【推荐1】Sleep position is often a matter of comfort, but in some cases your sleeping position may be important to your health.

When Side-Sleeping( Right or Left)Is Helpful

    1    Back sleeping is associated with snoring because while you are on your back, your tongue moves back into your throat. For this reason, sleeping on your side(either right or left)or on your stomach is recommended to prevent snoring.

Neck and back pain are very common problems that could be affected by sleep position.

    2    Pillows or other sleep aids might be used to keep the back in a more natural position while sleeping.

When Sleeping On the Left Is Not Recommended

You may have chronic heart failure or have had a heart attack.    3    Sleeping on your right side may lower your heart rate and your blood pressure. Sleeping on your left side may have a negative effect on sympathetic nervous activity.    4    

Important Points to Remember About Left-Sided Sleeping

Sleep position is often a matter of comfort, and most people change positions while sleeping and find themselves waking in a different position than the one in which they fell asleep.    5    Then you can try sleeping with a pillow behind your back to prevent you from rolling over.

【推荐2】A study on astronauts found that a short sleep during the day up to two and a half hours long improved working memory performance. Working memory includes focusing attention on one task while holding other tasks in memory, so a poor working memory could result in errors.

Taking a short sleep may make you think more clearly for the period right after you wake up and maybe several hours into the day. Taking a short sieep once or twice a week could lower the risk of heart attacks, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Heart. After tracking more than 3,400 peopIe between the ages of 35 and 75 for slightly more than five years, the researchers found that those who enjoyed occasional short sleep—once or twice a week, for five minutes to an hour—were 48% less likely than those who didn’t take a short sleep to experience a heart attack or heart failure.

A lack of quality sleep could lead to overeating because not enough sleep is believed to stimulate hunger and stop hormone(荷尔蒙)signals that communicate fullness. The findings were important because women were at high risk of fatness and sleep disorders, the researchers said, which could both be driven by a high intake of food. Taking a short sleep has been found to improve your creativity. The right side of your brain might experience a strong mental feeling during a short sleep, research suggested. The right side is the hemisphere(半球体)most associated with creative tasks, such as imagination and thinking, while the left is more logical. Rescarchers monitoring the brain activity of 15 people found that the right side of their brain communicated busily with itself as well as with its left part. The left side of the brain, however, remained relatively quiet. In a January 2020 study of 2,214 Chinese adults aged 60 and older, those who took afternoon sleep for five minutes to two hours showed better mental response than those who didn’t take a short sleep.

【推荐2】Although social media allow us to become more connected to other people than at any time in history, a new study suggests that many Americans feel lonelier than ever before, which is weakening the nation’s mental and physical health.

The study conducted by the health insurer Cigna, found widespread loneliness, with nearly half of Americans reporting they feel alone, or left out at least some of the time. The nation’s 75 million millennials (ages 23 — 37) and Generation Z adults (ages 18 — 22) are lonelier than older generations. Besides, 54% of people surveyed said they feel no one knows them well, and four in ten reported they “lack companionship”, their “relationships aren’t meaningful” and they “are isolated (孤立的) from others”.

Douglas Nemecek, MD, Cigna’s chief medical officer for Behavioral Health, said the findings of the study suggest that the problem has become common, equaling the risks caused by tobacco and the nation’s ever-expanding waistline. “Loneliness has the same influence on health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, while obesity (肥胖) less than 10 cigarettes a day,” he said in releasing the report.

Nemeceks commentstallied withthose of other leading public health specialists, including former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD, who said loneliness should be targeted in public health campaigns like those designed to fight against smoking and obesity. “During my years caring for patients, the worst disease I saw was not heart disease diabetes; it was loneliness,” Murthy said in a recent cover story in the Harvard Business Review.

The new report, produced in Cigna’s partnership with the polling company Ipsos, is based on an online survey of more than 20,000 US adults using the well-regarded UCLA Loneliness Scale to see how widespread loneliness is in America.

【推荐3】Who do you count as your friends? From our BFF to a workmate, it’s good to have someone to chew the fat with or offer comfort and support. But the recent lockdown we have endured has made of us question our friendships. We’ve fallen out of touch with friends and acquaintances. But do we actually have to restart every relationship we once had? It might be time to take stock and think about who you kept in touch with, who you missed talking to, and who you didn’t. In short, maybe it’s time to reset your list of real mates.

There’s no obligation to stay friends. Bryan Lufkin says, “While people have known for years that friendships are unquestionably good for your health, experts say it’s only natural for acquaintances and even friends to fall by the wayside as time goes on.”

Of course, it can be hard to choose who’s in your friendship circle. This is what Suzanne Degges-White, professor of counselling at Northern Illinois University, calls our “friendscape”. She says. “In life, as we go through certain stages and ages, our attention shifts, and we want to be around people who are like us.”

So, changing friends is normal, but we still need those special pals who have known us long term. These are friendships we invest time in. These are your inner circle of friends—your “shoulders to cry on”—and you have to see them at least once a week to keep them in that circle. The friends that do drift are mostly “friendships of convenience”. But the advice for maintaining a good friendship is to share how you feel with someone you trust—this can help strengthen your friendship as well as giving you both a chance to support each other.