Eat Some Chocolate: It Does You Good!

Do something nice for yourself today: Eat some dark chocolate.  Get a bar of dark chocolate from your local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's - try for the highest cocoa content you can get, or you can even get a Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar.  Eat it with your green tea or coffee, and enjoy the wonderful aroma of chocolate and the extra rush of endorphins it gives you! 

 While you do want to take in account the calories and amount of fat and sugar if you are on a strict diet, dark chocolate is actually very good for you. A report in The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that dark chocolate (most emphatically NOT milk or white chocolate) can lower your mild high blood pressure. Also, dark chocolate has antioxidants, and antioxidants "gobble up free radicals, destructive molecules that are implicated in heart disease and other ailments"(webmd.com). It has been shown to help harden tooth enamel. And since it has a low glycemic index, it won't cause your blood sugar to spike.

  Just remember: NEVER eat your dark chocolate while drinking milk as it will cancel out the good effects.

Sleep, Sleep, Ah......Sleep

I am an insomniac.  I live for decent, deep comforting sleep that I seldom get. But I am working on it! If you have problems with insomnia (and I have had since I was only 6 years old when fears kept me awake) make sure that you are doing the following (they really are important):

• Don't sleep with your television on.  Okay, that's a given, right? But if your insomnia started early in life and was terror-based, it's hard to believe that you can actually go to sleep without the television. I used the television for everything from company to blocking out other people's annoying sounds. TURN IT OFF! Breathe deeply, and see that now that you are grown, it is much easier to go to sleep without the light and sound of a tv.
• Don't take long naps in the early evening.  It's tempting, especially if you are really sleepy and can lapse into a delicious sleep at 6 or 7 in the evening.  That sleep feels so good - but it's going to keep you up for the rest of the night when you actually go to be at 11 or 12. Find something to do and skip the nap.
• Don't drink coffe, tea, sodas.  When I was in my twenties, I drank cup after cup of coffee all day and made fresh pots at 6, 7, 8 and 9 at night, then complained that I couldn't sleep.  The coffee wasn't the only cause of my insomnia, but it certainly didn't help.
• Do take a warm bath with something that smells soothing and great added to the water about 30 minutes or more before bed.  Don't watch Criminal Minds, CSI (any of them), Forensic Files or any of the other doom and gloom programs you may ordinarily enjoy. You may think that they do not disturb or scare you, but they are unsettling to the mind which doesn't forget them that easily. Best: watch something funny, something that can make you laugh out loud. Try Nick at Night or TV Land for some of the lightest comedies going.

Sleep is too important to us to tolerate poor quality sleep or insomnia. Do something, even if the last resort is a sleep clinic or doctor-prescribed sleeping pills. Your quality of life will vastly improve!