Alcoholism is a sin. When I say it is a sin, I didn’t refer to a religious angle. It is a sin to yourself, your family and your loved ones. Drinking regularly can lead to a habit and eventually to addiction. Drinking has got so many evil effects on your health, finances and your happiness. So it is high time to stop drinking. Even in a party it’s not necessary that you have to drink, there are so many ways to network and get involved in a party. 

Here are six simple steps to reduce or stop drinking: 

Don’t keep alcohol at home: Never keep alcohol at home. When you stock it, you will have the temptation to drink. At times, even in a situation when you could avoid drinking or even when you are not in a mood to drink, the thought of alcohol at your cabinet will give you the temptation to go and have it. So never stock alcohol at your home or at office. 

Postpone it: If you are a regular drinker and say if you drink at 8 pm in the night, just postpone it. Drink at 10 pm. There are two advantages of doing this. First, you are convincing your brain and mind that you can postpone the urge and you are not an addict, secondly the early you start; the more you drink. Starting late will force you to have less and go to sleep. 

Don’t drink before food: When you drink before having food, your stomach will be relatively empty. You may end up drinking more. Make a habit that you have food first and fill your stomach fully. When there is less space in stomach, you may end up drinking less. After all you don’t want to make you stomach strained an then let out what you had right?

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Increasing waistline is always a cause of worry and agony when you are already over weight. Obesity is a major problem in these days and getting over it is a huge task. You might have tried several methods to reduce weight. Had been consistent, it would have produced results too. Let’s try ayurveda this time. Ayurveda is the oldest medical science and the most important fact is that there are no chemical rich medicines in Ayurveda. Fat reduction can also be caused by still having enough food but in a different manner. The things that I’ve mentioned below may be familiar but just try this out consistently for 30 days and I’m sure you will smile because you will start seeing the results. 

1. 
   
   Take 2 fruits in the morning and 1 fruit in the evening. I’ll mention later in this article the fruits that help in fat reduction.


2. 
   
   Take one glass of water every hour from the time you wake up till you sleep.


3. 
   
   Exercising is one of your dreams that never come true. Okay don’t do any heavy exercise. Morning or evenings go for a brisk walk. Don’t think you are brisk walking to reduce fat. Just go out and do some brisk walking while enjoying the scenes around. Stop whenever you want for a chat or to have a juice. Then again continue. Or join a swimming club and swim everyday for sometime. If even that doesn’t work, buy a bicycle and ride for 30 minutes everyday.


4. 
   
   Come back and have a glass of Carrot juice without sugar.


5. 
   
   Any time of the day have a salad made of cabbage, tomato, lime juice, honey and mint.


6. 
   
   Minimize intake of salt and reduce milk based products like ice cream and butter for few days. I told reduce.


7. 
   
   Use lot of ginger, cinnamon, pepper and garlic in your cooking.


8. 
   
   Now the hottest tip. Take two spoons of

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The Consequences of Sleep Deprivation

Depression & Self Esteem
Sleep-deprived children have longer illnesses, more severe depression, and greater fatigue than those who aren’t sleep deprived. Other studies link sleep deprivation with self esteem problems as well. Getting good sleep and curing insomnia helps with fight depression and increase self esteem.

Beauty Rest is Fiction
Alex Gardner of the British Psychological Society and emeritus professor of dermatology Ronnie Marks of the University of Wales found that sleep deprivation did not alter study participants’ physical appearance. However, the study participants who were sleep deprived felt self-conscious about their appearance and thought their skin showed their lack of rest. They were convinced their looks were affected by their lack of sleep, even though they looked the same as when they were rested. Getting good sleep makes you feel better about yourself. Sleep deprivation can lower your self esteem.

Weight Gain
If you’re losing sleep your body mass index (BMI) is likely to increase, and so is your waist circumference. Your risk of becoming obese is almost doubled, according to Professor Francesco Cappuccio of Warwick Medical School. He detected this trend in adults and kids as young as five years old. Getting good sleep can help you lose weight.
Sleep deprivation increases appetite through hormonal changes. Specifically, more of the appetite-increasing ghrelin is produced when you’re not getting good sleep; less of the appetite-suppressing leptin is produced. Sleep deprivation and insomnia naturally causes you to eat more.

Memory Loss
Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen of the Harvard Medical School found that “sleep protects memories from interference.” The more quickly you fall asleep after studying for a test or learning a new skill, the more likely you’ll remember it later. If you learn new information and then go about your daily business, you’ll have about a 44% lower chance of retaining what you’ve learned. This research could be particularly helpful when you’re learning a new job. Getting good sleep helps your memory, while sleep deprivation damages it.

Intellectual Impairment
Researchers at the University of Virginia have found that insomnia or lack of sleep can impair IQ and cognitive development in children. Lower grades and poor peer relations could also result from sleep deprivation. Getting good sleep increases cognitive ability.

Physical Impairment
According to the National Sleep Foundation, your body does show the effects when you’re not getting good sleep. Your coordination and motor functions may be impaired, and your reaction time may be delayed. You could have reduced cardiovascular performance, reduced endurance, and increased levels of fatigue because of sleep deprivation. Tremors and clumsiness can also result if you’re not getting good sleep.

So now decide to go to bed early by following the below mentioned steps everyday.
•For most of the people who go to bed late it’s mostly a problem of mentality. You look at the clock and think “02:00? Oh, no problem, I’ve still got plenty of time”. No, you don’t. When you make it a habit to go to bed way past midnight, your idea of late becomes an increasingly later hour. So, the next time you look at the clock and see it’s past 23:30 (or any time you’d consider ‘early’), abandon everything you were doing at that time and start hurrying to go to bed. The first step in starting to go to bed early is redefining your idea of ‘early’ and ‘late’.

•One good incentive is recalling a time (or several) when your lateness in getting to bed had disastrous results: you overslept, didn’t get enough sleep, became sick, etc. Also, if you’re a habitual late-nighter (e.g. college student), this will give you a chance to see that rarest of natural phenomena: a sunrise!

•Most of the time I wake-up at 7:00, but sometimes I wake-up at 6:00 to do homework” isn’t a good answer. If you planned on waking up at 6 then you would think that going to bed an hour earlier would make up for it, but you wouldn’t be tired at said bedtime, so you would lay in bed for an hour and only get 7 hours of sleep. Your wake-up time needs to be the same every day except for rare occasions. Weekends are not rare.

•Determine how long it actually takes you to fall asleep. Don’t glance at the alarm clock constantly to test this, just think whether you lay in bed for what seems for hours, or does your head barely hit the pillow? If the first one is the case you should subtract on hour from the time you have. If your head barely hits the pillow you only need about five minutes in bed before your -8 hour time. If you’re somewhere in between 30 minutes should be a safe amount of time to be in bed before you need to fall asleep.

•The computer may be calming but your brain naturally makes you sleepy when it is dark, so by staring at a screen you are keeping yourself alert and wide-awake for longer than you should. A shower is an excellent thing to do before bed. Make your activity a sort of ritual. This helps.

•The best time to go to bed is when you can’t stop yawning and feel the need to just close your eyes and lay your head down. If you force yourself to stay awake, after this stage is over, you’ll have a slight headache because of tiredness, but stop feeling that urge to go to sleep, which makes you stay awake even more.

•Force yourself to turn off the computer and TV before bed. By turning off the computer (not the monitor) you would have to wait for it to reboot and normally that is enough to persuade you to get off the computer. Throw the remote for your TV across the room or onto the floor (gently). Getting up to turn on the TV hardly seems worth it, huh?

•After you have been following a bed time for a week or so,

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Male Infertility

The Roots of Yoga

The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word “Yuj” meaning to yoke, join or unite. This implies joining or integrating all aspects of the individual - body with mind and mind with soul - to achieve a happy, balanced and useful life, and spiritually, uniting the individual with the supreme.

In India, Yoga is considered one of the six branches of classical philosophy and is referred to throughout the Vedas - ancient Indian scriptures and amongst the oldest texts in existence.The Upanishads are also broadly philosophical treatises which postdate the Vedas and deal with the nature of the “soul” and universe.

However, the origins of yoga are believed to be much older than that, stemming from the oral traditions of Yogis, where knowledge of Yoga was handed down from Guru (spiritual teacher) to Sisya (spiritual student) all the way back to the originators of Yoga, “the Rishis,” who first began investigation into the nature of reality and man’s inner world.

Legend has it that knowledge of Yoga was first passed by Lord Shiva to his wife Parvati and from there into the lives of men.

The Aim of YogaAccording to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the ultimate aim of Yoga is to reach “Kaivalya” (emancipation or ultimate freedom). This is the experience of one’s innermost being or “soul” (the Purusa). Then one becomes free of chains of cause and effect (Karma) which tie us to continual reincarnation. In Kaivalya one is said to exist in peace and tranquillity, having attained absolute knowledge of the difference between the spiritual which is timeless, unchanging and free of sorrows, and the material which is not.

This is considered desirable as life is analysed as ultimately full of sorrows and pain- even pleasure and joy leave pain and loss when they have gone as nothing in the material world is permanent.

Yoga is therefore a spiritual quest. However, along the path of yoga, the aspirant also gains health, happiness, tranquillity and knowledge which are indicators of progress and an encouragement to continue their practice. Buddhism and other Eastern spiritual traditions use many techniques derived from Yoga.

The Paths of YogaThere are said to be 4 main paths (Margas), according to the Bhagavad Gita, by which to reach the ultimate goal of Yoga - “Kaivalya.” There is the path of Knowledge (Jnana Marga) in which one learns to discriminate between what is real and what is illusory, the path of selfless work (Karma marga), the path of devotion (Bhakti Marga) and the path of control of the mind (Yoga Marga) where all the activities of the mind and consciousness are studied and brought under control. From these have come the various paths of yoga which can be followed.

Raja yoga involves mastery of the mind and senses in Samadhi; essentially the advanced aspects of Patanjali’s astanga yoga.
Hatha yoga is the yoga of the will which involves cultivating ones energy to arouse Kundalini primarily by means of asana and pranayama.
Mantra yoga involves reciting sacred syllables to reach perfection.
Laya yoga involves absorption in god to experience ultimate bliss.
Bhakti yoga requires absolute devotion to god to achieve the ultimate goal.
Karma yoga achieves this through selfless work without thought of personal reward.
Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge cultivating the discrimination between spiritual reality and the illusion of the material world.
It must be realised that there are no clear cut boundaries between these various paths and all draw on the practices and philosophy of the others; effectively all paths have the same goal and “tread the same terrain.” They are different views of the same topic.
The Vedas and Upanishads give some of the earliest references to the paths of yoga. These scriptures form the basis of Indian religious practices but contain many varied references to yoga and other things.

There are the Puranas, also ancient, which deal with the nature of the universe.

Famous epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabarata contain stories of the gods and lectures on moral and philosophical subjects with references to yogis and yogic practices.

The Bhaghavad Gita is a particularly famous part of the Mahabarata which contains a detailed discourse on yoga by Krisna to Arjuna.

Other texts such as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are more “technical manuals” of yoga which go into detail on technique as opposed to just the theory.

In general all these texts discuss Yoga from the particular standpoint of

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