The Underrated Full Body Exercise (That Looks A Little Silly)
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Sometimes, the best exercises don’t look very impressive, but this one’s a good one:
Shake it up!
You’ll want a heavy blanket of some kind, or a thick towel. Something that won’t whip/snap.
Then:
- Set your stance: stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, and core braced. Hold one end of the towel in each hand.
- Start shaking: explosively shake the towel up and down with both arms, keeping your elbows slightly bent. Focus on powerful, quick movements.
- Add footwork: shuffle side to side, step forwards and backwards, or move in small circles while continuing to shake the towel. Keep your upper and lower body working together, but independently.
- Mix movement planes: alternate between vertical shakes (up and down), horizontal shakes (side to side), or diagonal motions to engage more muscles.
- Adjust intervals: do short bursts (10–20 seconds) going for all-out for conditioning and power; use longer rounds (1–2 minutes), at 65–75% effort for endurance.
The main advantage of this is that it works the body in every direction—lateral, forward, backward, rotational—unlike running, biking, or even burpees that stay in one plane.
It conditions shoulders, arms, and core while improving strength, endurance, balance, and stability. It’s also a good option if lower body impact needs to be reduced (e.g. due to injury, joint problems, etc).
For more on all of this plus a visual demonstration, enjoy:
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Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health
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This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than 48,000 stranded, and wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed at least 16,000 homes and other buildings.
Events such as these signal what climate scientists have long warned: climate-related extremes are becoming more frequent and intense.
Poor housing can leave us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So in today’s warming world, it’s increasingly important our homes and our housing system are climate resilient. This means they must protect us from heatwaves, floods and bushfires, and keep out air pollutants. And the housing system must function to provide affordable and secure housing.
Location is important too. Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, released this week, estimates 8.7% of residential buildings are in very high-risk areas (prone to hazards). This proportion is projected to increase to 13.5% by 2090 in a scenario with a high global warming level.
Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a new paper published in the Lancet Public Health, my colleagues and I identify several ways climate change affects our homes, and in turn, our health.
On a basic level, housing shields us from the elements. But when we look at the bigger picture, resilient housing and housing systems have a key role to play in helping us face the challenges of climate change.
How does climate change affect our homes and our health?
Climate change can lead to deterioration in the indoor conditions in our homes.
For example, extreme temperatures can compromise air quality by making building materials more likely to degrade and generate pollutants. Particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants from bushfire smoke can infiltrate indoor environments. Both of these processes can contribute to poor indoor air quality. This is not to mention that extreme heat outside can lead to unbearable temperatures indoors.
Meanwhile, floods, storms and cyclones can cause structural and water damage to homes. This can expose occupants to toxins, for example from contaminated water, and increase the risk of allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and infectious diseases (such as water-borne and mosquito-borne diseases).
Climate change and housing security
The risks associated with climate change can also influence housing security and affordability.
Both housing insecurity and unaffordability are significant predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing, and both are already significant problems independent of climate change.
But a changing climate exacerbates these problems. Equally, the housing crisis leaves us more vulnerable to climate change.
Climate-related disasters put a strain on housing costs and general cost-of-living pressures. Residents may need to pay for maintenance and repairs alongside their mortgages and rental payments. Meanwhile, increasing extreme weather events push insurance premiums higher. All this puts pressure on housing affordability.
Extreme temperatures also increase the risk of energy poverty. Not being able to adequately heat or cool a home can negatively affect both physical and mental health for its occupants.
What’s more, climate-related disasters can drive forced relocation, with flow-on effects to health and wellbeing through disruption to family life, loss of income, gender-based violence, social disconnection, and reduced access to services.
Notably, the effects of climate change reduce the supply of affordable housing, especially affordable rentals, which are more likely to be damaged or lost from hazards, for example due to lower structural quality. Lower-income renters as a result find it harder to compete for the remaining stock.
There are also other examples showing the effects of climate change on housing are inequitable, with the consequences flowing disproportionately to less advantaged groups.
When areas with low climate risk become more desirable, this can drive up housing and other costs in an area. Climate “gentrification” can displace low-income households to higher risk and less protected areas. We’ve seen this happen in countries including the United States and Denmark.
What does climate-resilient housing look like?
Housing needs to protect people from the growing risks posed by climate change. In a physical sense, this means it must be robust enough to bear more intense weather conditions, be energy efficient, and have good thermal performance that allows for both ventilation and climate control.
To achieve this, climate-resilient housing should include features such as:
- well-constructed foundations, walls and roofs
- ventilation and insulation
- energy-efficient cooling and heating
- exterior shading and roof reflectivity
- building materials that are fire- and heat-resistant.
Building codes need to be cognisant of the changing climate, while existing housing may need to be upgraded.
We’ve seen some signs of progress. For example, updates to the National Construction Code in recent years have accounted for the increasing impact of climate change, by raising energy efficiency and thermal performance standards, among other measures.
There is also a need for stronger tenant protection policies. Rental housing is disproportionately of poor quality, yet it houses a large portion of the more vulnerable people in the population. Minimum standards for rental housing must be climate resilient.
But housing people well isn’t just a question of the physical construction of homes.
Climate-resilient housing should be affordable, secure and provide residents the chance to access opportunities for work, education and social connection that sustain wellbeing.
So much public discussion has focused on the need to meet housing supply targets, but we can’t forget that people need to be housed well to flourish.
This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.
Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
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“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said…
This is Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author. She’s most known for her best-selling “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power Of Balancing Your Blood Sugar”.
It’s a great book (which we reviewed recently) and you absolutely should read it, but meanwhile, we’re going to distill at least the most critical core ideas, 10almonds style. In this case, her “ten hacks”:
Eat foods in the right order
The order is:
- Fiber first
- Protein and fat second
- Starches and sugars last
What happens here is… the fiber perks up the gut bacteria, the protein and fat will then be better-digested next, and the starches and sugars will try to jump the line, but they can’t because the fiber is a physical speedbump and the proteins and fats are taking the prime place for being digested. So instead, the starches and sugars—usually responsible for blood sugar spikes—get processed much more gradually, resulting in a nice even curve.
Add a green starter to all your meals
We know what you’re thinking: “that’s just the first one again”, but no. This is an extra starter, before you get to that. If you’re the cook of the household, this can absolutely simply mean snacking on green ingredients while cooking.
Stop counting calories
Especially, she advises: stop worrying about extra calories from fats, such as if doing an oil-and-vinegar dressing for salad—which she also recommends, because all three components (the oil, the vinegar, and the salad) help even out blood sugar levels.
Flatten your breakfast curve
For many, breakfast is the starchiest meal of the day, if not the sugariest. Inchauspé recommends flipping this (ideally) or softening it (if you really must have a carb-based breakfast):
- Top choices include: a warm vegetable salad, fish, or eggs (or tofu if you don’t do animal products).
- Next-best include: if you must have toast, make sure to have butter (and/or the aforementioned egg/tofu, for example) to give your digestion an extra thing to do.
- Also: she recommends skipping the juice in favour of home-made breakfast smoothies. That way, instead of basically just sugar with some vitamins, you’re getting a range of nutrients that, if you stack it right, can constitute a balanced meal itself, with fiber + protein + fat + carbs.
Have any type of sugar—they’re all the same
They’re technically not, but the point is that your body will immediately take them apart and then they will be just the same. Whether it’s the cheapest white sugar or the most expensive organic lovingly hand-reared free-range agave nectar, your body is going to immediately give it the chop-shop treatment (a process so quick as to be practically instantaneous) and say “this is now glucose”.
Pick a dessert over a sweet snack
Remember that about the right order for foods? A dessert, when your body is already digesting dinner, is going to make much less of a glucose spike than, say, a blueberry muffin when all you’ve had this morning is coffee and juice.
Reach for the vinegar before you eat
We recently did a whole main feature about this, so we’ll not double up today!
After you eat, move
The glucose you eat will be used to replace lost muscle glycogen, before any left over is stored as fat… and, while it’s waiting to be stored as fat, just sitting in your bloodstream being high blood sugars. So, this whole thing will go a lot better if you are actively using muscle glycogen (by moving your body).
Inchauspé gives a metaphor: imagine a steam train worker, shoveling coal into the furnace. Meanwhile, other workers are bringing more coal. If the train is moving quickly, the coal can be shoveled into the furnace and burned and won’t build up so quickly. But if the train is moving slowly or not at all, that coal is just going to build up and build up, until the worker can shovel no more because of being neck-deep in coal.
Same with your blood sugars!
If you want to snack, go low-sugar
In the category of advice that will shock nobody: sugary snacks aren’t good for avoiding blood sugar spikes! This one probably didn’t need a chapter devoted to it, but anyway: low sugar is indeed the way to go for snacks.
Put some clothes on your carbs
This is about olive oil on pasta, butter on potatoes, and so forth. Basically, anything starchy is going to be broken down quickly to sugar and sent straight into the bloodstream, if there’s nothing to slow it down. If you’re wondering what to do with rice: adding a tablespoon of chia seeds to the rice while cooking (so they’re cooked together) will add very healthy fats to your rice, and (because they’ve been cooked) will not seem like eating seeds, by the way. In terms of texture and appearance, it’ll be as though you threw some black pepper in*
*which you should also do for many reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this “about blood sugars” feature!
Wanting to know more about the science of this?
We’ve done all we have room for here today, but Inchauspé is, as ever, happy to explain it herself:
Prefer text? Check out:
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They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten.
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KFF Health News and KCUR are following the stories of people injured during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl celebration. Listen to how one Kansas family is coping with the trauma.
Jason Barton didn’t want to attend the Super Bowl parade this year. He told a co-worker the night before that he worried about a mass shooting. But it was Valentine’s Day, his wife is a Kansas City Chiefs superfan, and he couldn’t afford to take her to games since ticket prices soared after the team won the championship in 2020.
So Barton drove 50 miles from Osawatomie, Kansas, to downtown Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Bridget, her 13-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and Gabriella’s school friend. When they finally arrived home that night, they cleaned blood from Gabriella’s sneakers and found a bullet in Bridget’s backpack.
Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks from a ricocheted bullet, Bridget was trampled while shielding Gabriella in the chaos, and Jason gave chest compressions to a man injured by gunfire. He believes it was Lyndell Mays, one of two men charged with second-degree felony murder.
“There’s never going to be a Valentine’s Day where I look back and I don’t think about it,” Gabriella said, “because that’s a day where we’re supposed to have fun and appreciate the people that we have.”
One month after the parade in which the U.S. public health crisis that is gun violence played out on live television, the Bartons are reeling from their role at its epicenter. They were just feet from 43-year-old Lisa Lopez-Galvan, who was killed. Twenty-four other people were injured. Although the Bartons aren’t included in that official victim number, they were traumatized, physically and emotionally, and pain permeates their lives: Bridget and Jason keep canceling plans to go out, opting instead to stay home together; Gabriella plans to join a boxing club instead of the dance team.
During this first month, Kansas City community leaders have weighed how to care for people caught in the bloody crossfire and how to divide more than $2 million donated to public funds for victims in the initial outpouring of grief.
The questions are far-reaching: How does a city compensate people for medical bills, recovery treatments, counseling, and lost wages? And what about those who have PTSD-like symptoms that could last years? How does a community identify and care for victims often overlooked in the first flush of reporting on a mass shooting: the injured?
The injured list could grow. Prosecutors and Kansas City police are mounting a legal case against four of the shooting suspects, and are encouraging additional victims to come forward.
“Specifically, we’re looking for individuals who suffered wounds from their trying to escape. A stampede occurred while people were trying to flee,” said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. Anyone who “in the fleeing of this event that maybe fell down, you were trampled, you sprained an ankle, you broke a bone.”
Meanwhile, people who took charge of raising money and providing services to care for the injured are wrestling with who gets the money — and who doesn’t. Due to large donations from celebrities like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, some victims or their families will have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical expenses. Other victims may simply have their counseling covered.
The overall economic cost of U.S. firearm injuries is estimated by a recent Harvard Medical School study at $557 billion annually. Most of that — 88% — represented quality-of-life losses among those injured by firearms and their families. The JAMA-published study found that each nonfatal firearm injury leads to roughly $30,000 in direct health care spending per survivor in the first year alone.
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, as well-intentioned GoFundMe pages popped up to help victims, executives at United Way of Greater Kansas City gathered to devise a collective donation response. They came up with “three concentric circles of victims,” said Jessica Blubaugh, the United Way’s chief philanthropy officer, and launched the #KCStrong campaign.
“There were folks that were obviously directly impacted by gunfire. Then the next circle out is folks that were impacted, not necessarily by gunshots, but by physical impact. So maybe they were trampled and maybe they tore a ligament or something because they were running away,” Blubaugh said. “Then third is folks that were just adjacent and/or bystanders that have a lot of trauma from all of this.”
PTSD, Panic, and the Echo of Gunfire
Bridget Barton returned to Kansas City the day after the shooting to turn in the bullet she found in her backpack and to give a statement at police headquarters. Unbeknownst to her, Mayor Quinton Lucas and the police and fire chiefs had just finished a press conference outside the building. She was mobbed by the media assembled there — interviews that are now a blur.
“I don’t know how you guys do this every day,” she remembered telling a detective once she finally got inside.
The Bartons have been overwhelmed by well wishes from close friends and family as they navigate the trauma, almost to the point of exhaustion. Bridget took to social media to explain she wasn’t ignoring the messages, she’s just responding as she feels able — some days she can hardly look at her phone, she said.
A family friend bought new Barbie blankets for Gabriella and her friend after the ones they brought to the parade were lost or ruined. Bridget tried replacing the blankets herself at her local Walmart, but when she was bumped accidentally, it triggered a panic attack. She abandoned her cart and drove home.
“I’m trying to get my anxiety under control,” Bridget said.
That means therapy. Before the parade, she was already seeing a therapist and planning to begin eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a form of therapy associated with treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Now the shooting is the first thing she wants to talk about in therapy.
Since Gabriella, an eighth grader, has returned to middle school, she has dealt with the compounding immaturity of adolescence: peers telling her to get over it, pointing finger guns at her, or even saying it should have been her who was shot. But her friends are checking on her and asking how she’s doing. She wishes more people would do the same for her friend, who took off running when the shooting started and avoided injury. Gabriella feels guilty about bringing her to what turned into a horrifying experience.
“We can tell her all day long, ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’s not your responsibility.’ Just like I can tell myself, ‘It wasn’t my fault or my responsibility,’” Bridget said. “But I still bawled on her mom’s shoulder telling her how sorry I was that I grabbed my kid first.”
The two girls have spent a lot of time talking since the shooting, which Gabriella said helps with her own stress. So does spending time with her dog and her lizard, putting on makeup, and listening to music — Tech N9ne’s performance was a highlight of the Super Bowl celebration for her.
In addition to the spark burns on Gabriella’s legs, when she fell to the concrete in the pandemonium she split open a burn wound on her stomach previously caused by a styling iron.
“When I see that, I just picture my mom trying to protect me and seeing everyone run,” Gabriella said of the wound.
It’s hard not to feel forgotten by the public, Bridget said. The shooting, especially its survivors, have largely faded from the headlines aside from court dates. Two additional high-profile shootings have occurred in the area since the parade. Doesn’t the community care, she wonders, that her family is still living with the fallout every day?
“I’m going to put this as plainly as possible. I’m f—ing pissed because my family went through something traumatic,” Bridget vented in a recent social media post. “I don’t really want anything other [than], ‘Your story matters, too, and we want to know how you’re doing.’ Have we gotten that? Abso-f—lutely not.”
‘What Is the Landscape of Need?’
Helped in part by celebrities like Swift and Kelce, donations for the family of Lopez-Galvan, the lone fatality, and other victims poured in immediately after the shootings. Swift and Kelce donated $100,000 each. With the help of an initial $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, the United Way’s #KCStrong campaign took off, reaching $1 million in the first two weeks and sitting at $1.2 million now.
Six verified GoFundMe funds were established. One solely for the Lopez-Galvan family has collected over $406,000. Smaller ones were started by a local college student and Swift fans. Churches have also stepped up, and one local coalition had raised $183,000, money set aside for Lopez-Galvan’s funeral, counseling services for five victims, and other medical bills from Children’s Mercy Kansas City hospital, said Ray Jarrett, executive director of Unite KC.
Money for Victims Rolls In
Donations poured in for those injured at the Super Bowl Parade in Kansas City after the Feb. 14 shootings. The largest, starting with a $200,000 donation from the Kansas City Chiefs, is at the United Way of Greater Kansas City. Six GoFundMe sites also popped up, due in part to $100,000 donations each from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Here’s a look at the totals as of March 12.United Way#KCStrong: $1.2 million.Six Verified GoFundMe AccountsLisa Lopez-Galvan GoFundMe (Taylor Swift donated): $406,142Reyes Family GoFundMe (Travis Kelce donated): $207,035Samuel Arellano GoFundMe: $11,896Emily Tavis GoFundMe: $9,518Cristian Martinez’s GoFundMe for United Way: $2,967Swifties’ GoFundMe for Children’s Mercy hospital: $1,060ChurchesResurrection (Methodist) “Victims of Violence Fund”: $53,358‘The Church Loves Kansas City’: $183,000
Meanwhile, those leading the efforts found models in other cities. The United Way’s Blubaugh called counterparts who’d responded to their own mass shootings in Orlando, Florida; Buffalo, New York; and Newtown, Connecticut.
“The unfortunate reality is we have a cadre of communities across the country who have already faced tragedies like this,” Blubaugh said. “So there is an unfortunate protocol that is, sort of, already in place.”
#KCStrong monies could start being paid out by the end of March, Blubaugh said. Hundreds of people called the nonprofit’s 211 line, and the United Way is consulting with hospitals and law enforcement to verify victims and then offer services they may need, she said.
The range of needs is staggering — several people are still recovering at home, some are seeking counseling, and many weren’t even counted in the beginning. For instance, a plainclothes police officer was injured in the melee but is doing fine now, said Police Chief Stacey Graves.
Determining who is eligible for assistance was one of the first conversations United Way officials had when creating the fund. They prioritized three areas of focus: first were the wounded victims and their families, second was collaborating with organizations already helping victims in violence intervention and prevention and mental health services, and third were the first responders.
Specifically, the funds will be steered to cover medical bills, or lost wages for those who haven’t been able to work since the shootings, Blubaugh said. The goal is to work quickly to help people, she said, but also to spend the money in a judicious, strategic way.
“We don’t have a clear sightline of the entire landscape that we’re dealing with,” Blubaugh said. “Not only of how much money do we have to work with, but also, what is the landscape of need? And we need both of those things to be able to make those decisions.”
Firsthand Experience of Daily Kansas City Violence
Jason used his lone remaining sick day to stay home with Bridget and Gabriella. An overnight automation technician, he is the family’s primary breadwinner.
“I can’t take off work, you know?” he said. “It happened. It sucked. But it’s time to move on.”
“He’s a guy’s guy,” Bridget interjected.
On Jason’s first night back at work, the sudden sound of falling dishes startled Bridget and Gabriella, sending them into each other’s arms crying.
“It’s just those moments of flashbacks that are kicking our butts,” Bridget said.
Tell Us About Your Experience
We are continuing to report on the effects of the parade shooting on the people who were injured and the community as a whole. Do you have an experience you want to tell us about, or a question you think we should look into? Message KCUR’s text line at (816) 601-4777. Your information will not be used in an article without your permission.
In a way, the shooting has brought the family closer. They’ve been through a lot recently. Jason survived a heart attack and cancer last year. Raising a teenager is never easy.
Bridget can appreciate that the bullet lodged in her backpack, narrowly missing her, and that Gabriella’s legs were burned by sparks but she wasn’t shot.
Jason is grateful for another reason: It wasn’t a terrorist attack, as he initially feared. Instead, it fits into the type of gun violence he’d become accustomed to growing up in Kansas City, which recorded its deadliest year last year, although he’d never been this close to it before.
“This crap happens every single day,” he said. “The only difference is we were here for it.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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Regular Nail Polish vs Gel Nail Polish – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing regular nail polish to gel nail polish, we picked the regular.
Why?
This one’s less about what’s in the bottle, and more about what gets done to your hands:
- Regular nail polish application involves carefully brushing it on.
- Regular nail polish removal involves wiping with acetone.
…whereas:
- Gel nail polish application involves deliberately damaging (roughing up) the nail to allow the color coat to adhere, then when the top coat is applied, holding the nails (and thus, the attached fingers) under a UV light to set it. That UV lamp exposure is very bad for the skin.
- Gel nail polish removal involves soaking in acetone, which is definitely worse than wiping with acetone. Failure to adequately soak it will result in further damage to the nail while trying to get the base coat off the nail that you already deliberately damaged when first applying it.
All in all, regular nail polish isn’t amazing for nail health (healthiest is for nails to be free and naked), but for those of us who like a little bit of color there, regular is a lot better than gel.
Gel nail polish damages the nail itself by necessity, and presents a cumulative skin cancer risk and accelerated aging of the skin, by way of the UV lamp use.
For your interest, here are the specific products that we compared, but the above goes for any of this kind:
Regular nail polish | Gel nail polish
If you’d like to read more about nail health, you might enjoy reading:
The Counterintuitive Dos and Don’ts of Nail Health
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Legs Feel Weaker? This Is Probably Why
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Dr. Alyssa Kuhn shows us how it doesn’t have to be that way:
Time to step up
This exercise will, by itself, help build/restore the strength necessary for most leg-related tasks, including walking, ascending/descending stairs, lowering yourself to a seat or the floor, and rising from a seat or the floor.
- Beginner lateral step-up: stand sideways to a low step, place your inside foot on top, push through that leg to bring your other foot up, then step back down and repeat while adjusting your stepping foot slightly behind for less knee stress or parallel/in front if comfortable.
- Knee-safest form: if you have existing damage to your knees, a little extra care is needed for this one, so keep your stepping-down foot slightly behind your lead leg, to help keep your knee behind your toes, while taller or more forward positions can increase the knee-bend, and/but can still be fine so long as it feels comfortable.
- Minimum-risk version: step side to side on the floor, widening your step based on your hip mobility and speed to build coordination, endurance, and lateral strength with lower risk (start with this one if for example you have osteoporosis and/or poor balance)
- Intermediate march step-up: step sideways onto the stool with your inside leg, drive up, and lift your opposite knee into a march to challenge your core, balance, and single-leg strength, using light support if needed.
- Advanced weighted step-up: hold weights at your sides or shoulders, step up sideways while pressing through your heel, stay upright without leaning forwards, and increase difficulty with heavier weights or a higher step.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Struggle to Get Up? The Strength Many People Lose First (Not Your Legs)
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Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
- Beginner lateral step-up: stand sideways to a low step, place your inside foot on top, push through that leg to bring your other foot up, then step back down and repeat while adjusting your stepping foot slightly behind for less knee stress or parallel/in front if comfortable.
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Deficiency In Two Vitamins & Two Minerals Linked To Cognitive Decline
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
Food for thought
Researchers (Dr. Samitinjaya Dhakal et al.) analyzed dietary intake, eating patterns, and cognitive function in adults aged 65 and older, and found that higher intakes of fiber, healthy unsaturated fats, and micronutrients including vitamins A and E, as well as magnesium and potassium, were associated with better brain health and memory.
It is also worth mentioning that carotenoids, the pigments that give many fruits and vegetables their bright colors, were also linked to better overall cognitive function.
Nevertheless, nearly all participants had diets that fell short of age-appropriate nutrient adequacy, and some did even worse—higher consumption of refined grains such as white bread, certain cereals, pasta, and crackers was negatively associated with cognitive function and memory (i.e. they were associated with lower scores in those things).
Read in full: Fiber and certain micronutrients help with healthy brain aging, study finds
Related: A New Contender For “Best Diet For Heart & Brain” In Aging
Too old for it? No, but…
Researchers from the University of Tartu in Estonia analyzed data from 67,334 adults aged 18–89 in the Estonian Biobank, representing about 7% of the country’s adult population, to examine how sexual desire varies with demographic factors.
There were some interesting findings, including:
- men’s desire and age: men’s reported sexual desire peaked in their late 30s and early 40s rather than in their teens or 20s, which rather challenges long-held assumptions about male desire across the lifespan.
- women’s desire and age: sexual desire tended to decline with age for everyone, but the decrease was significantly steeper in women than in men; it also decreased more if in a family with children.
The researchers wrote that “demographic factors alone—even without accounting for psychological or relational influences—explained 28% of the variance in sexual desire,” meaning that nearly one-third of differences can be predicted from factors such as age, gender, education, and family situation.
In particular the men’s age range thing is quite interesting, as it means it’s not linked to peak testosterone (which would be teens and 20s).
Read in full: What a study of 67,000 people reveals about sexual desire and age
Related: Who Initiates Sex & Why It Matters
When teens need more social media, not less
Social media is often thought as a “Big Bad” when it comes to health in general, and older adults tend to especially hold this view when it comes to teens and younger. However, science suggests it’s not always true!
Researchers (Dr. Rachel Curtis et al.) analyzed data from nearly 100,991 children followed from grades 4 through 12, using self-reported social media use and annual wellbeing surveys covering happiness, life satisfaction, and emotional regulation.
There’s a definite “Goldilocks zone”, because:
- Those using social media for more than two hours every day were more likely to have low wellbeing compared with moderate users.
- Those not using social media at all were also much more likely to have poorer wellbeing, particularly in older adolescents.
This held true regardless of gender, but there was a disparity in how big the effect was, as boys who didn’t use social media were 300% more likely to have low wellbeing, while girls who didn’t use social media were “only” 79% more likely to have low wellbeing.
As the paper concluded:
❝Adolescents reporting moderate use generally demonstrated the most favorable well-being profiles, whereas both nonusers and those with the highest levels of use were at elevated risk for low well-being.❞
Read in full: Can teens use social media too little for their own good? Maybe, study says
Related: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
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