Health

Australia Gets World’s Toughest Law on Cigarette Branding

- Adam Clare

It is common knowledge that smoking kills people and, in democracies, providing health care for citizens is important and unquestioned. In Australia, they clearly care about each other as they now make it harder than ever for cigarette companies to shill their destructive product.

Starting in December, packs will instead come in a uniformly drab shade of olive and feature dire health warnings and graphic photographs of smoking’s health effects. The government, which has urged other countries to adopt similar rules, hopes the new packs will make smoking as unglamorous as possible.

Many countries mandate that packages display photos or text describing smoking’s health effects, and some limit the size of the branding or ban certain slogans, but Australia’s dual approach would be the strictest globally.

Read more here.

Get Fit Through Self-Motivation

- Adam Clare

A lot of people use the nice weather of the summer as motivation to get fit, however, keeping oneself motivated can be a problem. One approach that is gaining popularity is to change your motivation from positive-reinforemecnt to negative encouragement. Worth a try at the very least.

The basic message is as follows: In modern society we are coddling ourselves into a mushy mess. We get medals for just showing up. We’re inundated with messages about the importance of loving ourselves the way we are. We are told to give ourselves a break. According to RFBF author Ruth Field, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it isn’t much of a motivator.

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The traditional you-can-do-it approach to exercise has never worked for me, nor has signing up for expensive gym memberships or designating a workout buddy. I fantasized about hiring a personal trainer in the mould of the Lou Gosset Jr. character in An Officer and A Gentleman, who would harass, browbeat and berate me into physical perfection. RFBR instructs readers to administer tough self-love; I wondered if I could be my own drill sergeant.

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Coffee Drinkers Have a Lower Death Risk

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

I’m writing this as I sip my first coffee of the day and it makes me feel good to do both activities at once because coffee drinkers have a lower risk of death than non-coffee drinkers.

Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Researchers caution, however, that they can’t be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer. The results of the study were published in the May 17, 2012 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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The researchers found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Coffee drinking was not associated with cancer mortality among women, but there was a slight and only marginally statistically significant association of heavier coffee intake with increased risk of cancer death among men.

Read more here.

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.

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.

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