Month: May 2012

Get High from Running

- Adam Clare

You may hear from people who run that they feel great afterwards and get “addicted” to running, well it turns out our bodies may be born to run, which is why we get high from it.

As a doctor, Morganti knows what regular running does for her body. “Your heart gets stronger. It gets bigger. The amount of blood your heart can pump is more.” That’s called “stroke volume.” Oxygen metabolism gets more efficient, as well. “That means your blood vessels and muscles absorb more oxygen,” she says. “Running also builds new bone.”

But when I ask her about “runner’s high,” she lights up. “Oh, it’s really like an empowerment. And zen at the same time. You feel strong and light, and you feel relaxed.”

Read more at NPR.

Empire State Building Gets a Green Overall

- Adam Clare

The Empire State Building in New York has received a green overall that has cut 20% of the building’s energy consumption and will save the owners a ton of cash.

The renovations are part of a $500 million rehab plan for the building. The building’s owners, Malkin Holdings LLC, filed for an initial public offering back in February which valued the building at $2.5 billion.

The changes to the Empire State include:

–Filling the existing windows with an energy saving gas and adding an additional plastic pane.

–Upgrading the building’s cooling system.

–Using computerized “smart” energy management technology that can adjust temperatures floor by floor.

–Provide tenants with detailed energy use in their space.

–Automatically shut off lights in unused areas.

Read more at CNN.

Lose Weight the Geeky Way

- Adam Clare

Weight Hacker is a website and book that focus on losing weight in a very geeky way. The creator of weight hacking writes about geeky things all the time and he decided to take his appeal of geeky things to his diet.

Sometimes I tried dieting, but either it didn’t work or it didn’t work for long. I concluded that diets weren’t for me because 1) they usually aren’t sustainable for anyone in the long term and 2) they weren’t compatible with my geeky lifestyle.

So I created Weight Hacking, my own personal weight loss system that used my geeky nature to work for me, and one that I could incorporate into my daily life. I didn’t go on a diet, I permanently changed my diet. I didn’t “get exercise,” I re-arranged my life so that I was naturally more active. And it wasn’t particularly hard.

Read more.

Bike Lanes Makes Road Safer for Everyone

- Adam Clare

The worst mayor in Canada hates people who don’t drive automobiles and thinks cyclists deserve to die. The mayor of Toronto wants to remove bike lanes (while every smart city is installing more) despite the fact that the number of cyclists has increased. So where’s the good news you ask?

It turns out (much to the chagrin of mayor Rob Ford) that bike lanes improve safety for all road users!

The Toronto Cyclists Union has drummed up a City staff report that compares crash data in the three years previous to the bike lanes and the one year with the bike lanes. The report finds that the overall crash rate for Jarvis has actually decreased by 23 percent. That’s for all road users—bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. In fact, the report notes that “most of this reduction can be attributed to the reduction in collisions involving motor vehicle turning movements and collisions involving pedestrians.”

But the bike lanes have also been better for cyclists. While the number of bicycle-car collisions has increased from an average of 7 per year in the three years prior to the bike lane to 15 in the year with the bike lane, the report notes this still represents a drop in the rate of collision when you take into consideration the fact that the number of bicycles increased threefold post-bike lane implementation.

Read more at Spacing.

Loblaws Plans on Removing Artificial Ingredients from its Food

- Adam Clare

Artificial ingredients have a bad reputation because they’ve been left untested for years. Now, one of Canada’s largest grocery stores is ring to remove all those artificial ingredients from their in-house food line. This follows other pod providers and is a direct reaction to growing consumer concerns over some of their food.

Advocacy groups such as the Ottawa-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest have called for better controls on the use of artificial dyes and flavours and improved labelling laws. In Canada, food companies aren’t required to spell out which artificial colours they use on product labels. Health Canada has floated the idea of changing that.

Members of the medical and scientific communities remain divided about the true risks of artificial flavours and colours. For instance, some studies that found links between hyperactivity and synthetic food dyes have been criticized for using shoddy methodology. But in an era when many equate natural ingredients with better health, some consumers don’t want to wait and are demanding a shift in the food industry.

And the industry has begun responding. For instance, Nestlé has removed artificial colours from Smarties in Canada, while the company announced in March all of its confection items sold in Britain will contain only natural flavours and dyes and no artificial preservatives.

Read more at the Globe.

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