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(Photo by: Mohamed; Wilting, SWD, SFD.)

A remote camera set up in Borneo photographed a very rare otter. The species is so rare some believed it could be extinct.

The camera photographed the otter in Dermakot forest in Sabah, a state of Malaysian Borneo. One had not been seen since 1997. That one was deceased and had been killed by a car.

"These findings also boost the conservation of this endangered otter internationally, as historically this otter was distributed throughout large parts of southeast Asia," says Dr. Laurentius Ambu, director of the Sabah Wildlife Department.

The species is considered to be one of the most endangered otters in the world. They have been subjected to poaching, and their habitats have been polluted and diminished.

 

A Similar Otter Species in Captivity

Sabah Wildlife Department and Sabah Forestry Department collaborates with the Conservation of Carnivores in Sabah (ConCaSa) project which was started by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW).

The Small Carnivore Conservation group studies wild animals like civets and otters for the purpose of conserving their dwindling numbers. Their work has used remote cameras to photograph Borneo's wild cat species and to record the first video of the otter civet.

(Note that the otter civet is not the same otter as mentioned above.)

Derkamot Forest Reserve was created to protect the area from unsustainable logging practices. It is over 100,000 acres with about 30 percent of the area with very poor forest due to previous logging. The habitat is tropical rainforest. Most of the land is managed for sustainable logging. A small portion has been set aside for conservation only.

 

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"Art is only art when it is synonymous with living." Mid-century designer Alexander Girard said this and he is the inspiration for this DIY project.

I recently went up in the attic looking for a sun-faced poster that I had as a kid. It was a popular '60s design by Girard. While I was digging around in the dust, I spied some pictures leaning next to old wood frames.

Many were handed down in our families, some of them ornate and gilded. They just don't work with our decorating style now. I'm not bringing the pictures back into circulation, but those frames possess untapped potential.

Picture frames are fun to collect and easy to pick up in antique, thrift, second-hand stores or flea markets and tag sales. Don't forget to search for unusual frames when you travel.

10 ways to repurpose a vintage picture frame:

1. Frame a tray.


2. Frame a calendar.


3. Frame vintage wallpaper or vintage fabric (I like Marimekko), old calendar pictures, greeting cards, magazine covers or record albums.


4. Frame a mirror.


5. Display photos or a make a collage.


6. Make a bulletin board from a frame without a glass. Back it with cork or wine corks.


7. Make a magnetic bulletin board.


8. Cover a digital picture frame. Cut the frame and glue it over a generic digital picture frame.


9. Make a scrapbook display or an inspiration board for all your DIY. ideas.


10. Frame a pocket display board - for organizing bills, photos, business cards. Use colored library book pockets, envelopes or fabric.

No vintage frames? No problem. Check out this vintage frame tape to frame anything, anytime, anywhere. Vintage frames have wonderful decorative potential. Is the picture or the frame the art? Live with it and find out.

What would you do with a vintage frame?

Ronnie Citron-Fink is a writer and educator. Ronnie regularly writes about sustainable living for online sites and magazines. Along with being the creator of www.econesting.com, Ronnie has contributed to numerous books about green home design, DIY, children, and humor. Ronnie lives the Hudson Valley of New York with her family.

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There is something mystical and romantic about walking through a garden on a summer evening.

The moonlight casts a spotlight of shadows capturing and emphasizing moody white flowers and shimmery plants amongst the greenery. The sounds are quietly eerie. Day lilies are closed up tight and sleeping.

Nightfall brings entirely new and intoxicating fragrances that awaken the senses to a unique garden experience.

What is a night garden?
A night garden incorporates plantings whose, color, texture, sound, and scent can be appreciated in the evening. Sometimes night gardens are called "moon gardens".

Are night gardens new?
According to this Lifescript article, night gardens have been around for a long time: "A night garden is not new to the contemporary world. Moonlight gardens were planted in medieval Japan using white or pale-colored rocks and sand. Pools of water caught the shine of the moon and white chrysanthemums cast a ghostly profile. In the 1600s India's mogul emperor planted a stunning night blooming garden using fragrant and beautiful flowers like jasmine, narcissus, and lilies all in white."

Why plant a night garden?
People who work all day and have busy schedules that keep them away from home until the evening get to enjoy the beauty of the garden. For those who want to unplug and unwind in the evening to the sounds of nature, a night garden is the perfect place to relax.

Where to plant a night garden?
Plant it in a place where you will enjoy it most. Small container night gardens are perfect for those with limited space.

What plants to plant in a night garden?
These plants listed on the DoItYourself site are night bloomers and aromatic, making them perfect for night gardens:

• moonflower
• white sand verbena
• fragrant plantain lily
• evening campion
• yucca
• night-flowering catchfly
• thornapple
• scarlet gaura
• citron daylily
• lemon lily
• evening iris
• evening star
• gumbo lily
• soapwort
• vesper iris
• evening primrose
• night-blooming tropical waterlilies
• four o' clock
• desert lily
• white gaura
• evening stock

Do you have a night garden? Add some plants that you enjoy in the evening hours to the list above.

Ronnie Citron-Fink is a writer and educator. Ronnie regularly writes about sustainable living for online sites and magazines. Along with being the creator of www.econesting.com, Ronnie has contributed to numerous books about green home design, DIY, children, and humor. Ronnie lives the Hudson Valley of New York with her family. 

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(Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by grahamking)

We live in a short attention span society. Between the hours most of us spend in front of the television and the time we spend online, our ability to concentrate is practically under siege on a daily basis.

Yoga is a great way to improve concentration, just by its nature. Working a few of the postures and breathing exercises below into your practice can help boost your power to focus even more!

1. Salutation Seal

2. Alternate Nostril Breathing

Another breathing exercise, practicing alternate nostril breathing for a couple of minutes can really help clear your mind. Like with salutation seal, you'll sit cross legged. Hold your right hand with your palm in front of your face, and fold down your pointer and middle fingers. Before you inhale, use your thumb to hold your right nostril closed. Hold onto that breath, then release the right nostril and use your ring finger to hold your left nostril closed as you exhale.

Now, inhale while still holding the left nostril closed, then switch nostrils to exhale. Repeat this cycle for a couple of minutes to focus your mind and clear your head of distracting thoughts. 

3. Tree Stand

Balance poses are excellent for concentration! You can do tree stand in a number of ways, but to start stand up straight with your hip distance apart. Bend your right knee and grab hold of your right knee with both hands. Once you feel like you have your balance, move your grasp so you're holding your right foot, and slowly place that foot on your left thigh with the toes pointed toward the floor. Move your hands into prayer, and breathe here for about 30 seconds.

If you feel balanced with your hands in prayer, you can move them over your head and either hold them with your arms straight and palms facing each other or place your palms together over your head. Repeat this on your left side.

4. Crane Pose

This is another balancing posture, but this time you're balancing on your arms. Start out in a squat with your feet hip distance apart. Move your legs so that your shins are right in line with your armpits, then place your palms on the floor in front of you. Ever so slowly, tilt your weight forward. The idea here is to get your feet off the floor, so you're balancing fully on your hands.

Crane pose is a bit tricky, but if you keep at it, the payoff is so worth it. Not only does this help with concentration, but it's so gratifying when this posture finally clicks.

5. Seated Forward Bend

6. Camel Pose

Backward bending is about facing our fears, which goes a long way toward quieting those distracting thoughts in our heads. Start sitting on your knees, then raise your bottom off of your feet, so your thighs are perpendicular to the floor. Place your hands on your lower back, then inhale and arch back slowly, letting your head hang gently backwards.

If you feel comfortable there, you can take camel pose to the next level by taking your hands off of your back and grabbing your right foot with your right hand and left foot with the left hand. Stay here for 10-12 deep breaths.

Regardless of how far you take the pose, make sure you move your hands to support your lower back as you come out of it, and come up slowly. Your head should be the last thing you straighten.

7. Reclining Hero Pose

Relaxation poses help you focus in a way similar to some of the breathing exercises. Sit on your knees, then move your feet apart slowly until your bottom is on the floor. Inhale and straighten your spine, then exhale as you lean backwards. The idea here is to relax your back onto the floor. Lay your arms at your sides, palms facing upward and focus on taking deep breaths. You can hold this pose for 30 seconds or up to five full minutes.

If this is too much on your knees, you can try savasana instead. Rather than laying with your knees bent, just lay on your back with your legs straight out and feet hip distance apart. Relax, breathe, and clear your mind.

 

Do you guys have any favorite yoga postures for improving concentration? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

 

More from Care2:

• 8 Tips to Focus Your Mind
• What Does Your Favorite Yoga Pose Say About You?
• 10 Exercises for Better Posture

(Image Credit: digitalART2 / Flickr)

By Paula Alvarado, TreeHugger

Bodies that work with the Earth's magnetic field to determine location. Female-only societies. Telling whether you're a friend or a jerk there to make trouble with just one whiff. Homes so efficient they keep one steady temperature all the time. No, we're not talking about new X-Men or other comic book characters, we're talking about animals with skills we can only dream of.

These seven animals are way smarter than us - just another reason to pay some respect when we encounter them in the wild.

 

1. Homing Pigeons

While most humans need several types of maps and a compass to find their way home after a long journey, the homing pigeon can return from extremely long distances (more than 1,100 miles) without any guidance.

Well, as a matter of fact, they do have some help: According to research by the University of Frankfurt, these pigeons have iron-containing structures in their beaks, which help them sense the Earth's magnetic field independent of their motion and posture, and thus identify their geographical position.

Research results released this year indicate this magnetic charm is present in other birds as well.

 

 

(Image Credit: DavidDennisPhotos.com / Flickr)

2. Ants

Despite their size, the world's many varieties of ants have amazing skills. One of the most impressive is the mycocepurus smithii from the Amazon, a super feminist species that has developed the ability to reproduce via cloning - dispensing with both sex and males - to evolve into an all-female breed.

According to research from the University of Arizona, it's not clear when the change happened, but by reproducing without sex, the ants avoid the energetic cost of producing males and double the number of reproductive females produced each generation.

Unlike us humans, ants have also learned super efficient ways to organize their traffic. And 2006 research by the Berkeley University of California has established that the trap-jaw ant (odontomachus bauri) can close its mandibles at an incredible speed: The strike lasts 0.13 milliseconds, 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye. This allows them to jump enormous heights for their size.

But don't take our word for it, check out the video:

 

 

(Image Credit: exfordy / Flickr)

3. Elephants

They're huge, and sometimes they seem tired and slow. But it's no surprise that this mammal's peculiar nose is really something: Research from the University of St. Andrews suggests that elephants can keep track of up to 30 absent members of their family by sniffing out their scent and building a mental map of where they are. How useful would this little feature be for moms with several kids?

Even better, according to another study by the same University, elephants can tell whether a human is friendly or a threat by their scent and color of clothing. So good luck trying to fool them.

 

 

4. Termites

In Zimbabwe, the termite species Macrotermes michaelseni has developed a precise technique to farm a specific fungus they feed on. As this fungus can only grow at 87 degrees Fahrenheit, and temperatures outside range from 104 degrees Fahrenheit during day and 35 degrees Fahrenheit at night, the termites have come up with a system to keep the temperature steady in their mounds by constantly opening and closing heating and cooling vents.

This is such a useful idea that Loughborough University has conducted research in order to use the same technique in human buildings. Case in point - the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe has been modeled after the termites' system.

 

 

(Image Credit: belgianchocolate / Flickr)

5. Chimps

Much has been said about the intelligence of chimps, with some people claiming they're geniuses and others saying they're only as smart as a three year old kid. Of course, the actual facts fall in between.

But there is at least one area in which chimpanzees are smarter than humans - photographic memory. A study by the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University proves young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection, better even than that of human adults tested with the same apparatus following the same procedure.

Presented with the same sequence of numbers, small chimps could recall them, outperforming humans. Not too shabby.

 

 

(Image Credit: MShades / Flickr)

6. Crows

Contrary to the massive amount of animals and species facing extinction, crows are thriving, reproducing all over the world, with the small exceptions of the Arctic and the Southern tip of South America.

But, although they're proven to be smart in many ways (as Joshua Klein explains in this TED talk), officially scientists say they're not smarter than humans.

However, their amazing capacity for fast adaptation and ability to live in cities show they could be a lot more than they are today. And who knows, one day they might top us.

 

 

(Image Credit: J. D. Ebberly / Flickr)

7. Dolphins

Ok, again, not officially smarter than humans yet, but dolphins have recently been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures (after humans). A zoologist from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, according to The Times, has even gone far to say that their "neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins," and called for reconsideration of human-dolphin interactions. Another scientist from the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles has even called them 'non-human persons.'

So yes, dolphins are smarter than chimps and with communication skills similar to humans'. Their brains are only second in mass to the human brain, making them cultural animals with distinct personalities with the ability to think about the future, among other faculties. How long will these clever animals put up with human abuse? We hope not too long.

Have more suggestions to help us reconsider the way we look at animals? Put them in the comments.

 

More from Care2:

• Chimpanzees: Even More Like Humans Than We Think 
• Are Chimps Smarter Than Humans? (3 videos) 
• Our Pets as Spiritual Teachers? 

(Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by moosicorn)

It is hot out there! We know that insulation helps us run that air conditioner a bit less, but what you might not know is that there are lots of different insulation options, and certain types are much more environmentally sound than others. Insulators like spray foam contain harsh chemicals and even emit greenhouse gases.

Here are some insulation options that get it right:

Blue jeans

In 2008, Levi's recycled over 200,000 pairs of discarded jeans into insulation for the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and you can find recycled denim insulation for the home, too. Not only is denim insulation easier on the environment, you're keeping all of that discarded material out of the landfill!

For folks looking to score denim insulation for the home, Bonded Logic makes home insulation using post-consumer cotton and denim.

Sand

Straw bale construction

Straw bale is a totally natural insulator that's easy to source locally in many areas. It's a great addition to a natural building project, because it's easy to work with. A great insulator, straw is a renewable resource and contains none of the harsh chemicals you'd associate with conventional insulators.

A great way to learn more about natural materials like straw bale is to hunt down sustainable building courses in your area. The more you know how to do yourself, the more money you can save on construction costs.

Paper

Insulating from the outside in

Soy

While too much soy might not be the dietary ideal, it's a great alternative to conventional, toxic spray insulation. Perfect for attics and crawl spaces, soy-based foam helps improve air quality. If you want to find soy insulation for your home, you might check out companies like BioBased.

Did I miss any alternative insulation options here? Let me know in the comments.

Becky Striepe is a green blogger and independent crafter with a passion for vintage fabrics. She runs a crafty business, Glue and Glitter, where her mission is to use existing materials in products that help folks reduce their impact without sacrificing style! She specializes in aprons and custom lunch bags. Like this article? You can follow Becky on Twitter or find her on Facebook.

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(Photo: Getty Images)

How clean is the water at your favorite beach? It's easy to find out thanks to the Natural Resources Defense Council's newly released report on the state of the nation's beaches.

In general, beaches in the Great Lakes region tend to be the dirtiest in the U.S., according to the report, while the Southeast and the Delmarva Peninsula have the highest percentage of clean beaches. Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Illinois had the most reported beach contamination last year, according to the NRDC. Beaches in New Hampshire, Delaware, and Oregon had the least amount of reported contamination.

All told, there were 18,682 beach closing and advisory days last year because of water pollution, according to the report. That's the sixth-highest level since the NRDC began it's annual testing 20 years ago. Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches is based on an analysis of beach water testing results collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009.

Swimming in water that's been contaminated with bacteria, viruses, and parasites can cause skin rashes, stomach flu, ear nose and eye infections, respiratory illnesses, hepatitis, and other diseases.

The NRDC rated 200 of the most popular beaches in the United States based on the quality of the beach water, how frequently it is monitored, and whether the public was notified about contamination.

Here is a list of the cleanest and dirtiest beaches that the NRDC rated. They're not listed in any particular order.  

Cleanest beaches:

• Lafayette Community Club Beach, Minnesota
• Franklin Park at 13^th Street on Park Point, Minnesota
• Hampton Beach State Park, New Hampshire
• Wallis Sands Beach at Wallis Road, New Hampshire
• Bolsa Chica State Beach, California
• Huntington City Beach at the Beach Hut, California
• Newport Beach, California
• Salt Creek Beach at Dana Strands, California
• Cardiff State Beach (portions of), California
• Laguna Beach (portions of), California
• Gulf Shores Public Beach, Alabama (As of July 27, this beach has been closed for 53 days because of the BP oil spill.)

Dirtiest beaches:

• Ben T. Davis North, Florida
• Dixie Belle Beach, Florida
• Monument Beach, Florida
• Navarre Park, Florida
• Quietwater Beach, Florida
• Simmons Park, Florida
• Treasure Island Beach, Florida
• Old Orchard Beach, Maine
• Long Sands Beach, Maine
• Short Sands Beach, Maine
• Courthouse Road Beach, Mississippi
• Edgewater Beach, Mississippi
• Front Beach, Mississippi
• Nags Head (one section), North Carolina
• Hamline Beach State Park, New York
• Orchard Beach, New York
• Robert Moses State Park Beach, New York
• Rockaway Beach (sections of), New York
• Coney Island, New York
• Narragansett Town Beach, Rhode Island
• Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
• South Carolina State Park and Campground, South Carolina
• Springmaid Beach, South Carolina
• Surfside Beach, South Carolina

Can't find your beach on this list? Check out the full list on the NRDC's website. If your beach wasn't evaluated, then here are some additional sources of information on beach water testing results as well as tips for avoiding polluted beaches.

The NRDC offers the following suggestions: Don't swim in water that is cloudy or smells bad. Keep your head out of the water when possible. Avoid swimming for at least 24 hours after heavy rains. Choose beaches that are next to open water and avoid those in the middle of highly developed areas when possible.

 

One new element to this year's NRDC report is a special section on how the BP oil spill is impacting beaches in the Gulf region, which the NRDC says has resulted in a significant increase in beach closings and advisories compared to the same time period last year.

So far this year, there have been 2,239 days of beach closings, advisories, and notices in the Gulf region. Beaches in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida have been effected as of July 27. Check this map of current oil spill beach closures to get up-to-date information.

Breathing in sea spray from dispersed oil or vapors can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and eye and throat irritation, and you can get skin rashes if you touch oil, according to the NRDC.

 

Check out Yahoo! Green on Twitter and Facebook.

You may have heard about a Texas-sized garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean and another island of garbage found in the Atlantic. Scientists recently announced the existence of a third major collection of plastic garbage in the Indian Ocean. Plastic trash swirls around in gyres, which are powerful rotating currents in the world's major oceans. Except none of these areas are actually garbage patches.

"There is no island of trash," says Anna Cummins, cofounder of 5 Gyres Institute. "It's a myth." Instead, she says the garbage patches resemble plastic soup or confetti. "We now have a third accumulation zone of plastic pollution that shows compounding evidence that the trash isn't condensed to an island," she says. "It's spread out across the entire gyre from coast to coast.  The world's oceans are covered with a thin plastic soup that's thickest in the middle of the gyres."

Plastic debris collected from the ocean's newest floating "garbage patch."
(Photo: 5 Gyres Institute)

Cummings and her husband, Marcus Eriksen, established the 5 Gyres Institute to research plastic pollution in the world's oceans. The team works in collaboration with Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Pangaea Explorations. They report that all of the 12 water samples collected in the 3,000 miles between Perth, Australia, and Port Louis, Mauritius (an island due East of Madagascar), contain plastic.

Map of the five ocean gyres (Image: NOAA)

The five large subtropical gyres are located in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian oceans. Once plastic makes its way into the ocean (through sewers, streams, rivers, or from the coast), it is ultimately swept up and trapped in these gyres and forms a swirling soup of garbage.

It would be far easier to clean up the oceans if the trash were forming islands, Eriksen explains. In his opinion, it isn't practical to try to recover the plastic from sea because most is fragmented and widely distributed.

The best solution, he says, is to collect debris that washes up on beaches, which act as natural nets, before it washes back into the ocean where it poses significant health risks for fish, seabirds, and other marine animals that mistake small plastic pellets for food or get tangled in discarded fishing nets.

Garbage washed up on island beaches. (Photo: 5 Gyres Institute)

"If you stand on island beaches and mainland coastlines, you can watch the plastic coming to you. That's where gyre clean up makes the most sense," Eriksen says, "but we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean."

This Indian Ocean garbage patch discovery means there are now three confirmed ocean zones of plastic pollution, and Eriksen and Cummins expect to find others in the South Pacific and South Atlantic gyres also. The 5 Gyres Institute, a team of scientists and educators, will lead eight expeditions to explore the South Atlantic (starting later this summer) and South Pacific (scheduled for next spring).

More garbage floating in the ocean. (Photo: 5 Gyres Institute)

What can we do help prevent this plastic soup from growing larger? We can look for the new degradable bioplastics to replace conventional petroleum-based plastic. We can choose reusable items over disposables and buy less plastics overall.

For more ideas, check out what you can do to stop marine debris from Ocean Conservancy.

Check out Yahoo! Green on Twitter and Facebook.

(Photo courtesy of Plastiki.)

After traveling 130 days and 8,000 miles, the Plastiki sailed in to Sydney earlier today, ending the trek to bring attention to the problem of plastics in our ocean.

Headed up by David de Rothschild, the project's purpose was to show that there is no "away" and that our wasteful ways are causing havoc in the high seas, specifically, causing massive trash gyres like the Pacific Garbage Patch. The Plastiki, made from 12,500 plastic bottles, was home to the adventurers - including TreeHugger's own Graham Hill - as it sailed from San Francisco to Sydney, and now that it has completed the journey, it's time for the crew to see what progress has been made in promoting the message of minimal consumption and maximum recycling.

(Photo courtesy of Plastiki.)

TreeHugger has followed the Plastiki starting well before the crew began their journey, jumping on the opportunity to learn how the boat was being built - which alone is an interesting story with both biomimicry as well as ecology at its heart - and the purpose of the mission.

At the core of the Plastiki voyage was showing that plastic is something to question. In other words, while plastic has its place in our modern lives, we have to consider where we use it, and more importantly, how and where we reuse it. Right now, it is disastrous for our environment. The Plastiki hoped to show both the damage, and the possibilities for sustainable living.

During its time on the water, the Plastiki's crew brought messages about World Ocean Day and pushed to get people to pledge to curb their use of plastic. It's been an incredible trip, and we hope that the ship and its crew accomplished what it set out to do back in April.

And we hope even more that the journey for the Plastiki and advocating for the oceans doesn't end in Sydney.

Follow Jaymi on Twitter for more stories like this.

More on Oceans From TreeHugger:

• Most Beautiful Waves Ever
• Sailboats So Green You'll Want to Quit Your Job and Sail Around the World
• Dozens of Strange Species Discovered Deep in the Atlantic
• An Ocean of Plastic ...in Birds' Guts (Slideshow)
• The Pacific Garbage Patch Explained

Check out Yahoo! Green on Twitter and Facebook.

It has been a sleepless several nights for me, mainly because of troubling events. But it made me start thinking about food, and how it's intimately connected to our patterns of sleep. If you can't sleep, and life is calm and happy, maybe it's something you ate - or didn't. The foods we eat can dramatically affect how much, and how well, we snooze. Some calm and relax, some wake up the nervous system, and some just downright wire you for the night.

What you should eat for deeper sleep depends partly on your patterns. If you toss and turn before drifting off but then doze soundly for the rest of the night, you might benefit from adding slow-burning carbs (beans, sweet potatoes, berries) to your evening meal to prompt the production of serotonin, a brain chemical that promotes calm.

If you zonk out quickly but wake up a few hours later, you might be suffering from blood sugar fluctuations. I've tried a high-protein snack before bed - a handful of walnuts, a spoonful of almond butter, a small cube of cheese - and these tend to keep blood sugar levels steady throughout the night.

Focus on foods with soothing nutrients, like magnesium, which helps relax muscles and calms the body and B vitamins, key in the production of serotonin and other brain chemicals key to sleep. Trytophan, an amino acid that's needed to make sleep-inducing serotonin, is especially effective when it's paired with complex, slow-burning carbs.

And banish foods that stimulate the body and disrupt sleep.

Caffeine's the worst, and its effect can last up to 10 hours, so steer clear of coffee, tea, sodas, chocolate and other foods that contain caffeine after lunchtime. Some other foods have a similar sleep-disrupting effect.

Avoid these five sleep saboteurs:

• Sugar. It's the worst; it prompts the brain to release stress hormones that block sleep, and causes blood sugar fluctuations that can wake you in the wee hours.
• Chocolate. In addition to caffeine, it's high in theobromine, a stimulating plant compound.
• Red wine contains sleep-disrupting alcohol, as well as tyramine, an amino acid that increases the brain's levels of stimulating neurotransmitters.
• Aspartame is worse than sugar; like monosodium glutamate (MSG), it encourages the release of excitatory nerve transmitters that can keep you up all night.
• Spicy foods like garlic, ginger and hot peppers are way too warming and stimulating to eat before bed.

 

For better, faster and deeper Zs, ease yourself into sleep with these soothing snacks...

1. Turkey has the highest levels of tryptophan. Chicken, seafood and soybeans are close seconds. Soothing snacks: a slice of turkey and a few avocado cubes, rolled up in a lettuce leaf; a small bowl of beans plus a couple of grilled shrimp.
2. Yogurt and other dairy products are also rich in sleep-prompting tryptophan. Soothing snacks: a blueberry and flax seed smoothie; a small bowl of yogurt with chopped walnuts and strawberries; a few whole-grain crackers spread with soft goat cheese.
3. Almonds and other nuts and seeds are rich in both tryptophan and nerve-calming magnesium. Soothing snacks: half an apple cut into wedges and spread with almond butter; a small dish of blackberries sprinkled with chopped cashews.
4. Beans and soy are high in B vitamins and magnesium, as well as tryptophan. Soothing snacks: a small dish of hummus with red pepper strips and celery for dipping; a quarter cup of black beans with a slice of avocado.
5. Spinach and other leafy greens like chard, kale and collards, are loaded with both magnesium and B vitamins. Soothing snacks: a small bowl of chopped kale with feta cheese and almonds; a handful of spinach with turkey cubes.

What foods help you snooze? I'd love to hear about your favorites. Please post your comments below, and may all your dreams be sweet.

 

Lisa Turner is a widely published food writer with five books on health and nutrition, and hundreds of magazine articles. In addition to writing books and magazine articles, Lisa combines 20 years of yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices to help her clients explore emotional issues behind their eating habits. Currently, she's a faculty instructor at Bauman College of Culinary Arts and Nutrition in Boulder, Colorado, and hard at work on her next book. Visit her websites at www.TheHealthyGourmet.net and InspiredEating.com.

 

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• Face-Saving Foods 
• Spa Cuisine: Top 20 Healthiest Foods for Spring