Whether the goal is to look more confident or increase overall health and wellbeing, anyone can achieve better posture with just a few lifestyle changes. Bing Howenstein, CEO and co-founder of health and wellness consumer brand BackJoy, offers ten tips that will help you look and feel better in the New Year: 1 Stretch more often. Many… Continue reading Lifestyle Changes for Better Posture
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8 Tips for Finding True Love in the New Year
The start of a new year brings high hopes for many singles that this is the year they find a life partner. But if you have suffered from relationship failures in the past, it’s time to make some simple changes before you can find your soulmate and have high hopes of settling down. Colin Christopher,… Continue reading 8 Tips for Finding True Love in the New Year
12 Ways to Lift the Winter Blues
By Terry Barnett-Martin January is a time when the winter blues often set in and dampen the joy in our hearts. The winter brings cold weather and shorter daylight hours that can cause many of us to slow down and pull in. It is so important to listen to the wisdom of your body and… Continue reading 12 Ways to Lift the Winter Blues
10 “Healthy” Food Practices That Could Make You Sick
Could your commitment to healthy living be making you sick? Some everyday food practices that most of us do with the best of intentions could actually be undermining all your efforts to eat less fat, increase fruit and veggie intake, and prepare meals hygienically at home. Danger lurks in your kitchen, in packaged foods and… Continue reading 10 “Healthy” Food Practices That Could Make You Sick
Anticipating “Experiential” Purchases Makes Us Happy
The enjoyment we derive from “experiential purchases” such as buying tickets to shows or booking hotels for a vacation may begin even before we buy, according to a study done atCornell University and the University of California, San Francoosco and published in September 2014 in Psychological Science. A release from Cornell quotes psychology researcher and… Continue reading Anticipating “Experiential” Purchases Makes Us Happy
“Happy Antics” Exercise for Dementia Patients
A holistic exercise program called “Happy Antics” that pairs cognitive activities with physical movements helps dementia patients and caregivers alike, according to research done at Teesside University in the U.K. and published in May 2014 in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies.
“Pre-crastination” Appears to Be Common
Putting off tasks until later, or procrastination, is a common phenomenon — but new research suggests that “pre-crastination,” hurrying to complete a task as soon as possible, may also be common.
Thestudy, published in May 2014 in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that people often opt to begin a task as soon as possible just to get it off their plate, even if they have to expend more physical effort to do so.
Stem Cells Make “Heart Disease-on-a-Chip”
Harvard scientists have merged stem cell and “organ-on-a-chip” technologies to grow, for the first time, functioning human heart tissue carrying an inherited cardiovascular disease. The research appears to be a big step forward for personalized medicine because it is working proof that a chunk of tissue containing a patient's specific genetic disorder can be replicated in the laboratory.
A Lab in Your Doc’s Pocket
When you have blood work done during a physical exam, you have to wait several weeks for the results because your doctor sends the sample to a lab for analysis. That’s not a problem if you’re healthy and simply getting a routine checkup but if you have worrisome symptoms, both you and your physician would benefit from knowing very quickly whether something is amiss.
Challenging the Notion of “Healthy Obesity”
Back in October of 2013, the concept of “healthy obesity” made news because of a study published in the journal Diabetologia about overweight people with no metabolic problems. Now a study published on April 30th 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology challenges that assertion. A release from the publisher explains that obese people who have no signs of cardiovascular disease show a much higher prevalence of early plaque buildup in the arteries compared to healthy normal weight individuals, according to a study.
Of Mice and Men – But Not Women
Laboratory mice are stressed by male experimenters but not by women and the reaction of the rodents may skew research findings. The reason is that the mice pick up on the human male pheromone scent but not that of human females. This may turn out to be the reason that scientists typically have trouble replicating research findings using mice and rats, a fact that has contributed to mounting concern over the reliability of such studies. These are the findings of an international team of pain researchers led by scientists at McGill University in Montreal
Ground-Breaking “Brown Fat” MRI Scan
The first MRI scan to show “brown fat” in a living adult could prove to be an essential step towards a new wave of therapies to aid the fight against diabetes and obesity.
Researchers from Warwick Medical School and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust in the UK used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based method to identify and confirm the presence of brown adipose tissue in a living adult. The study was published on April 17th 2014 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Don’t It Make My Brown Fat White
What causes “good” brown fat to turn into “bad” white fat? Boston University researchers say the unfortunate transformation happen when you eat too many high calorie foods. They found that this habit not only leads to an increase in white fat cells (the type prominent in obesity) but that it also makes brown fat cells (the type that generate heat and burn energy) “whiten”. The results were published in April 2014 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Criteria for “Choosing Wisely” Lists
In the creation of lists by specialty societies of medical services deemed least beneficial, the "Choosing Wisely" initiative, inclusion was often justified by evidence suggesting no additional benefit with higher risk, higher cost, or both, compared with other options, according to a study in the April 9th 2014 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
“White Coat Effect” on BP Is True
Doctors routinely record blood pressure levels that are significantly higher than levels recorded by nurses, according to the first thorough analysis of scientific data on the so-called “White Coat Phenomenon”. The study was done at at the University of Exeter Medical School in the UK and published in March 2014 in the British Journal of General Practice.
Should You Work Out With A Cold Or Flu?
By Joe Vennare, PT & Fitness Program Director
Moving more is good for us, which makes regular exercise an essential component of a healthy, active lifestyle. Of course, creating that lifestyle takes time. It’s a product of repetition. That’s how we form habits. We try not to break the chain, for anything.
Tracking a Superbug’s Evolution
Using genome sequencing, National Institutes of Health scientists and their colleagues have tracked the evolution of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258), an important agent of hospital-acquired infections. While researchers had previously thought that ST258 K. pneumoniae strains spread from a single ancestor, the NIH team showed that the strains arose from at least two different lineages.
Deer Hunters’ Trick Can Help Diabetics
The scent of a human alerts deer to a hunter’s presence so scientists developed sprays for suppressing the telltale odor. Now, in an unexpected twist, researchers at Mississippi State University have discovered that the work of those scientists could help develop an electronic device to do the work of “diabetes alert dogs”. The team presented the findings at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in March 2014 in Dallas.