Oof. The afternoon lull. Your eyelids feel like they’ve got kettlebells attached to them, your energy abandoned you sometime around lunchtime, and you seem to have all the focus of a fruit fly. But instead of reaching for a hit of caffeine, shut it down for a quick nap, says David Neubauer, MD, associate director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Sleep Disorders Center. And let’s face it, we could all use some more sleep....
[sidebar]Vitamin C A 10-year Boston University study of 149 people with knee osteoarthritis (OA) found that getting less than 150 mg of vitamin C per day tripled the rate of cartilage breakdown. High-C foods include sweet peppers, peaches, and strawberries. Omega-3s Several clinical trials found that eating 3 g of fish fats a day relieved the joint pain, swelling, and morning stiffness of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and reduced the need for drugs....
Although some of this worrying can help keep you healthy—assuming it helps you to consume fewer artery-clogging saturated and trans fats—much of it is misguided. All too often, we feel guilty about eating foods that actually aren’t all that bad. In fact, some of these guilty pleasures can actually be healthy snacks. So with a glass of wine and a handful of nuts in hand, savor the news you’re about to read—and put those worries to rest!...
Ashley’s answer: No, of course not. Head to bed, let your body get the amazing benefits of recovery that good sleep provides, and know that you are totally fine having one day a year that you don’t eat any veggies. However, when you rise the next day and on all subsequent days, it’s critical to find ways to get vegetables—every color of the rainbow—because these colored gems are Mother Nature’s clean-up system....
Ashley’s answer: Cereals should contain protein from whole cereal grains which naturally include amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. However, if the cereal grain is refined into a “flour” (note: this is different than a “whole-grain flour”) the processing removes amino acids (proteins) and other nutrients leaving just the white flour. Cereals may also contain protein from the addition of nuts and seeds, equally good protein sources. The cheaper and less healthy option to get “protein” in many cereals is to add some “protein” from a refined source....
While DOs are often indistinguishable from MDs (they are fully licensed, and can prescribe drugs and perform surgery like an MD), their medical education is rooted in a distinctive philosophy. Like all integrative doctors, osteopathic physicians are taught to encourage the body back toward health using the least invasive measures first. What differentiates their training is this: It focuses on how the structures of our bodies are deeply linked with how healthy we are....
Researchers examined data from more than 1,900 people who were participating in two large-scale studies. Participants’ body weight and personality traits were collected at two check points, nearly a decade apart. What researchers found was that those who gained 10 percent or more of their weight in that time period showed significantly increased impulsiveness, the heightened tendency to give into temptations. But there was an unexpected twist lurking in the data: those same participants showed an increased deliberation—aka, the tendency to think before acting—nearly twice as much as those who maintained a consistent weight between check points....
Peanut ButterPB is the complete package: high-quality, slow-burning carbs, heart-healthy fat, and protein, all in one jar. “Peanut butter also has fiber that helps you feel fuller faster, too,” says Timothy S. Harlan, MD, director of the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University. What’s more, it has a ton of micronutrients: folate for healthy tissue growth, copper to help prevent low iron levels, phosphorus for healthy bones and teeth, magnesium to keep your metabolism firing, and manganese to help blood sugar regulation....
Finally! Wrinkly Bath Time Toes Explained [Science Blogs] A soak in the tub will help your entire body unwind, but it’ll also lead to one particularly annoying downside—wrinkly fingers and toes. Now, scientists are offering up an explanation for the phenomenon…and it might make you appreciate those pruned digits a little more. Wrinkly skin is better able to adhere to surfaces, says a team out of Newcastle University, and we likely inherited these bath time wrinkles from our ancestors: They may have relied on wrinkled fingers to grab food from wet vegetation or streams, and wrinkly toes probably improved their grip when walking in rainy weather....
You’re qualified for the position, you’ve spent hours perfecting that résumé and CV, and you’ve got your good luck heels on. But none of that may matter if your leisure pursuits, personal experiences, and taste in movies—basically, what defines your life outside of work—don’t align with those of the person doing your interview, finds a new study out of Northwestern University. Over a research period of nearly three years, study author Lauren Rivera, PhD, an assistant professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, interviewed 120 hiring managers and directors from elite-level law, investment, and consulting firms....
Talk about practicing what you preach. Petra Strand built an internationally-loved beauty brand based on the following principle: to make women look like themselves, but better, in just a few fuss-free minutes. And she, just like her products, are always multitasking. Whether she’s at an all-day event promoting Pixi, her line of beauty products (we’ve seen it!), or running around with her two sons, 47-year-old Petra maintains the same fresh, effortless look her botanical products deliver....
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So this is why Beyonce and Kate Middleton always look so zen: Powerful people are happier because they feel more authentic, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. To reach that conclusion, investigators conducted online surveys in both the US and Israel. They found that dispositional power (feeling that you’re in control and have a level of power) predicted happiness. In fact, the link held up across several different facets of life, including an individual’s career, relationship, and friendships....
Honesty may not be the best policy when it comes to relationships. Couples lie to each other an average of three times a week—but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to a recent study soon to be published in the journal Communication Quarterly. Researchers looked at how often people expressed affection toward their partners even when they weren’t genuinely feeling it—otherwise known as deceptive affection. This could be anything from complimenting your partner’s haircut, when you actually think it’s heinous, to kissing him goodbye even when you’re really irked....
Between 1990-1993 and again from 2000-2001, more than 9,000 older adults underwent cognitive tests and took subjective memory surveys, and then researchers followed the participants until 2012 for incidence of stroke. What they found was scary: While poor performance on formal cognitive tests didn’t show a significant relationship to future stroke risk, memory complaints did. Adults who’d reported memory problems were more likely to have a stroke compared to adults who didn’t....
To prove it, we scoured research from the world’s leading experts to bring you breakthrough insights on the small steps you can take to maximize your health and happiness for decades. We broke our findings into these five handy categories; click through the links for genius ways to keep getting better: The Body BeautifulTo fight the sings of aging, you have to first understand what’s really going on. Here’s your guide to four essential systems and how to take care of them for a lifetime: Your heart Your brainYour bodyYour skin...
MORE: Brain Games That Make You Smarter Your numbers are low Fuzzy mindedness could signal a vitamin or hormone deficiency, especially if you’re also feeling unusually tired. For example, hypothyroidism—too-low levels of thyroid hormone—could be to blame, says Robert Orford, MD, consultant at the Mayo Clinic’s Preventive Medicine Division in Scottsdale, AZ. “If there’s a deficiency in thyroid hormone, metabolism slows, which reduces blood flow and cellular function in various parts of the brain,” Dr....
In the spirit of having some serious fun in the sun—safely!—we’ve gathered our best tips on protecting your skin: There’s one thing skin experts agree on: We don’t use as much sunscreen as we should. In fact, the protection most of us get from SPF 15 is more like SPF 3 to 7. See what SPF level you should be using, and sort out the rest of your sunscreen confusion....
