5 Common Smartphone Battery misconception

Last month, I did a post on Top Reasons Why Your Smartphone Battery Now Drain Twice As Fast. Click here to view.

Now we are the misconceptions.
The ultimate need to keep our smartphones running at all times has manifest in a number of ways. Smartphone users hunt for different measures to keep their batteries healthier and durable. A number of these "battery saving practices" are just mare misconceptions and misinformations (All na wash) which most people consider. Here are five of the most prevalent smartphone battery myths :

1. Don't use your phone while charging: Most people believe that using your phone while charging might cause your phone to implode or end up electrocuting you. Well this is not exactly true, except if you're using it in a bathtub, making call or if your charger is Aba made . Charging your phone and using it at the same time has no effect on battery quality. However, it can slow the rate at which your phone get fully juiced because the longer you screen is on the more power it'll consume.

2. Let your battery run down completely before charging: This was applicable to old age batteries which are the Nickel Cadmium or Nickel-metal hydride batteries. These batteries used to be foolish. They tend to forget their full capacity hence can no longer charge 100% again. Most Modern smartphones however, use lithium-ion batteries which works entirely different from the old batteries. In fact, complete battery drainage before charging is believed to reduce battery durability. Most batteries have finite number of charging cycles and as it continuously increases battery efficiency is reducing. As your battery drains to 0% more charging cycles results. It is better advisable to keep your battery charged at all times in contrast to complete depletion.

3. Leaving your phone on charger overnight damages the battery: This is probably the most common. As it is believed overcharging reduces the battery's ability to hold charge. This is true for ancient lithium-ion batteries that could overheat or even explode if charged for too long. Modern phones however, are called smartphones for a reason. They're intelligent enough to detect or recognize when the battery is fully charged thereby limiting the power reaching the battery. In fact, most smartphones undergo trickle charge that improves battery health. Leaving your device to charge overnight is not as detrimental as they say. This however,doesn't guarantee you leave your device connected to the power source in excess of 12 hours. Some other factors might arise such as the battery overheating and this coupled with a poor battery casing might cause your battery to explode. It is more recommended to maintain battery juice between 40% - 80%.

4. Use only original charger to charge your phone: Although the use of official original charger is highly recommended, brand-off or third party chargers work just fine. However there's an exception to super-cheap crappy chargers which can lead to battery damage. A Licensed third party charger is just fine as long as it charges you device. Although it might take a longer time to fill up your battery.

5. Task Managers or App killers conserve phone battery: Most often, you'll find a lot of people opting-in for task managers to help preserve smartphone battery. But in the actual sense these apps only results in more battery depletion.App killers tend to arbitrarily destroy applications running in background thereby taking it out of the phone's RAM. Most of these apps are required for the phone to function normally. So as soon as they're closed, they'll have to load to the phone's memory all over again. This frequent loading and unloading puts extra stress on the device leading to more power consumption than if you just left it alone.

#WhaYaSay

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A very touching story. Our Nigerian police should learn from

Am touched by this... Wish our Nigeria police will be like him...
Helene from The USA.Someone reported against her that she stole from a supermarket.

When the policeman went to arrest her , he asked her : what did you steal?, she answered : only five eggs to feed my children.

He took her to the super market and bought for her some food., she started to cry and said : sir it's too much what
you do.

He said : sometimes we shouldn't apply the law but we must apply the humanity.

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Useful tips on giving a quick speech or toast.

Most people would agree that the idea of speaking in front of large groups of people can be terrifying, and so we tend to avoid it whenever possible. There are times, however, when we are faced with the task and there's no running away: we must say a few words. The following is a template for success which you can use when it's your turn to speak, in just about any type of gathering, formal or informal.

1. The Greeting

"Good..."

The greeting is the easy part. You begin by simply wishing your audience a good morning, afternoon, evening, or whatever time of day it is. **Good* evening everybody...*

2. State the Event

"As we all know..."

The second part is also very easy: You simply state the obvious and remind everybody what the purpose of the event or celebration is, and what you're all doing there. **As we all know,* we're here to celebrate the marriage of John and Kate, and to show them our support as they begin their journey of love and life together...* Now you've got the ball rolling, and the words are coming out easily. You look like you know what you're doing up there, and people are listening. So now, it's time to....

3. Establish Common Ground

"We've all..."

It's important to include your audience as part of the message you're delivering. Talk about something both yourself and your audience can relate to regarding the event or celebration. **We've all* had the wonderful opportunity to get to know John and Kate and enjoy watching their love develop...*

4. State Why You're Speaking

"I..."

Include a personal account, or tell a brief story to let people know why you specifically are talking. What gives you the right to be speaking..? **I've* personally been very lucky to have John as a close friend of mine, and it's been quite amazing to watch how he's grown as a person, and couldn't be more pleased for him to have found someone like Kate to go about his life with...*

5. Call for Action

"So let's all..."

Finally, close your speech with a call for action. This lets everybody know that you're finished without you having to awkwardly say "That's it!" or "I'm finished, thank you"...that is how every weak speech is concluded and makes the audience uncomfortable. You should say something like **"So let's all* raise a glass to John and Kate, and wish them well. Cheers!" or, So Let's all give a big round of applause to Mark for the outstanding job he's done while working with the company"*

*you can also crack a little joke at least to buy a little time and manage remaining speech. but this depends on the kind of event and the mood of the audience

Obviously, there are many different ways these leading lines can be used, but if you can commit them to memory and be prepared to use them next time you might be asked to speak, you will let go of all fear and anxiety, and people will be SO impressed with your ability to get up and give a confident, fluent speech in front of a group of people, while looking like you didn't even have to prepare! Good luck, and happy public speaking!

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Eating late at night

Do you eat dinner late at night and go to bed less than three hours later? Do you also suffer from unexplained post-nasal drip, cough, and difficulty swallowing? These could be signs of acid reflux, which, unbeknownst to many, can occur without the telltale signs of heartburn and indigestion. Further, if you want to nip it in the bud, all you may have to do is change your lifestyle to eat dinner earlier. Eating late at night, especially if you overeat and/or eat heavy foods, and then lying down shortly after, is a recipe for acid reflux.
Long work hours necessitate a late dinner for many.

Intermittent Fasting
Our ancestors did not have access to grocery stores or food around the clock. They would cycle through periods of feast and famine, and modern research shows this cycling produces a number of biochemical benefits. Today, simply by altering what and when you eat, you can rather dramatically alter how your body operates for the better.

One of the simplest ways to do this is via intermittent fasting.
There are many methods for doing this, but the one I recommend and personally use is to simply restrict your daily eating to a specific window of time , such as an eight-hour window from 11a.m. to 7p.m.
This gives you a 16-hour fasting "window" without much sacrifice on your part. It also ties in nicely with eating dinner at a reasonable hour (any time prior to 7 p.m.), while giving you
several hours for your food to digest before you lay down for
the night.

What Are the Benefits of Intermittent Fasting?
In this case, the earlier dinner will not only benefit any acid reflux that's present, but, when combined with a delayed breakfast at 11 a.m., will give your body the benefits of
remaining in a carefully timed "famine mode."
Benefits include the following:

Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, and boosting mitochondrial energy efficiency: One of the primary mechanisms that makes intermittent fasting so beneficial for
health is related to its impact on your insulin sensitivity.
While sugar is a source of energy for your body, it also promotes insulin resistance when consumed in the amounts found in our modern processed junk food diets. Insulin
resistance, in turn, is a primary driver of chronic disease— from heart disease to cancer.

Intermittent fasting helps reset your body to use fat as its primary fuel. mounting evidence confirms that when your body becomes adapted to burning FAT instead of sugar as its primary fuel, you dramatically reduce your risk of chronic disease.

Normalizing ghrelin levels , also known as "the hunger hormone."
Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production:
Research has shown fasting can raise HGH by as much as 1,300 percent in women, and 2,000 percent in men, which plays an important part in health, fitness, and slowing the aging process. HGH is also a fat-burning hormone, which helps explain why fasting is so effective for weight loss. Lowering triglyceride levels and improving other biomarkers of disease.

Reducing oxidative stress: Fasting decreases the accumulation of oxidative radicals in the cell, and thereby prevents oxidative damage to cellular proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids associated with aging and disease.
Intermittent fasting is the most powerful tool I know to address insulin resistance. However, once the resistance is resolved and you are no longer overweight, have high blood pressure, diabetes, or are taking a statin drug you don't need to do it and would only benefit from doing it occasionally.

Eating Too Late at Night Throws Your Internal Clock Off Kilter If you're in need of more motivation to move your dinnertime up a few hours, emerging research suggests that the timing of your meals, for instance eating very late at night when you'd normally be sleeping, may throw off your body's internal clock and lead to weight gain. For instance, artificial light, such as a glow from your TV or computer, can serve as a stimulus for keeping you awake and, possibly, eating, when you should really be asleep.
In one study, mice that were exposed to dim light during the night gained 50 percent more weight over an eight-week
period than mice kept in complete darkness at night. They also had increased levels of glucose intolerance, a marker for pre-diabetes. The weight gain occurred even though the mice were fed the same amount of food and had similar activity levels, and the researchers believe the findings may hold true for humans as well.
When mice were exposed to night time light, they ended up eating more of their food when they would normally be sleeping, and this led to significant weight gain. However, in a second experiment when researchers restricted meals to times of day when the mice would normally eat, they did not gain weight, even when exposed to light at night. So when your light and dark signals become disrupted it not only changes the times you may normally eat, it also throws your metabolism off kilter, likely leading to weight gain.

The Case for Making Dinner Your Biggest Meal of the Day
You've probably heard the advice to make your mid-day meal the biggest of the day and have a lighter meal at dinner, which takes some stress off your body and allows you time to wind down for bedtime (rather than digesting a heavy meal). But this is debatable… and possibly all wrong. Some experts believe that eating your main meal at night may actually be more in-tune with your innate biological clock. Routinely eating at the wrong time may not only disrupt your biological clock and interfere with your sleep, but it may also devastate vital body functions and contribute to disease. According to Ori Hofmekler, author of The Warrior Diet: "Your body is programmed for nocturnal feeding. All your activities, including your feeding, are controlled by your autonomic nervous system, which operates around the circadian clock. During the day, your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) puts your body in an energy spending active mode, whereas during the night your parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) puts your body in an energy replenishing relaxed and sleepy mode.
These two parts of your autonomic nervous system complement each other like yin and yang. Your SNS, which is stimulated by fasting and exercise, keeps you alert and active with an increased capacity to resist stress and hunger throughout the day. And your PSNS, which is stimulated by your nightly feeding, makes you relaxed and sleepy, with a better capacity to digest and replenish nutrients throughout the night. This is how your autonomic nervous system operates under normal conditions.
But that system is highly vulnerable to disruption. If you eat at the wrong time such as when having a large meal during the day, you will mess with your autonomic nervous system; you'll inhibit your SNS and instead turn on the PSNS, which will make you sleepy and fatigued rather than alert and active during the working hours of the day. And instead of spending energy and burning fat, you'll store energy and gain fat. This is indeed a lose-lose situation."
That being said, even if you do eat your main meal at night, you'll want to avoid eating it too close to bedtime as doing so may increase your risk of acid reflux symptoms. Ideally, try to give yourself a three to four hours window between your last meal of the day and bedtime. Personally, I eat my primary and really only major meal in the mid-afternoon. I snack a bit before and after but this seems to work for me as long as I get enough calories and protein.

Written By Dr. Mercola

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