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    Our lifestyles today are very busy. We have family, school, sports, entertainment and social activities to fit into a time that seems never enough. We need to be healthy to meet the demands of daily life. But what does it mean to have a healthy lifestyle?

To have a healthy lifestyle, we need to:

◆ eat different kinds of healthy food most of the time

◆ do exercise often

◆ have time to relax

◆ get enough sleep to give our bodies time to grow healthy and strong

Read about a normal day in the lives of two children.

    No matter which kind of lifestyle you agree on, just remember it's important to balance all aspects of life.

    Taobao is a major online shopping website in China. For those who just love to shop online, now is the best time of the year, because Nov 11, China's Singles' Day, will see some seemingly irrational discounts, in line with the tradition that was started in 2010.

    Last year, Taobao, a major online shopping website, set a record of 1 billion yuan in sales on that day alone, with a whopping 19.1 billion yuan exchanging hands on the website. The number of items sold paralyzed the delivery services due to overloading. On the verge of yet another annual spending spree, it's worth reading up on tricks and tips to make the most of the shopping carnival.

    Be prepared

    Select goods early and rationally

    Put everything you want in the “shopping cart” to make a list of potential purchases. Then go through it carefully, removing anything you selected on impulse.

    Seal a deal in advance

    Talk to service staff as early as possible. They may have already decided on a discount policy for Nov 11 and may even ship the product to you in advance, which is a good way to avoid the heavy online traffic on the special day.

    Manage your budget

    Popular items will be in strong demand, so make sure you're ready to pay with the least number of procedures. It's best to deposit a reasonable amount of money in your Alipay account so that you can pay without going through any lengthy verifications. If you're planning on using a credit card, you can call the bank to apply for more credit, but only spend as much as you can afford to repay.

    Look at the real items

    With many products, such as shoes and clothes, it's better to look at them first to check their quality, size and appearance and ensure you're buying the right one.

    Be smart

    It's all about timing

    According to Alipay, there are several peak hours when online traffic is heavy and there is a higher risk of failed transactions. Try to avoid the following time spans: 12 pm-1:30 am, 10-11 am, 3-5 pm, and 8-10 pm.

    Apps as a helping hand

    Smartphone apps like Huihui Shopping list the best offers on a particular website, while Yitao, a software developed by Alibaba, compares prices of selected items across different websites to bring you the best deal.

    Track and open your package

    Because of the huge demand, delivery mistakes are inevitable, so try to track the package. If the product is perishable, keep the tracking record in case of a dispute. When the package arrives, check the item carefully before signing for it. Now you can go ahead and enjoy all your new stuff!

    Are you so sure your mistakes are just mistakes? Or could they be building blocks to a success beyond any you imagined?

    When my friend Dorothy goes home to visit her family each Thanksgiving, her mother serves the traditional “mistake salad”. The dish was born many years ago, Dorothy explains, when mother was using a cookbook to make a salad. In the process, by mistake, mother included half the salad ingredients (原料) from a recipe (食谱) on the left side of the open cookbook, and half the ingredients from a different salad recipe on the opposite page. Everyone enjoyed the salad so much that she continued to serve it every year. So it was really not a mistake at all.

    Then there was the man named Alfred, who invented dynamite (炸药). When Alfred's brother died, the city newspaper mistook his brother for him, saying in the news that the dead's most famous act was the creation of bombs (炸弹). Surprised to consider that his name would forever be connected with destruction, Alfred wanted to leave a more positive impression on people. So he set a prize for people who made contributions to world peace. Now the Nobel Prize, set up by Alfred Nobel, is the most respected prize in the world.

    Everything is part of something bigger, and so are mistakes. In his brilliant book Illusions, Richard Bach explains that every problem comes to you with a gift. If you only fix your attention on what went wrong, you miss the gift. If you are willing to look deeper and ask for the bright, the problem will disappear. You are left only with the learning, and you go forward on your path.

    A T-shirt that constantly monitors the heart's activity and detects abnormalities could help protect people against stroke. The T-shirt, which can be washed up to 35 times before it needs replacing, has been developed to improve the detection of dangerous heart conditions like atrial fibrillation( 心房颤动), which causes an irregular heart rhythm and raises the risk of stroke.

    At least one million people in Britain are known to have this condition; however, it's estimated that at least another 500,000 have it but haven't yet been diagnosed because they have no obvious symptoms. Some will have symptoms such as chest pain, dizziness and fatigue; but a large number of people have no idea they're ill until they suffer a stroke.

    Detecting atrial fibrillation involves carrying out an ECG(心电图). Conventional ECGs are done in a hospital and involve highly trained teams of staff attaching up to 24 separate electrodes(电极) to different parts of the body to measure electrical signals. But most patients experience abnormal rhythms only intermittently(间歇地). This means the chance of picking them up during a short hospital check is slim.

    Doctors sometimes issue patients with a device called a Holter monitor to wear under their clothes to try to pick up cardiac( 心脏的) problems. This is an electronic box which clips onto your waistband and is connected to a series of electrodes worn on the upper part of your body. But the box itself is quite bulky, hard to hide beneath clothing and involves a dozen or more wires being attached to the patient's chest.

    The Cardioskin T-shirt, which is made from cotton, could be a much more convenient alternative and can be worn 24 hours a day — meaning it is more likely to pick up any abnormal rhythms in the patient's heart. It has 15 tiny electrodes woven into the material which are strategically placed around the chest area to track the electrical signals from the heart as they travel across the main part of your body.

    The electrodes are powered by a battery which can be removed easily when you need to wash the T- shirt and feed results to a microchip which then sends them out wirelessly to an app. This converts( 转换) the data into an easy-to-read chart showing if the heart rate is abnormal. The results are shared with the patient's doctor so they can check the patient's heart without having to call them into the hospital.

    Martin Cowie, a professor of cardiology at Imperial College London, said, “Cardioskin could be an important development for cardiologists.”

    Parents should ban electronic media during mealtimes and after bedtime as part of a comprehensive "family media use plan", according to new recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Excessive media use is associated with obesity, poor school performance, aggression and lack of sleep", said Marjorie Hogan, co-author of the new policy.

    Families should have a no-device rule during meals and after bedtime, the guidelines say. Parents should also set family rules covering the use of the Internet, cellphones, including, perhaps, which sites can be visited, and who can be called. The policy also restated the existing recommendations: Kids should limit the amount of screen time for entertainment to less than two hours per day; children younger than 2 shouldn't have any TV or Internet exposure. Also, televisions and Internet-accessible devices should be kept out of kids' bedrooms.

    Doctors say parents need to obey the family rules, too, to model healthy behavior. That, some say, may be the toughest part. "If you go to any restaurant, Family 3.0 is Mom and Dad on their devices and the kids on theirs", says Donald, a pediatrician and an AAP spokesman. "Who is talking to each other?"

    Children aged from 8 to 18 spent an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day consuming media for fun, including TV, music, video games and other content in 2009, according to a 2010 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report was based on a survey of 2002 third through twelfth graders, 702 of whom completed a seven-day media use diary. That was up about an hour and 17 minutes a day from five years earlier. About two-thirds of 8 to 18-year-olds said they had no rules on the amount of time they spent watching TV, playing video games or using the computer, the Kaiser report found.

    Use of mobile devices by young kids has soared. A new report from Common Sense Media, a child-advocacy group based in San Francisco, found that 17% of children 8 and younger use mobile devices daily, up from 8% in 2011.