Category: tips

source : pixabay

Studies have shown that people who think of break time as a “waste of time” are more associated with depression, anxiety, and stress.
Different people have different ways to relax. Some people spend intellectual time reading, and others prefer to do physical activities like hiking. Also, some people spend a relaxing time watching movies or playing games.

Although each of these ways of relaxing is different, the common important part is the attitude toward relaxation. According to previous studies, the better you spend your break time, the better your mental and physical health, the better your happiness, and the power to return to society.

Conversely, according to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, those who think of relaxation as a “waste of time” or believe that it is an “unproductive time” did not fully enjoy the break and even showed a deeper connection with various emotional disorders.

The research team recently recruited 302 people who enjoyed Halloween. And five questions were asked to determine how much fun activities such as parties, eating out, and visiting haunted houses were, and whether they thought this time was a waste of time.

As a result of the answer analysis, the more people who answered that time such as participation in parties was wasteful and unproductive, the more they did not enjoy this time properly.

In the second experiment, the study was conducted based on more routine breaks. The same questions as the first experiment were asked about the break time spent in daily life, such as spending time with friends, watching TV, and meditation, and the participants’ happiness, depression, anxiety, and stress levels were measured.

As a result, as in the previous experiment, those who believed that their break time was a waste of time did not enjoy leisure properly. In addition, happiness, depression, anxiety, and stress were more severe, which could cause emotional and physical well-being to decrease, the research team explained.

In the last experiment, the research team conducted an experiment showing participants an article published in the New York Times. This is not actually an article in the New York Times, but fake news created by a research team. Participants in the experiment were divided into four teams, each reading an article saying that rest is a waste of time, rest is an unproductive time, rest is a productive time, and a coffee machine unrelated to this. The research team then showed interesting cat videos and evaluated how much fun it was to watch the videos.

As a result, people who read articles that rest was wasteful or unproductive time were less pleased to watch cat videos than those in other groups. In other words, it means that when the research team induced the participants to think that resting was a waste of time, they did not actually enjoy their leisure time properly.

The research team explained that the more negative the evaluation of rest, the more important it is to spend the rest, but what perspective it sees as rest also affects the quality of rest. In addition, he explained that it is important to rest properly when resting in that you can spend other days well.

source : pixabay

Cardiovascular disease prevention effect.

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According to a 2019 analysis of about 4 million people in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, dog owners can reduce the risk of premature death by 24%. If the person has already had a heart attack or stroke, the probability of dying from cardiovascular disease is not 31 percent lower.

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This study was criticized for not taking into account other factors such as other diseases or social and economic status into account. However, another large-scale study published that year showed that people with major cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks or strokes have higher survival rates when raising dogs. In the case of heart attack survivors living alone, the risk of death is 33% lower in raising dogs than in the case of not raising dogs. In addition, stroke survivors living alone had a 27% lower risk of death when raising dogs than when they did not.

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The effect of preventing diabetes.

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The American Heart Association (AHA) has chosen to raise dogs as one of its health lists that reduce the risk of diabetes. The AHA said, “People who regularly walk their dogs are at a one-third risk of diabetes compared to those who do not have dogs.” In addition, raising a dog is a great help socially and emotionally and allows us to predict behavioral changes that can lose weight.

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In particular, the benefits of aerobic exercise are not for raising cats, horses, or pets, but only for raising dogs. The AHA said that unlike other pets, dogs who need to walk more than once a day exercise for about 30 more minutes a day than those who do not.

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It helps to stabilize your emotions when you’re stressed out.

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Meghan Mueller, co-director of the Tuffs Institute for Human-Animal Interaction, said, “Rather than asking, ‘Is your companion animal better for us?”, or ‘Is it better to ask which of us is the right combination for a specific companion animal and a specific person?'” He said, “There are many studies showing that raising pets reduces stress for people in unstable situations.” Professor Hairzog said, “Research has repeatedly shown that raising pets improves people’s mood and reduces bad mood,” adding, “There is no denying that human-animal interactions have immediate and physiological short-term benefits.”

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The effects on depression are half and half.

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But I can’t say the same thing about depression yet. Professor Hairzog conducted as many as 30 studies in this regard, and 18 studies found no difference in depression between the owner of the pet and those who did not. In five studies, pets alleviated depression and in five studies, depression worsened. The conclusion was unclear in the remaining two studies.

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In a study of the elderly conducted by Director Mueller, it was found that the elderly raising antimicrobial animals were twice as likely to have suffered from depression in the past, but recently they did not suffer from depression. It was unclear whether they had depression because they raised pets or whether they got out of depression thanks to raising pets.

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It helps children stabilize their emotions.

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One of the reasons why the correlation between pets and health is very unclear is that it is impossible to conduct a control experiment to randomly assign pets to the experimental group while controlling all other factors. Director Mueller explained, “Random research is difficult because most people try to choose on their own whether to raise pets or not, and they try to choose on their own which pets to raise.”

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Research has begun to solve the problem as the National Institutes of Health and the Walsom Pet Management Research Institute in the UK have offered $9 million in research aid. In a 2015 experiment on children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it was found that children who read books to pets improved their sharing, cooperation, service, and behavioral problems more than children who read books to stuffed animals. It was also found that autistic children are more calm and interact more when they are with guinea pigs than when they are toys.