Normally, it’s not good to be “caught napping” because it suggests lack of alertness, laziness or weakness. New studies suggest, however, that taking a nap can be very beneficial to your health and can help improve alertness, creativity, mood and productivity, and helps reduce stress and lower your risk of diabetes, heart attack, stroke and weight gain.

When is the Best Time to Take a Nap?

You don’t feel the need to nap in the afternoon because it’s too hot or because you had a heavy lunch. Your body is programmed to feel two periods of intense sleepiness: in the wee hours of the morning – about 2 to 4 AM – and in the afternoon – between 1 and 3 PM.

Knowing the best time for you to nap depends on when you go to sleep at night and how early you wake up. If you’re a “lark” and prefer to get up as early as 6 AM and hit the sack between 9 or 10 PM, you’re urge to nap will be at around 1 or 1:30 PM. On the other hand, if you’re an “owl” and get your zzzs after midnight and get up at around 8 or 9 AM, your nap need comes at around 2:30 or 3 PM.

What’s in a Nap and What You Get from Short and Long Naps

When you sleep, your brain’s electrical system undergoes five stages:

1. Falling asleep
2. Light sleep
3. Deep, slow-wave sleep
4. Deep, slow-wave sleep
5. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep or dreaming stage

If you take a catnap of 20 minutes, you get mostly light sleep, which boosts your alertness and concentration, improves your mood and sharpens your motor skills.

A nap of up to 45 minutes may include REM sleep, which boosts creative thinking and sensory processing. That’s why it’s best to limit your naps to 45 minutes or less if you need to immediately get going after dozing off to avoid drifting to slow-wave sleep. Waking up during the third and fourth stages causes disorientation, grogginess and serious sleep inertia that can last for 30 minutes or more.

If you want to take a long nap, nap for at least 90 minutes. Napping between 90 to 120 minutes usually covers all five stages of sleep. Long naps in the morning give you more REM sleep while long afternoon naps give more slow-wave sleep, which helps clear your thoughts, improve memory recall and compensate for lost sleep.

How to Enjoy the Perfect Nap

If you’ve already determined how long and what time you’ll take a nap, here are some tips that will help you make the most out of your siesta:

• Find a comfortable, quiet and safe place to lie down (it takes about 50 percent longer for you to fall asleep if you’re seated upright).
• Use a light blanket if it’s chilly (a heavy one will give you more warmth and may cause you to oversleep).
• Darken the room as much as possible. If you have eyeshades, use them.
• Take deep, slow breaths to calm your body. Relax your muscles one group at a time.
• Use earplugs or white noise to block out unwanted sounds.
• Relax your mind by counting sheep, reciting a mantra or focusing on a peaceful scene.
• Set an alarm or ask someone to wake you up.

Mission: Readiness, an organization composed of retired admirals and generals, recently reported that an alarming 75 percent of all young adults aged 17 to 24 are not qualified to join the military.

Many young adults are not eligible to become men in uniform because they either fail to graduate from high school or have criminal records. But the MAIN reason is obesity.

Child obesity rates have more than tripled in the past three decades. Now, one in three children, 10 to 17, is overweight or obese; and 27 percent of young adults, 17 to 24, are too heavy to join the services.

As a result, roughly 15,000 prospective recruits flunk the physical entrance exam because they are too overweight.

Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that fructose, a cheap sugar commonly used in processed food products and soft drinks, is one of the culprits in the obesity epidemic, both in children and adults.

Today, more than 50 percent of manufactured foods and beverages are sweetened using fructose in the form of high fructose corn syrup. This sweetener is found in soda, the number one source of calories in America.

How Fructose is Making Americans Fat

Every cell in your body uses glucose or blood sugar, Dr. Mercola explains. Glucose is immediately burned up immediately after you consume it. When you eat 120 calories of sugar in the form of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat.

But fructose is a completely different story. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat, Mercola warns. Your body converts fructose into free fatty acids, LDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat. Consuming 120 calories of sugar in the form of fructose means you store 40 calories as fat!

Studies show that soda and sugar-sweetened drinks increase the risk of obesity in children. And because high fructose corn syrup is also found in many processed foods, that further increases the chances of your children regularly consuming this dangerous sugar.

Why Kids Should Not Consume High Fructose Corn Syrup

Studies and estimates show that:

• Obese children are more than twice as likely to die before the age of 55 than children with a healthy weight
• Obese teenage girls are more likely to die between ages 36-56 than their normal weight peers
• Moderately obese teen girls increase their risk of death in adulthood by 50 percent
• Obese teens more than double their mortality risks compared to their slimmest peers

Yes, having more obese children and young adults may affect the military’s recruitment in the long run but more importantly, as they mature, obesity is exposing them to diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart disease, robbing them of a chance to live healthy and happy lives.

As a Parent, What Can You Do About It?

Changing your lifestyle will help you and your family achieve your ideal weights. You should keep your fructose consumption to under 25 grams per day by avoiding fructose-rich fruits, fruit juices and soda.

Check what your kids are eating at the school cafeteria. Better yet, prepare their meals at home so you can be sure that they’ll be eating healthy even when they’re at school.

Exercising as a family is also a step to the right direction. You can go for walks, bike rides, teach them how to swim or skate, the activities are only limited by your imagination. Limit their time in front of the television and playing videogames because a sedentary lifestyle compounds obesity woes.

Known for his successful practice of integrative medicine, Dietrich Klinghardt, MS, PhD sorts through the material and reveals some of the “toxic causes” leading to autism, which currently afflicts 1 out of 150 infants.

“Dr. Klinghardt helps make the picture become much clearer,” shares top natural health expert Dr. Joseph Mercola, who considers Klinghardt one of his primary mentors and a pioneer in natural medicine.

“One commonality among most people with autism is that their pathways of detoxification have become overwhelmed by both man-made and microbial toxins,” Dr. Mercola reveals, sharing some of Dr. Klinghardt’s recent findings on what possibly makes autism happen:

• Autoimmune disease
  A precondition that “should be looked into,” according to Dr. Klinghardt,  are a greater rate of autoimmune diseases – food allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, to name a few – in parents of autistic children, especially mothers.
• Gene mutations
  “Children with autism tend to have more gene expressions that are inefficient for detoxification,” quotes Dr. Mercola from Dr. Klinghardt’s findings, adding that these “mutations” tend to be unpredictable.
• Lyme disease and chronic infections
  Extremely common in autistic children are chronic infections such as Lyme disease, which may even be causing the gene mutations. “Typically, the child gets the disease not from a tick bite but from their mother, who may be a silent carrier of the illness,” Dr. Mercola says, adding what Dr. Klinghardt discovered: 4 out of 5 children with autism who came to his office tested positive for Lyme disease. “Children with autism not only have overwhelmed detoxification pathways and often heavy metal toxicity, but, according to Dr. Klinghardt, they also have a silent, daily toxin production in their body caused by toxic microbes,” Dr. Mercola explains further.
• Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cellphones
  When toxic microbes in your body are exposed to EMFs, says Dr. Mercola, they think they are being attacked. In turn, they produce more biotoxins to prolong their survival.
  Dr. Mercola quotes from Dr. Klinghardt that this increase in EMF exposure not only causes autism, but also “helps explain the avalanche of children with neurodevelopmental disorders.”

And don’t forget about mercury, adds Dr. Mercola, especially delving on vaccines as toxic, mercury-containing offenders.

“Carefully review the vaccination issue, including the conventional vaccination schedule. Know that in most U.S. states, you have the right to opt out of vaccines,” he says.

In the article of Tim O’Shea titled “Autism and Mercury” and excerpted from The Sanctity of Human Blood,  American children by age 2 are seen to have received 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines alone. This “far exceeds” current EPA safe levels of 0.1 mcg/kg per day.

Thus Dr. Mercola pushes for a multi-faceted approach to treating autism, which includes the following:

1. Having informed choices on vaccines
2. Eating according to Nutritional Type
3. Avoiding pasteurized milk
4. Completely eliminating sugars, juice, soda, French fries and wheat from diet
5. Getting proper sun exposure
6. Addressing emotional stresses through tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

As a hormone, oxytocin has powerful, health-promoting properties which start from the moment you are born. Oxytocin is released during childbirth, stimulating the contractions which guide the baby through the birth canal toward delivery. It also promotes the release of milk during breastfeeding and facilitates maternal behavior and bonding between new mothers and their infants, Dr. Joseph Mercola explains.

Only three percent of all mammals are able to form lasting monogamous relationships. This tiny list includes bats, beavers and a few other rodents, certain foxes, a few hoofed mammals, otters, and some primates, including humans.

The Three Stages of Love

Researcher Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, defines three stages of love, each marked by hormones which influence your behavior and feelings:

1. Lust – In this stage, both men and women are driven by the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen. This occurs from a few weeks to a few months.
2. Attraction – During this time, the initial lust progresses towards a desire for a specific partner. Romance and commitment develop as the neurotransmitters adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin are at work.  Attraction usually lasts a year to three years.
3. Attachment – Oxytocin and a similar hormone, vasopressin, are at work in this final and most important stage. Oxytocin is released by both men and women during sexual intercourse and steadily strengthens the feelings of attachment and closeness. The bonding which occurs is necessary for a long-term relationship.

Love can start in any one of these stages, Fisher explains. Some people have sex with a new partner and fall in love after. Some fall in love first before becoming more intimate. Others develop a deep feeling of attachment first, then experience romance and mutual sexual attraction.

Studies suggest that the location of receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin, makes all the difference when it comes to long-term social bonding and monogamy, Dr. Mercola points out. The more receptors you have in your brain associated with reward and reinforcement, the more likely you are to fall in love and remain monogamous.

How to Experience the Health Benefits of Oxytocin

Oxytocin’s health benefits stem from its ability to counteract stress. The more oxytocin your pituitary gland releases, the better your ability to handle stressful situations, as it decreases the levels of cortisol and other stress hormones and lowers your blood pressure during moments of anxiety.

This hormone has also been found to reduce the cravings for alcohol, drugs and sweets.

Dr. Mercola believes that oxytocin likely contributes to why people with pets recover faster from illness, why couples live longer than singles, and why support groups work for people with addictions and chronic diseases.

But he is strongly against the use of artificial forms of oxytocin because synthetic hormones can seriously harm you. An exception to this would be in the case of a difficult delivery and labor is not progressing smoothly.

Cultivating warm, loving, intimate relationships, no matter what stage of life you’re in, is the best way for you to facilitate the natural release of oxytocin in your body.

Touch, positive interactions and psychological support are known to increase oxytocin. Here are some tips on how you can experience the benefits of the love hormone:

• Take care of a pet
• Hold hands, hug and kiss more
• Give and receive a backrub
• Nurture others
• Get a massage
• Practice mind-body therapies like breathing exercises and yoga

Having healthy relationships contribute to a healthier you. This is something for you to ponder on this Valentine’s Day.

Dr. Joseph Mercola believes that love and intimacy – not just the physical form with a significant other but also the emotional form occurring between families, friends and even strangers – can protect and heal us from disease. Studies show that when people express love and feel loved they tend to:

• live longer
• feel happier
• have better cardiovascular health
• be more productive
• be less anxious and depressed
• become less likely to drink alcohol or do drugs

Love is a wonderful thing but it can also be agonizing and destructive. Many health experts, including Dr. Mercola, now regard lovesickness as a serious health concern. Lovesickness can cause people to feel weak and destabilized, and in extreme cases, put them in an extreme sense of despair, depression, hopelessness and physical exhaustion.

Studies show that relationship problems can have a negative effect on mental and physical health, and can be particularly hard on women. Women experiencing severe stress from marriage difficulties were times more prone to heart attack than peers without such stresses.

Heartache is very real. Stress stemming from emotional events may even be worse for your body than the stress from non-emotional events, even though both evoke the same types of responses, Mercola explains.

So how do you deal with heartache and the stress that accompanies it?

Stress is a main contributing factor in any illness and it’s impossible to completely eliminate it from your life. Since stress will always be there, what you can do is to look for ways to adjust your body’s ability to tolerate it. Dr. Mercola recommends energy psychology tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique to deal with depression and stress.

Knowing how to give and receive love will lead to a happier and healthier life so take care of your heart.