Kisses ease stress levels

Just in time for Valentine's Day, a panel of scientists examined the mystery of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.

Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate, Wendy Hill, dean of the faculty and a professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday.

In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.

Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined.

For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a surprise," Hill said.

In a test group that merely held hands, chemical changes were similar, but much less pronounced, she said.

The experiment was conducted in a student health center, Hill noted. She plans a repeat "in a more romantic setting."

Hill spoke at the session on the Science of Kissing, along with Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and Donald Lateiner of Ohio Wesleyan University.

Fisher noted that more than 90 percent of human societies practice kissing, which she believes has three components — the sex drive, romantic love and attachment.

The sex drive pushes individuals to assess a variety of partners, then romantic love causes them to focus on an individual, she said. Attachment then allows them to tolerate this person long enough to raise a child.

Men tend to think of kissing as a prelude to copulation, Fisher said. She noted that men prefer "sloppy" kisses, in which chemicals including testosterone can be passed on to the women in saliva. Testosterone increases the sex drive in both males and females.

"When you kiss an enormous part of your brain becomes active," she added. Romantic love can last a long time, "if you kiss the right person."

Lateiner, a classical scholar, observed that kissing appears infrequently in Greek and Roman art, but was widely practiced, despite the spread of skin disease at that time by facial kissing. And there was a potential for social faux pas by kissing the wrong person at the wrong time.

Overall, the science of kissing — philematology — is under-researcherd, Hill concluded.

Overwork a silent killer in Japan

Pushed to their limits, thousands of Japanese are literally working themselves to death each year, a scourge the Asian power has started to address but which could get worse in the global economic crisis.

Employees in Japan work like crazy , their atmosphere is hectic, others say they suffers from stress night and day, particularly in peak periods when everybody works late into the night.

The Japanese call the problem "karoshi," or death by overwork. And with the global downturn sapping demand for Japanese exports and leading companies to slash jobs, the stress on workers is becoming even more severe. Even they go out with their colleagues at night to relax to dwell the bad things during the days with their bosses, still no room to breathe.
While for some the overwork is simply annoying, for others it causes everything from poor blood circulation to arteriosclerosis to strokes. According to the survey by the Japan's main labour union federation Rengo that 53 percent of workers have been suffering more stress.

It was estimated that more than 2,200 Japanese committed suicide due to work conditions in 2007. But Hiroshi Kawahito a lawyer who represents relatives of karoshi victim said that figure represent only a fraction of the problem. He estimated some 10,000 workers in the same year suffered heart attacks or strokes, which were sometimes fatal, due to stress.

He said that fewer than 10 percent of the incidents were reported to authorities or companies because of the long time it takes to certify cases and the fair chance the effort will be in vain.
In 2007, 58 percent of people who sought compensation for a loved one's karoshi had their application refused. However, this was still a big improvement on 20 years ago when 95 percent of cases were rejected.
The public pressure for this scourge to be better recognised according to Kawahito.

In May 2007, the head of a construction site in the Tochigi region north of Tokyo committed suicide after putting in 65 to 70 hours every week for six months, plunging him into ill physical health and depression.
Even if the government is addressing the problem, the families of karoshi victims dare to go to former employers. The labour ministry certify the suicide as a work accidents and offer his widow $32,000 (3 million yen) a year compensation.

Nearly half of all businesses have no measures at all in place to prevent workplace stress, according to an investigation by the union, in Japan, businesses thinking that their employees' mental state is their private problem, pointing on working conditions at Rengo, the union federation.
Even though the law sets a 40-hour working week, one-quarter of Japanese workers toil for more than 50 hours a week and 10 percent put in more than 60 hours.
The vast majority of overworked employees are men, many in their 30s who are working their way up the corporate ladder.
Stress has long been a problem in Japan. Not even the imperial family is immune, with three members, including Emperor Akihito, all diagnosed in recent years with health problems tied to stress.
But karoshi has become a much more serious problem since the early 1990s when the collapse of the country's post-World War II economic miracle destroyed workers' promise of stable jobs for life.
Companies now routinely hire temporary workers, allowing bosses to lay them off when times get tough and putting more pressure on workers who remain on full-time contracts.
The long hours work is not the problem here, but the abusive bosses, power tripping, tension with co-workers, and a sense of professional defeat amongst workers.
The Japanese people worked very hard but they also dreamed of a better life.

Suspended again

Oh! its my second suspension agai from sulit.com.ph. When one of the member asking for the link , the culprit of my suspension, I PM'd him, unfortunately I forgot that I'm inside the premises of sulit.com.ph, while typing the message it didn't come in my mind that I will be suspended again, after typing of course including the link I send the message, wwwhhhooo I was log out, oohhh my God what a mistake again of what happen, I remeber the time my first suspension, so I try to visit my profile and saw my profile suspended, I email again the admin of sulit.com.ph and he respond, retract my account, He is very accomodating and understand what happen to is just a mistake that I did not intended.

Until now I have still the hang over of stress of what hapenning yesterday.

By the way there are 1200+ banned site in sulit.com.ph, so the tendency that one of those banned site will be type in the forum, PM, Ads and again will be the cause of suspension.