Harley Pasternak
Courtesy Harley Pasternak
When I don't get a good night's sleep, I'm exhausted, grumpy and starving! Needless to say, I don't have the energy to do my daily workout, and I eat everything in sight. After a few sleepless nights, I swear I feel myself actually getting a little heavier ... and I probably am!
There are several reasons why not getting enough (quality) sleep can make you gain weight.
The first has to do with your hormones – specifically, ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is an appetite-stimulating hormone produced in your stomach that tells your body when it should eat. Leptin influences energy expenditure and basically tells you when to stop eating. When you don't get enough sleep, your leptin levels decrease, so you feel less satisfied and eat more to compensate. And your ghrelin levels rise, so your appetite increases. Studies have shown that you may eat up to 20 percent more food because of this.
The second factor has to do with how lack of sleep leads not only to poor food choices but to decreased energy expenditure during the day. When we're tired, we're more likely to choose convenience over health when it comes to meals and snacks. We tell ourselves it's easier and faster to stop at the drive-through on the way home rather than prepare a nutritious meal. Also, we're more drawn to sugary sweets for an energy boost, which are just empty calories. Plus, we don't have the energy to go through the normal motions of our day, much less exercise, so we're burning minimal calories.
Finally, the longer you're awake, the more time you have to eat. If you eat dinner at 7 and don't go to bed until 12:30, you're probably going for a late snack. If you go to bed before you get hungry again, you're saving hundreds of calories and getting the rest your brain and body needs.
So let's resolve this year to get more sleep. Here are some tips my clients have shared with me over the years that have helped them get more zzz's.
What are your favorite sleep tips? Tweet me @harleypasternak – and let me know.
Check back every Wednesday for more insider tips from celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak on Hollywood's hottest bodies – and learn how to get one yourself! Plus: Follow Harley on Twitter at @harleypasternak
WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.
Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.
"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.
But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.
Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.
The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.
Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.
Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.
But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.
Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.
Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks dropped on Tuesday as investors pulled back from last week's rally on the "fiscal cliff" deal in Washington, and ahead of what is expected to be a weak earnings season.
AT&T Inc
Providers like AT&T pay hefty subsidies to handset makers so that they can offer device discounts to customers who commit to two-year contracts.
After a 4.3 percent jump in the two sessions around the close of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the S&P has fallen and investors have found few catalysts to extend the rally that took the benchmark to five-year highs.
"We had a brief respite courtesy of what happened on the fiscal cliff deal and the flip of the calendar with new money coming into the market," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.
"But now the stark reality of uncertainty with regard to earnings, plus the negotiations on the debt ceiling, are there and that doesn't give investors a lot of reason to take bets on the long side."
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 73.68 points, or 0.55 percent, at 13,310.61. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 7.31 points, or 0.50 percent, at 1,454.58. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 12.53 points, or 0.40 percent, at 3,086.29.
Fourth quarter profits are expected to beat the previous quarter's lackluster results, but analyst estimates are down sharply from October. Quarterly earnings are expected to grow by 2.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
With AT&T's fall, the S&P telecom services index <.gspl> was the worst performer of the 10 major S&P sectors, down 2.6 percent.
Sears Holdings
Markets went lower as some of the first reported earnings were weak.
"It doesn't seem to be bouncing back, it might stay here or sell off a little further," said Stephen Carl, head of U.S. equity trading at The Williams Capital Group in New York.
Shares of restaurant-chain operator Yum Brands Inc
GameStop
Shares of Monsanto Co
Education provider Apollo Group and Dow component Alcoa Inc , the largest U.S. aluminum producer, round out the start of earnings season after the closing bell.
(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
James Pomfret/Reuters
Demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of Southern Weekend Monday in Guangzhou, China.
BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper office in southern China on Monday to show their support for journalists who had declared a strike to protest what they called overbearing censorship by provincial propaganda officials.
The journalists, who work for Southern Weekend, a relatively liberal newspaper that has come under increasing pressure from officials in recent years, also received support on the Internet from celebrities and well-known commentators.
“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress, said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an actress with more than 31 million followers, cited a quotation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”
Many of the people who showed up Monday at the newspaper offices in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, carried banners with slogans and white and yellow chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers watched the protesters without immediately taking any harsh actions.
The angry journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the removal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong, whom the journalists blame for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that ran last week and was supposed to have called for greater respect for rights enshrined in the constitution under the headline “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism,” according to the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one praising the current political system, in which the Communist Party exercises authority over all aspects of governance.
A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said on her microblog that the actions of a local official had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,” the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership transition.
One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday afternoon that negotiations between the various parties had been scheduled later in the day, but there were no results from any talks as of Monday evening.
It was unclear how many employees in the newsroom had heeded the calls for a strike. It appeared Sunday that many of Southern Weekend’s reporters had declared themselves on strike. A local journalist who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open but quiet. One employee told the journalist that the people there were not on strike. Dozens of supporters showed up outside the building at various times, some carrying signs and flowers.
The conflict was exacerbated Sunday night by top editors at the newspaper, who posted a message on the publication’s official microblog saying that the New Year’s editorial had been written with the consent of editors at the newspaper.
According to an account from a newspaper employee posted online on Monday, that statement was made after pressure was exerted on the top editors by Yang Jian, the head of the party committee at Southern Media, the parent company that runs Southern Weekend and other publications. Southern Weekend’s editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressured an employee to give up the official microblog password so the statement could be posted on the microblog.
Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment Monday.
Some political analysts have said the conflict raises questions about whether the central government, led by Xi Jinping, the new party chief, will support the idea of a more open media by moving to support the protesting journalists. In his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled to Guangdong and praised the market-oriented economic policies put in place by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader. But more recently, Mr. Xi has said that China must respect its socialist roots.
Resolving the Southern Weekend tensions could also be a test for Hu Chunhua, the new party chief in Guangdong and a potential candidate to succeed Mr. Xi as the leader of China in a decade. Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, was regarded by many Western political analysts as being a “reformer,” but he presided over a tightening of media freedoms in the province and specifically over Southern Media.
On Monday, People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran a signed commentary that referred to a recent meeting of propaganda officials in Beijing and said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of the times” and help the authorities establish a “pragmatic and open-minded image.” Some people have interpreted that as support for officials in adopting a more enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.
But Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran a scathing editorial that said Southern Weekend was merely a newspaper and should not challenge the system.
“Even in the West, mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a fight with the government,” the editorial said. Xinhua, the state news agency, published the editorial online.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 7, 2013
An earlier version of a photo caption with this article misstated the name of a newspaper in China. It is Southern Weekend not Southern Weekly.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — LG unveiled a 55-inch TV that sports “ultrahigh-definition” resolution with four times the sharpness of regular HD television sets, kicking off what is likely to be a mini-obsession with the latest super-clear format at the annual International CES gadget show.
The model announced Monday is the smallest in a 2013 lineup that includes 65-inch and 84-inch versions. But the smaller size — and smaller price tag — begins the parade of TV makers that are seeking to bring ultrahigh definition to the masses.
Also known as “4K,” ultrahigh-definition screens are 3,840 pixels wide and 2,160 pixels tall, or more than 8 million in all. The higher resolution will let TV screens get larger without degrading picture quality, though initially the price tag will limit those sets to technology’s early adopters.
LG said the 55-inch and 65-inch versions will be available later this year in the U.S. No price was announced, but it will be less than $ 10,000. The 84-inch version that went on sale late last year cost $ 20,000.
For a few years, though, there won’t likely be a mainstream standard for getting native ultra-HD movies and TV shows to the screen either by disc or broadcast.
LG Electronics Inc. said these new TVs will have upscaling technology that takes images of lesser quality and renders them in high detail. The Korean electronics maker also said it has formed an ultra-HD content agreement with Korea’s top broadcaster, KBS, and is seeking out deals with other global content providers. The company offered no specifics.
LG said that with an ultra-HD TV, it will be possible to play phone games with very sharp resolution and in 3-D. The company said it has been possible to hook up smartphones to the TV to play games with current sets, but the resolution isn’t good.
Along with the lineup of higher-resolution TVs, LG unveiled a new Magic Remote, which acts like a wand that is sensitive to motion and is used to navigate on-screen menus. LG said the new model responds better to natural speech and can be controlled with a single finger rather than “very tiring arm gestures.” It also lets you change the channels by writing numbers in the air.
The company also touted the ability to tap different devices so they can share data. With that capability, you’d be able to see what’s inside your refrigerator while shopping, and you’d be able to monitor how clean your house is getting with cameras on a robotic vacuum. Washing machines will also have such capabilities.
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Mike Fisher and Carrie Underwood
Steve Marcus/Landov
Carrie Underwood? Not so much.
Although Underwood – who has been married to professional hockey player Mike Fisher since 2010 – was quick to celebrate her husband's return to the ice, she couldn't help but joke about it.
"Well, folks, hockey is back!" she Tweeted on Sunday. "I just lost my purse holder but gained cheering on my hot husband as he kicks butt! #GoPreds."
While supportive of Fisher's career, the lighthearted Underwood, 29, is anything but quiet when it comes to voicing her opinion on what comes with being married to a hockey player.
Last April, when Fisher, 32, and his Nashville Predators – he was traded from the Ottawa Senators in February of 2011 – made it to the NHL playoffs, Underwood was thrilled for her husband's success, but not for his impending playoff beard.
"[The players] all grow out their facial hair during the playoffs," she told PEOPLE last year. "So before they started, I told Mike, 'You need to shave close.' He always looks good with a little stubble, but it's probably going to get out of hand soon."
It will come even sooner this season as Fisher points out on his site: "It's nice to finally be able to put this behind us and we can finally start thinking about hockey again ... It's going to go by really quickly, and before you know it the playoffs will be starting."
BERLIN (AP) — Organ donations have dropped sharply in Germany following a scandal over alleged corruption at several transplant clinics.
The German Foundation for Organ Transplantation says the number of organs donated fell almost 13 percent to 3,917 last year, the lowest figure in a decade.
Several German clinics are being investigated over allegations that doctors manipulated waiting lists to help some patients appear sicker than they were and so receive transplants sooner.
The foundation said Monday that the scandal had "massively shaken" the public's faith in the transplant system.
Some 12,000 people in Germany require organ transplants each year.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday as investors cashed in recent gains that lifted the S&P 500 to a five-year high and awaited the start of the fourth-quarter earnings season.
The day's decline was broad across all sectors, but energy and utilities were the top decliners. The S&P 500 energy sector index <.gspe> fell 1 percent and the utilities sector <.gspu> was off 1.2 percent.
Another sector in focus was the financials. Financial stocks fell after a group of major U.S. banks agreed to pay billions in settlement with U.S. regulators.
The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, was down 0.7 percent.
Earnings are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results, and analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October.
"There is little doubt that concerns about the fiscal cliff created spending hesitancy in both consumers and businesses in the fourth quarter, and it is likely that will adversely impact earnings season," margins are choppy and cost cuts have run their course, said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.
Aluminum company Alcoa Inc will unofficially launch the reporting season by announcing its results after Tuesday's market close. Alcoa shares were down 1 percent at $9.17.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 76.03 points, or 0.57 percent, at 13,359.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 8.40 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,458.07. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 11.89 points, or 0.38 percent, at 3,089.77.
The day's decline came a session after the S&P 500 finished at a five-year high and investors booked profits on stocks' best weekly gain in more than a year, boosted by a budget deal and economic data. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 percent last week.
Ten mortgage servicers - including Bank of America
Bank of America also announced roughly $11.6 billion of settlements with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and a $1.8 billion sale of collection rights on home loans.
The bank also entered into agreements with Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
"The settlements may remove any overhang for the stock in the near term, but it only partially satisfies the issue," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management.
Bank of America shares were down 0.7 percent at $12.02 while Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
Citigroup shares were down 0.5 percent to $42.20. Wells Fargo shares fell 1.1 percent to $34.55.
Walt Disney Co
Video-streaming service Netflix Inc
Amazon.com shares hit their highest price ever at $269.22 after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock. Shares were up 2.8 percent at $266.63.
Major U.S. technology companies could miss estimates for fourth-quarter earnings as budget worries likely led some corporate clients to tighten their belts last month.
(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, sounding defiant, confident and, to critics, out of touch with the magnitude of his people’s grievances, proposed Sunday what he called a plan to resolve the country’s 21-month uprising with a new constitution and cabinet.
But he offered no new acknowledgment of the gains by the rebels fighting against him, the excesses of his government or the aspirations of the Syrian people. Mr. Assad also ruled out talks with the armed opposition and pointedly ignored its central demand that he step down, instead using much of a nearly hourlong speech to justify his harsh military crackdown.
Mr. Assad waved to a cheering, chanting crowd as he strode to the stage of the Damascus Opera House in the central Umayyad Square — where residents said security forces had been deployed heavily the night before. In his first public speech since June 2012, he repeated his longstanding assertions that the movement against him was driven by “murderous criminals” and terrorists receiving financing from abroad, and he appeared to push back hard against recent international efforts to broker a compromise.
“Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice but not orders,” he said.
His speech came a week after the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria, the senior Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, visited Damascus, the capital, in a push for a negotiated solution.
“Who should we negotiate with? Terrorists?” Mr. Assad asked. “We will negotiate with their masters.”
Mr. Assad’s speech was a disappointment for international mediators and many Syrians who say they believe that without a negotiated settlement, Syria’s conflict will descend into an even bloodier stage. The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in what began as a peaceful protest movement and transformed into armed struggle after security forces fired on demonstrators.
Rebels have made gains in the north and east of Syria and in the Damascus suburbs, but Mr. Assad’s government has pushed back with devastating airstrikes and artillery bombardments and appears confident that it can hold the capital. Neither side appears ready to give up the prospect of a military victory.
The tenor of Mr. Assad’s speech is likely to raise the question of whether Mr. Brahimi’s mission serves any purpose; there was no immediate comment from him or his staff.
Mr. Assad’s opponents rejected the proposal as meaningless, sticking to their longstanding demand that the president resign as a precondition to negotiations.
“We can’t deal with this murderous regime at all,” George Sabra, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said in a brief interview. “This regime has killed 60,000 people, so no one could possibly think that working with this regime is a possibility. It is out of the question.”
Mr. Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years, said Sunday that he was open to dialogue with “those who have not betrayed Syria,” apparently a reference to tolerated opposition groups that reject armed revolution, like the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, whose members have been floated by Syria’s allies China and Russia as possible compromise brokers.
Yet Mr. Assad’s speech appeared unlikely to satisfy even those among his opponents who reject the armed rebellion, since it made no apology for the arrests of peaceful activists or for airstrikes that have destroyed neighborhoods. Mr. Assad gave no sign of acknowledging that the movement against him was anything more than a foreign plot or had any goals other than to inflict suffering and destroy the country.
“They killed the intellectuals in order to afflict ignorance on us,” Mr. Assad said. “They attacked the infrastructure in order to make our life difficult, they deprived children from school in order to bring the country backward.”
He added, “The enemies of the people are the enemies of God, and the enemies of God will burn in hell.”
Mr. Assad has framed the uprising as an attack by the West and its allies, and the members of the exile opposition leadership as puppets of their foreign supporters, including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, which has offered what it calls nonlethal support and recognized the main opposition body, now known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
Some armed rebel groups have used techniques that randomly target civilians, like car bombs, and there are foreign fighters among the rebels. But most of the armed movement is made up of Syrians who took up arms during the uprising or defected from the armed forces.
In his speech, Mr. Assad thanked officers and conscripts and vowed that he would stay by their side, apparently seeking to dispel speculation that he will flee the country. He spoke against a backdrop of snapshots that was reminiscent of montages that the opposition shows of people killed by the government.
When he finished the crowd chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we defend you, Assad,” and vowed to be his “shabiha,” the term that has come to designate pro-government militias that have attacked demonstrators.
Scores of people then rushed toward him with an almost aggressive frenzy. Bodyguards pushed them back to form a phalanx that slowly escorted Mr. Assad through the crowd.
Many observers wryly noted on social media that the opera house was a fitting setting for the speech.
“It was operatic in its otherworldly fantasy, unrelated to realities outside the building,” Rami G. Khouri, of the Beirut-based newspaper The Daily Star, wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Assad said the first step in his plan would be for foreign countries to stop financing the rebels; then his government would put down its weapons, he said — although he reserved the right to continue to fight terrorism, which his government has defined as nearly any opponent.
Next would come national dialogue, but only with groups Mr. Assad termed acceptable; then a constitution approved by referendum; then a coalition government. There was no mention of holding elections before Mr. Assad’s term expires in 2014.
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