11-hour days CAN KILL YOU

People working 10 or 11 hours a day are more likely to suffer serious heart problems, including heart attacks, than those clocking off after seven hours.

The finding, from an 11-year study of 6,000 British civil servants, does not provide definitive proof that long hours cause coronary heart disease but it does show a clear link, which experts said may be due to stress.

In all, there were 369 cases of death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks and angina among the London-based study group -- and the risk of having an adverse event was 60 percent higher for those who worked three to four hours overtime.

Working an extra one to two hours beyond a normal seven-hour day was not associated with increased risk.

"It seems there might a threshold, so it is not so bad if you work another hour or so more than usual," said Dr Marianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and University College London.

The higher incidence of heart problems among those working overtime was independent of a range of other risk factors including smoking, being overweight or having high cholesterol.

But Virtanen said it was possible the lifestyle of people working long hours deteriorated over time, for example as a result of poor diet or increased alcohol consumption.

More fundamentally, long hours may be associated with work-related stress, which interferes with metabolic processes, as well as "sickness presenteeism," whereby employees continue working when they are ill.

Virtanen and colleagues published their findings in the European Heart Journal.

Commenting on the study, Gordon McInnes, professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Glasgow's Western Infirmary, said the findings could have widespread implications for doctors assessing patients' heart risks.

"If the effect is truly causal, the importance is much greater than commonly recognized. Overtime-induced work stress might contribute to a substantial proportion of cardiovascular disease," he said.

Source: http://health.yahoo.com/news/reuters/us_heart_overtime.html

UN fears 'irreversible' damage to natural environment

I had to copy this article to my blog, its so hurtful what we´re doing to our planet...

I had a favorite quote from the movie "Wallstreet": "Greed is good". Well greed has won, money is the real root of all evil.

Here goes the article from http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100510/ts_afp/unenvironmentbiodiversityeconomy:

The UN warned on Monday that "massive" loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed.

As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several "tipping points" beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.

The third "Global Biodiversity Outlook" found that deforestation, pollution or overexploitation were damaging the productive capacity of the most vulnerable environments, including the Amazon rainforest, lakes and coral reefs.

"This report is saying that we are reaching the tipping point where the irreversible damage to the planet is going to be done unless we act urgently," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, told journalists.

Djoghlaf argued that extinction rates for some animal or plant species were at a historic high, up to 1,000 times those seen before, even affecting crops and livestock.

The UN report was partly based on 110 national reports on steps taken to meet a 2002 pledge to "significantly reduce" or reverse the loss in biodiversity.

Djoghlaf told journalists: "There is not a single country in the world that has achieved these targets, we continue to lose biodioversity at unprecedented rate."

Three potential tipping points were identified.

Global climate, regional rainfall and loss of plant and animal species were harmed by continued deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, the report said.

Many freshwater lakes and rivers were becoming contaminated by algae, starving them of oxygen and killing off fish, affecting local livelihoods and recreation for local populations.

And coral reefs were collapsing due to the combined blow of more acid and warming oceans, as well as overfishing, the UN found.

UN Environment Programme (UNEP) director general Achim Steiner underlined the economic value and returns of "natural capital" and its role in ensuring the health of soil, oceans and the atmosphere.

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to the contemporary world," Steiner said.

"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."

The report argued that biodiversity was a core concern for society that would help tackle poverty and improve health, meriting as much attention as the economic crisis for only a fraction of the cost of recent financial bailouts.

It advocated a new strategy to tackle the loss alongside more traditional steps such as the expansion of protected natural areas and pollution control.

They included attempts to regulate land consumption, fishing, increased trade and population growth or shifts, partly through a halt to "harmful" or "perverse" subsidies.

The issues raised by the report are due to be discussed at a UN biodiversity meeting in Japan in October.

New beginning

I have decided from this day on that I will only write good news and reviews about everything I discuss.

This is because the world is filled with critics; it’s the easiest thing to criticize, so I just decided I can brighten our days one good story at a time.

So here goes my first story, today I met a businessman from the US, that decided he needed a more relaxed life and ended up living in Antigua for over a year, he still lives here, with 10 kids, all from the same wife, and hi’s only 37. Jajajaja…. Talk about a life change, he comes from being an investment banker in the US.

Good going friend, almost all of us lack the balls to make aggressive, good life improving choices…

Follow your heart folks, life is too short to BS around, find your happiness.