Category: Body & Mind

Eat Whole Grains for a Whole Lifetime

A simple change to your diet can make a whole lot of difference on your heart. Instead of reaching for the white bread go for the bread with the whole grains. It’s a pretty easy modification you can make to your diet. Just by switching to whole grains over bleached grains you can improve your health.

Give it a try and see how you feel!

People who ate the most whole grains were about 16 percent less likely to die of any cause during the study than those who ate the least, almost 20 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and more than 10 percent less likely to die of cancer.

For every additional serving of 16 grams of whole grains, cardiovascular disease-related death risk declined by 9 percent and cancer death risk by five percent, as reported in the review in Circulation.

A half-cup of cooked brown rice, cooked oatmeal, or cooked 100 percent whole grain pasta, for example, or one slice of 100 percent whole grain bread, would be the equivalent of about 16 grams.

Read more.

Marathons Aren’t as Impressive as Running a 5K

Running a marathon is seen as the big goal for committed runners – and it’s quite the triumph since running for so far and long is a big challenge no matter how healthy one is. I’ve never run a marathon and I just found out that there’s no reason to (phew!). It turns out that after looking at a lot of studies on health and running that just committing to a 5K run is enough.

5K seems to be the optimal distance for the vast majority of people given the fact that it’s long enough to be a challenge but not so long it can endanger one’s health.

So by focusing on the 5K, you’re optimizing health benefits and minimizing injuries, and if you’re deliberate about your training, you can maximize your fitness gains too. Training seriously for the 5K will get you close to your biological potential for aerobic fitness, Joyner said. “Seriously is the key though,” he said. The secret is high-intensity interval training, or HIIT — short periods of very hard efforts interspersed with easier recovery bouts. Studies show that these high intensity workouts produce greater improvements in VO2 max than the kind of long, slow workouts emphasized in many marathon training plans.1 Two-time U.S. 5,000-meter champion Lauren Fleshman has published a list of a dozen 5K-friendly HIIT workoutsat Strava, most of which require no track, just a stopwatch.

Read more.

Your Body Wants You To Be Social If You Feel Lonely


Loneliness is something that everybody experiences in their life and it turns out it could be a good thing. By feeling lonely your body is telling you that you need to change: you ought to go hang out with friends.

Humans are social animals and our bodies have evolved to ensure that we stay in groups. Their are many benefits to surrounding yourself with friends and it looks like that deep inside our physical bodies know this too. So the next time you feel lonely just think about how cool it is that it’s an evolved trait! Then go chill with some friends.

In recent years, scientists have sharpened their focus on loneliness, concluding it does have a purpose, does have redeeming features. They are not talking like Thoreau about the benefits of solitude on our creative minds and spirits. They are talking like Darwin about loneliness driving change, an evolutionary correction.

“Loneliness is a warning system,” says Louise Hawkley a psychologist at the University of Chicago. It is our body telling us we’re breaking from the social bonds that nourished us as a species. “We’re failing to satisfy our fundamental drive to connect with other humans,” Hawkley says. Feeling isolated switches our bodies into self-preservation mode. “What happens with people who are lonely for a long time is their threat-defense programs get activated,” says Steve Cole, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The body interprets loneliness as threatening.”

Read more.

Easy HPV Testing From Eve Kit

HPV is a virus that can lead to cancer, but is generally easy to test for and prevent. It can be an awkward experience getting tested though, and that is where a new crowd sourced intuitive, the Eve Kit, comes into play. It’s a simple to use STI and HPV testing kit that women can use from the comfort of their own home.

The idea behind Eve Kit started over coffee, when our co-founder Jess realized that many of her close friends were all avoiding a potentially life-saving Pap test, just because it was “awkward” – which seemed like a terrible reason!

This sparked a mission to create a less invasive, more comfortable way for women to engage in their own health.

Through ongoing collaborations with women, healthcare providers and experts, Jess and the Eve team developed a simple, intuitive device to collect high quality samples for molecular diagnostic HPV, Chlamydia and other STI testing.

Check it out!
Thanks to Delaney!

Why Some Love Cities And Others Love The Country


The idea that cities are inherently stressful or that the country is inherently calming isn’t so cut and dry. Some people find the excitement of urban living as not only exciting but also as a source of relaxation. Others may find the boringness of the countryside as a required way to maintain mental calmness.

There’s some neat research that examines why some people are keen for the hustle and bustle of a downtown while others not so much.

But, before you box neurotics as city-types and non-neurotics as country mice, remember how much variation can exist within the respective environments. “Not all urban situations are loud and busy, and not all natural ones are calm and quiet,” Newman says, offering city parks and ziplining as examples of the dichotomy at play here. “A highly neurotic person can still enjoy nature, but maybe their ideal version of a hike includes more boulders, a trail run, some animals.” In other words, when it comes to alleviating anxiety, it’s not the environment so much as what you do in it.

So, do cities and small towns inherently attract separate types of people? Newman speculates this could possibly explain regional stereotypes: Midwestern niceties, the Southern drawl, West Coast chill, Northeastern pent-upness. And Newman says businesses and urban planners should pay attention to these qualities: It might make sense for a national park to showcase the active aspects of mountaineering or whitewater rafting for the Northeast, for example, while Midwestern parks might feature vistas and sunsets.

Read more.