unfortunately the rule rather than the exception.

2.  Choosing the wrong career

Your career is what you spend a huge chunk of your adult waking life doing.  Forget about how much money you make doing it for one second.  If you don’t like it, QUIT!  Money is certainly a major factor to consider when choosing a career, but make sure your enjoy your life doing whatever you do.  It doesn’t matter how cool your mom feels when she says, “Well, my son’s a doctor you know”.

3.  An unhealthy lifestyle

Unfortunately, many people don’t realize this one until they are diagnosed with some life-threatening illness.  Take care of yourself.  If you haven’t been doing it, start now.

4.  Not traveling

Does your whole life take place in a 50 km radius?  That’s pretty sad if it’s true.  When people look back on their lives, they regret not seeing the world.  90 year old people never say, “I wish I saved my money and didn’t waste it on that stupid trip when I was 30″

I hope this article sheds some light onto what actually happens when a teen is faced with some peer pressure to try drugs.

Most adults are clueless about this situation. They think that teens are “pressured” into trying drugs, and they only try them to “fit in” or “be cool”. Parents and teachers try to scare teens about the dangers of drugs, what they call, “the truth about drugs” in hopes that this will cause the teen to think twice before taking drugs. Well, this method works to a degree, and then it totally backfires. Let’s find out how exactly.

When kids are exposed to the horrors of drugs, it does frighten them. I remember when I was in school, I swore I’d never try any. I fought with my dad because he smoked cigarettes and I was totally convinced that anyone who even tried drugs was totally ridiculous. This is how all my friends felt too. Then we turned 15. (It happens younger now). I wasn’t a dare devil in school. I would have never been the first one to try drugs. But, like all kids, I knew people who had tried them.

I went to parties and I saw people smoking pot and snorting cocaine. I wasn’t interested at all. No one was really pressuring me to try any either. They’d ask if I wanted some, and when I said no they didn’t make a big deal about it. Maybe a friendly joke but nothing annoying at all. They respected my decision.

As time went on I saw more and more of it. My friends who were taking drugs were having fun. No one was getting addicted to them. They still played well in sports and still did well in school. I noticed that the “truth about drugs” was hardly the truth at all. They were scare tactics. I felt confused and cheated. The education I’d received was nonsense. Drugs weren’t as horrible as I was told. I lost faith in the education system with regards to drugs and started asking my friends for their own opinions. After all, they’d tried them, they knew.

They all said they weren’t nearly as big a deal as the adult world was making them out to be. I believed my friends. I could see with my own eyes they were right. They recommended trying a little bit at first, just for the feeling. Then I watched them try much more than I’d be taking. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was curious. I tried a little. I liked the feeling. They were right. It wasn’t that big a deal.

The next day I woke up feeling fine. I wasn’t at all addicted to the drugs. The only surprise was the realization that the education system likes to use propaganda to scare us. I made sure the next time I heard their advice I’d take it with a grain of salt.

Since my first experience with drugs, I’ve “convinced” many other people to try them.

The conversation would go something like this:

ME: Hey, you should try a little of this. I think you’d like it.

FRIEND: No thanks. I don’t want to get addicted. I was just talking about this with my dad tonight.

ME: I used to feel the exact same way. Then I realized that I didn’t know anyone getting addicted to drugs. I didn’t know anyone who’d overdosed either. All the people I saw doing them were just having fun. I realized they weren’t that big a deal and decided to try a little. I don’t take them more than once a month now. Obviously doing them everyday would be bad, but once in a while is no problem.

FRIEND: That’s true. Come to think of it I don’t know many people with major drug problems either. And all my friends have tried them too. I don’t really feel that curious though.

ME: Well then don’t have any. I’m just saying that it’s no big deal either way. If I were you I’d try just a little to get the idea. Then you can stop. Obviously, you won’t get addicted

(then they’d watch me take much more then I’d give them and see that I was totally fine)

FRIEND: Ok. What the hell. Just give me like 1 quarter of what you just had. Then that’s it.

ME: Ok.

Done. That’s how it happens. Most teens start off scared, then slowly come to realize that what they were told in schools was an exaggeration. Then the teen decides to try a little. A lot of the reason is because the adults lost their credibility.

Lesson to be learned:

Don’t exaggerate about the dangers of drugs. Of course the dangers are real, but if you exaggerate, teens will sooner or later figure this out and then they won’t believe anything you say after. And the worst part of this is not that your teen tried drugs. It’s that your teen realized that you are a less accurate source of information than his friends.

I am only attracted to woman who are in good shape and don’t have a lot of fat on them. I’m not talking about unhealthy anorexic models. If I had a girlfriend who started to gain weight, I would feel less attracted to her. I think I should be able to tell her that in a polite way. (Obviously there are exceptions. eg. she has to take medicine with weight gain as a side effect). I feel she should be able to tell me the same thing about changes in my physique. I’d want her to be physically attracted to me too.

I feel proud to be with an attractive girl. I feel embarrassed sitting beside a chubby girl.

I’ve told many people this and noticed their reactions. Not surprisingly, guys are generally more likely to be in agreement, especially when there are no females in earshot of our conversation. Some girls get quite angry with me when I tell them my true feelings. They call me shallow and other nasty things.

One woman in particular got furious with me when I told her all of this. She thought my true feelings made me a bad person. After she calmed down, she reminder her husband to go outside and re-paint the garage door. He obediently nodded and went out to paint. I asked her why she wanted it repainted. She looked at me like I was either kidding or just plain stupid. She said, “look at it! The old paint is chipping away and it makes the house look terrible. It’s embarrassing to be living in a place like this; especially in this neighborhood”. I told her that I personally couldn’t care less about paint falling off the garage. She said, “You are just like my husband. He doesn’t care either”.

I pointed out to her what I thought was incredibly obvious. I said that we are both shallow, but in different ways. I care about the aesthetic appeal of a woman’s body, and for whatever reason, attach importance to it. She does the same thing with the aesthetic appeal of her house. She got incredibly upset again at my comparison and totally disagreed. I asked her what exactly she disagreed with and she just said, “they are totally different. You can’t compare the two”.

She felt she won with that comment. I felt I was arguing with a fool.

What are your thoughts?

Let’s forget my personal opinion on the subject and just have fun exploring the question.

It’s not at all uncommon to hear a comment like, “You can’t love two woman at the same time”. Our society, and most others, find dating and sleeping with several woman, or men, as at least somewhat wrong.

We don’t however, hold this same opinion with friends. It’s considered totally fine, and even a good thing, to have several close friends. I can play basketball with one friend on Tuesday, then go for a beer with a different friend on a Wednesday, talk politics on Thursday with yet another friend, and then all get together on a Friday evening for a game of poker. None of this is secret and no one feels hurt.

We can say, “I find it boring to hang out with the same friend all the time”. Our society has no problem with that concept.

Try saying, “I find it boring to sleep with the same woman all the time”. The reaction is vastly different yet the reasons are the same.

We enjoy different things about different people. We enjoy the mix. Variety is the spice of life. You are apparantly just a jerk if you apply it to your love life.

Now just to avoid people coming back with a simple answer like “we want to avoid STD’s or unwanted pregnancy” let me just change the question to “what’s wrong with just “fooling around” with different people”? Let’s say you’d hang out with a girl on a Tuesday, watch a movie, then manually bring each other to orgasm before parting ways. No physical risk in doing that. Then the next day, you tell this girl, “Sorry, I’ve got plans with a different girl. We’re going bowling. You hate bowling anyway. We’ll hang out another night”. Of course it is implied that you will be just as intimate with this other girl.

Assuming you aren’t lying and being totally out in the open with what you do, then what is the big problem?

The jealousy factor is the one thing that pops into my head. We don’t like imagining our partners enjoying themselves with someone else. It’s hardwired into our brains to feel jealous. Humans don’t like to admit feeling jealous so they come up with other excuses to explain their feelings.

I’d love to get your opinions on this.

“A couple thousand years ago, a woman named Mary became pregnant. She was still a virgin though because God, a higher power who created the earth, miraculously impregnated her with a son; Jesus. Jesus, who was really God Himself, died from a painful execution on a cross, but came back to life a few days later.”

I admit I’m having a bit of fun with that story and am by no means a biblical scholar, but nonetheless it’s fascinating that millions of people would agree with the above story, or at least a very close version of it.

Why would anyone believe any story even remotely resembling this?

Interestingly enough, the very same people who believe this kind of story wouldn’t believe it if it happened today.

Imagine someone’s teenage daughter came home and said, “Dad, I’m pregnant. I know what you are thinking but it’s really not like that. God is the father. I didn’t do anything”.

Very few people would even consider that as a possibility; whereas they feel certain the story with Mary is true. Interesting…..

On the surface, both stories are equally eyebrow raising. No one living today actually witnessed either conception. Why believe the first story to be absolutely true, while giving the second story no merit whatsoever?

Let’s look at some possible factors:

1. We know that millions of other people believe the story of the virgin Mary. Even some extremely intelligent people believe this. In many circles, you’ll be accepted and respected by believing the Mary story. You’ll be outcast as a gullible fool if you believe the tale of the teenage daughter. It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to believe what people around them believe.

2. The Bible also uses an impressive advertising tactic. Heaven and Hell are the ultimate pain and pleasure motivators.

We are told, as impressionable infants, that believing in God and following the Bible will bring us to the coolest place we can imagine after we die. The place is called Heaven and it is amazing. It’s better than anything on earth and better than anything we can even imagine. You will be there for an eternity as well.
Oh yeah, and if you don’t believe in this story than you will go to a place worse than you could imagine for eternity. It’s called Hell and you’ll burn and be tortured there for eternity.

That’s even more motivating than saying, “[Santa] knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake”.

3. We are also told that God is so much better than us in every way. It’s impossible for us to even start to imagine how great He is so there is really no point in trying. He’s beyond science and beyond us. We’ll never be able to understand Him. It’s better to just have faith in Him and forget about your own logical ideas, which are just pathetic anyway in comparison.

Although impressively shocking, these factors may very well explain why so many people believe in this story. There is so much to gain from believing in it and so much to lose from not believing in it. We hear it when we are young and the fear stays with us. When our logical minds try to tell us not to be gullible, we can remind ourselves that our own logical minds are relatively useless tools anyways.