Stay Healthy In Your 40s

Have enough sleep.
Is there anyone who dislikes after a long fatiguing day watching TV or reading abed? It stands to reason that fatigue from work and home problems people relieve by lying on the bed. In case you really want to energize your body it is better for you to sleep.

Sleep is a restorative process necessary for a normal immunity functioning. From half to an hour of extra sleep is enough to make your immunity system much stronger. The main thing is that you should not fight with yourself when you feel you want to sleep. This is the way body says you that it needs reloading.

Learn to relax.
40 – 45 years of life are most stressful. Problems on the job, conflicts with grown up children, psychological borders of middle-aged – all these things superimpose on one another and as a result you feel permanent psychic tension. Stress washes you out not only morally but also physically making immune system work erratically, and as a result your body reacts slowly on viruses and bacteria. You should contribute time to relax, at least 15 – 20 minutes every three hours.

For example, at work you can catch a break and drink a cup of coffee, or you may go out on fresh air, or just lean backwards and close your eyes. Many companies long ago have understood benefits of this and so they made special relaxing rooms employees. These are small dark rooms with comfortable chairs where employees may relax and even have a nap.

However, remember, if you have a free moment from work and you switch your attention on an internet site or other computer entertainments – you just fool yourself. Your brain works on with the same intensity and maybe more harder when you check your mail, talk on the Internet chats or just check your cell phone. Psychologists claim that plenty of equipment and means of communication have a great impact on the mind and all these things do overload us with information which causes chronic stress.

New Blood Analysis Helps to Know Speed of Senescence

Scientists from North Carolina State University have invented a new blood analysis to find out how fast are ageing tissues of human body on molecular level.

It emerged that the more older do the tissues grow the much better they are filled with protein called p16INK4a. Measurement of level of this protein can help doctors to know how healthy tissues are and how do they react on surgical interference and on medicines.

To this day the main senescence marker was the length of ends of chromosome called telomere. Telomere regions of chromosomes, whose main feature is the lack of capacity to join other chromosomes or their fragments, perform protective function. Now the new marker of biologic senescence can be called protein p16INK4a.

It is well known, that p16INK4a helps to suppress cancer spreading. That protein are presented in T surpressor cells of immune system. They play the main role in organism fighting with diseases and in reconstruction of damaged tissues.

The number of p16INK4a in blood shows not only how quickly are cells ageing. Also scientists have discovered a connection between protein concentration and way of living and vicious habits such as smoking and physical inactivity which make ageing faster.

To define how exact are the analysis results, scientists have examined blood samples of 170 of people. Test persons also filled up a form where they wrote about state of their health and way of their living. It emerged that p16INK4a is not connected with fattiness although the reduction of food energy can slow down ageing process. More influence on molecular ageing has physical inactivity (in other words lack of physical activity).