Manfaat Coklat bagi Kesehatan

source:  jayanegara.com

Kata coklat berasal dari xocoatl (bahasa suku Aztec) yang berarti minuman pahit. Suku Aztec dan Maya di Mexico percaya bahwa Dewa Pertanian telah mengirimkan coklat yang berasal dari surga kepada mereka. Cortes kemudian membawanya ke Spanyol antara tahun 1502-1528, dan oleh orang-orang Spanyol minuman pahit tersebut dicampur gula sehingga rasanya lebih enak. Coklat kemudian menyebar ke Perancis, Belanda dan Inggris. Pada tahun 1765 didirikan pabrik coklat di Massachusetts, Amerika Serikat.

Dalam perkembangannya coklat tidak hanya menjadi minuman tetapi juga menjadi snack yang disukai anak-anak, remaja, maupun orang dewasa. Selain rasanya enak, coklat ternyata berkhasiat membuat umur seseorang menjadi lebih panjang. Suatu studi epidemiologis telah dilakukan pada mahasiswa Universitas Harvard yang terdaftar antara tahun 1916-1950. Dengan menggunakan food frequency questionnaire berhasil dikumpulkan informasi tentang kebiasaan makan permen atau coklat pada mahasiswa Universitas Harvard.

The Power of Hope

Hope can alter how you view yourself

Hope structures your life in anticipation of the future and influences how you feel in the present. Similar to optimism, hope creates a positive mood about an expectation, a goal, or a future situation. Such mental time travel influences your state of mind and alters your behavior in the present. The positive feelings you experience as you look ahead, imagining hopefully what might happen, what you will attain, or who you are going to be, can alter how you currently view yourself. Along with hope comes your prediction that you will be happy, and this can have behavioral consequences.

Hope shapes your methods of traversing your current situation. The cognitions associated with hope--how you think when you are hopeful--are pathways to desired goals and reflect a motivation to pursue goals (Snyder, Harris, Anderson, & Holleran, 1991). Better problem-solving abilities have been found in people who are hopeful when compared with low-hope peers (Change, 1998), and those who are hopeful have a tendency to be cognitively flexible and able to mentally explore novel situations (Breznitz, 1986).

How Do Executives Survive?

by Carl Beuke, Ph.D

Eight lessons your manager can teach you about thriving at work 

Life as a senior manager is harder than most people think. Long hours, crushing workloads, multiple and constant pressures, and incessant conflict and unpopularity often come with the job. Yet executives are typically healthier and happier than the rest of us. How do they do it?

The myth of the fat, lazy executive 

Some people like to stereotype managers as lazy fat cats who earn a living by passing on all the hard work to other people. Undoubtedly a few such individuals exist, but they are not typical. Managers work longer hours than most other occupations, with around 45% of all managers working at least 45 hours a week. The average manager starts each Monday morning with a to-do list containing around 200 items. Nor is the work always easy - by some estimates, the average manager spends 20 to 40% of their time dealing with conflict, and 50% of managers fail. The typical manager also has family responsibilities in addition to coping with his or her workload.

The ‘fat' part of the stereotype of managers is also overstated. American male managers have an obesity rate of 25%, while females have a rate of 20%, compared to an average of 25% for the rest of the population and 28% for the middle aged (probably a better comparison group). More importantly, managers are healthier and happier than the average for the population. How do effective managers meet the challenges of their roles while staying sane and in good health?

Trik Jadikan Pekerjaan Ladang Kebahagiaan

PEKERJAAN dan kebahagiaan, dua hal yang sebagian orang menganggapnya berada di kutub berbeda. Dengan beberapa trik, Anda bisa merasakan kebahagiaan lewat aktivitas pekerjaan sehari-hari.

Untuk menulis bukunya, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, Dan Buettner bekerja sama dengan psikolog dan ilmuwan untuk mencari orang-orang paling bahagia di dunia. Beberapa pelajaran yang ia berikan lewat bukunya mungkin bisa menjadi jawaban pencarian Anda terhadap ladang kebahagiaan lewat pekerjaan. Berikut ini, seperti diulas Yahoo: 

Women With Breast Cancer Who Consume Soy Food Have Lower Risk of Cancer Recurrence

Although there is a concern regarding the safety of soy food consumption among breast cancer survivors, researchers have found that women in China who had breast cancer and a higher intake of soy food had an associated lower risk of death and breast cancer recurrence, according to a study in the December 9 issue of JAMA.

"Soy foods are rich in isoflavones, a major group of phytoestrogens that have been hypothesized to reduce the risk of breast cancer. However, the estrogen-like effect of isoflavones and the potential interaction between isoflavones and tamoxifen have led to concern about soy food consumption among breast cancer patients," the authors write.

Xiao Ou Shu, M.D., Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., and colleagues examined the association between soy isoflavone intake with breast cancer recurrence and survival. The researchers analyzed data from the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study, a large, population-based study of 5,042 female breast cancer survivors in China. Women ages 20 to 75 years with diagnoses of breast cancer between March 2002 and April 2006 were recruited and followed up through June 2009. Information on cancer diagnosis and treatment, lifestyle exposures after cancer diagnosis, and disease progression was collected at approximately 6 months after cancer diagnosis and was reassessed at three follow-up interviews conducted at 18, 36, and 60 months after diagnosis. A Shanghai Vital Statistics Registry database was used to obtain survival information for participants who were lost to follow-up.

The 10 Golden Rules of Communication

by Neel Burton, M.D.

How to get the most out of people, and give the most back

Whether you're a psychologist, business person, or simply an attentive spouse or friend, the rules of good communication are very much one and the same. Good communication involves two things, listening and talking, and there are just five golden rules for each. This sounds pretty basic, but many people forget that good communication involves listening as well as talking. It could even be argued that listening is the more important of the two: how can you know what to say unless you first know what your audience wants or needs to hear ? 

Maybe You Should Be Angry

by Mary C. Lamia, Ph.D

Anger is a good emotion that sometimes goes badly

Perhaps your flight is considerably delayed; the team you've supported for years is getting humiliated on the field; your insurance company has rejected a claim for a ridiculous reason; or, you saw a provocative text on your partner's cell phone. In any case, you're angry. Anger deserves appreciation. Designed to produce action in response to the violation of social norms or to remedy situations that are wrong, anger alerts you to circumstances that are unjust and tells you that you're having a reaction to something that should not be as it is. Often anger is conceptualized as a disruptive emotional force, but it is meant to be an adaptive internal signal that cues self-protective action. Actually, anger is a good emotion that sometimes is misunderstood or irrationally misused.