Why you need to sleep in total darkness

Strangely, scientists still haven’t figured out why sleep is so crucial for our survival. But they do know that not getting enough wrecks our health. Now, a new study out of Northwestern University reveals that having a light on while sleeping can raise your risk of diabetes. (Learn more about the connection between aging and sleep deprivation.)

For the study—published in the journal, Sleep—researchers recruited 20 healthy adult volunteers (ages 18 to 40). The volunteers spent two nights and three days at the lab: The first night, they slept in pitch black darkness; the second night, half of them slept in the dark again while the other half slept in a room with a bright overhead light on. While the volunteers slept, the researchers tracked the volunteers’ vital signs, brain wave activity, and leg and eye movements; they also took hourly blood samples to measure melatonin—a vital hormone that helps control your internal clock (circadian rhythm) and typically rises during sleep. In the morning, the researchers conducted glucose tolerance tests on the volunteers.

Remarkably, just sleeping under a bright light drove up insulin resistance—a risk factor for diabetes. When insulin can’t do its job, the body struggles to process sugar. “Our preliminary findings show that a single night of light exposure during sleep acutely impacts measures of insulin resistance,” said lead author Ivy Cheung Mason, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine (at the time of the study), in a press release.

Previous research has linked poor sleep to a higher risk of depression, breast cancer and prostate cancer. Now we can add metabolic diseases such as diabetes to the list: “Sleep disturbances affect more than 25 per cent of the general population and up to 50 per cent of older adults… Improving sleep in adults at risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes represents a much needed and novel approach to the prevention and treatment of epidemics of type 2 diabetes and obesity, as well as improve the quality of life of those suffering from sleep disturbances.”

Although this is preliminary research, it does support the idea that you should avoid falling asleep on the couch and spending part—or most—of the night with the lights on and the TV blaring.

Check out these 12 ultimate secrets to a good sleep.

Motel vs. Hotel: Find Out the Difference

Whether you’re the kind of traveller who likes to relax in a luxurious resort or the kind for whom a hotel is nothing more than a place to crash, the place you choose to stay can make or break your vacation experience. But even the most seasoned travellers may not know the difference between the two main types of homes-away-from-home. Besides their first letter, is there any real difference between hotels and motels? By the way, these are the secrets hotels won’t tell you.

Well, there’s no simple, cut-and-dry answer. These two types of lodging have the same basic purpose—a place for travellers to crash—but there are plenty of features that set them apart. For instance, they came to be for different reasons, and at very different times. The word “hotel” dates back to the 1600s and comes from a French word, hôtel. That word, just like the English one, referred to a place that provides lodging, meals, entertainment, and other services to travellers. Motels, on the other hand, are a much more recent—and pretty much exclusively North American—lodging option. This word dates back to the 1920s and combines the words “hotel” and “motor.” As North America’s major highway system developed, so did motels, filling the need for roadside stops for motorists travelling cross-country.

There are also some more nuanced differences that can help you figure out which type of place you’re in. Hotels tend to be built for longer stays, while motels are geared more for one- or two-night stops along a journey. Because of this, hotels are much more likely to have offerings like lounges, gyms and entertainment. While hotels usually have lobbies, you’re more likely to access your motel room door straight from the parking lot. Hotels are also more commonly right in the middle of the action at an already-popular tourist destination. Motels, meanwhile, might have nothing around them but a stretch of open road. As for cost, hotels tend to be pricier as a whole, but other things such as size, popularity, and location can have a bigger effect on cost than motel vs. hotel distinction.

So, in the end, it comes down to what you want from your trip and from your lodging. Want the place you stay to be just as much a part of your travel experience as anything else? Opt for a hotel. Just need a place to pop in and out of to shower and sleep? A motel might be the better choice.

Here’s why you should think twice before sitting in a hotel chair.

As any Anglophile knows, while the British royal family enjoys worldwide stardom and some seriously awesome perks, they don’t actually have much in the way of governing power. Yet it’s thanks to them that people in the United Kingdom aren’t allowed to use a certain word willy-nilly—a word that describes them, to be precise. In the United Kingdom, you need special permission to use the word “royal” in certain contexts. (Here’s the real difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom.)

Of course, Brits are allowed to use the word “royal” in daily conversation; the monarchy certainly isn’t going to forbid their subjects from speaking about them. But it’s when citizens want to name something after royalty that this unusual stipulation comes into play. If someone wants to use the words “royal” or “royalty” in the name of a business, company, or product, they have to seek permission first. According to gov.uk, the words are considered “sensitive” because they might mislead the public by suggesting an association with the capital-R royals. (In case you were wondering, this is how much each member of the royal family is actually worth.)

And “royal” isn’t the only monarch-themed moniker that you can’t just slap up on your building. If you live in the United Kingdom, you must request permission to use “King,” “Queen,” “Prince/Princess,” “Duke/Duchess,” and “His/Her Majesty” in a business context as well. To get such permission, you have to send an application to the Cabinet Office in London. You must include why you want to use the word, evidence if that word is your last name, and details if your business actually is connected to the royals or the government. (Unlike this curious practice, these 10 myths about the royal family are totally false.)

According to an official document from the United Kingdom’s registrar of companies, though, the rules can be bent in cases of “occasional events of national importance.” After all, it’s hard to sell souvenirs for, say, a royal wedding when you’re not allowed to put “royal” on products. Next, learn the words you’ll never, ever hear the royal family say.

[Source: atlasobscura.com]

Bet you can’t guess the filthiest item in your doctor’s office…

Doctor visits should help us beat the common cold, prevent health issues, and generally keep us well. But beyond sick people coughing and sneezing in the waiting room are germs in places you never knew. (These are the 11 public places with the most germs.) In fact, new research conducted by InsuranceQuotes.com found that the item with the most germs is actually the clipboard pen used to sign paperwork.

Researchers tested a few commonly used items around three general physicians’ offices to see which surface was the “germiest.” They conducted 12 tests across four surfaces they determined were touched most by both patients and doctors in the office.

The results were cringeworthy. The clipboard pen has more than 46,000 times more germs than an average toilet seat. “[The] analysis of a few general doctors’ office items revealed the clipboard pen was alive with germs to the tune of almost 8 million colony-forming units (CFU) per square inch,” the report says. “If that term has you scratching your head, it simply refers to the bacteria’s capability to live and reproduce to form other bacteria of the same kind.” Find out 13 more things you didn’t know about germs.

The doctor’s keyboard ranked second dirtiest followed by the waiting room chair armrest and the door handle—all of which also harbour more bacteria than a toilet seat. Consider that the most common bacteria sampled were strains that cause pneumonia and sepsis. It might be worth bringing your own pen to the office and keeping your hands to yourself. Next, check out eight more doctor appointment mistakes you didn’t realize you were making.

Fort McMurray, Two Years On

Fort McMurray has always had a reputation being an exceptionally helpful community, full of giving people. Several of our community organizations have long histories of quick responsiveness whenever there was a need. Many businesses encourage giving back, and community members have made record-breaking donations to crucial charities, such as the United Way. A few different factors have contributed to this attitude of giving. Many McMurrayites are originally from other countries or other Canadian provinces, and the remoteness of this northern town forces people to work together to thrive.

In May 2016, as in most Canadian cities, folks in the communities of the municipality of Wood Buffalo were going about daily life, trying to keep up with their hectic schedules. The busy-ness of life can be tiring, making it hard to focus on what all the effort and expense is for. There seems to be little opportunity to appreciate the fragility of the structure, and the indescribable value of the stakes. That is until a community experiences a crisis—a collective jolt.

When the wildfires raged towards our town on that May morning, the entire community had, in most cases, less than an hour to decide what could fit in the vehicle and what could be left behind—possibly to never be seen again. (Here’s what the experience was like for Fort McMurray resident Eldora Baillie.)

More than six months had passed since the wildfires when I snapped this photo (above). Winter had descended upon us and a comforting blanket of snow that stayed put until spring had restored stillness and quiet.

Walking in our winter landscapes has always held a beautiful magic for me, but this one was different. Reminders of the summer’s fires were still visible: empty house lots, half-repaired homes and scorched trees poking through the snow reminded us that the trauma and scars would not be healed quickly.

It’s now been more than a year since the wildfires and our town is very different. The changes are more than just physical. The fires changed the collective attitude of members of this community. Besides being more aware of their physical surroundings, those who went through that traumatic event are more aware of one another. This is evident in the poignant conversations on social media and in person, with people comparing notes about their May 2016 evacuation and about their lives since.

We listen to one another more intently, and offer empathy. We’re more aware of what is most important to us. We’ve all heard the stories of having five minutes to grab what was most precious—a box of mother’s items, baby photos and mementoes. For the majority of people in Wood Buffalo, this feeling has lingered, and will hopefully grow into a well-rounded philosophy on life. We ask ourselves more frequently, what and whom do we love and who loves us? We need to nurture those relationships because, in the end, that’s what we’ve got to hold on to—which will propel us forward. The rest can be left behind.

Don’t miss more inspiring stories from the Fort McMurray wildfire.

How well do you know the English language?

Quick! Try naming five words that start with the letter L. Lollipop, lazy, long, Labrador, like, language…and the list goes on and on. Now, try naming five words that start with the letter X. Xylophone, X-ray…not so easy, right? (These 17 English words have totally different meanings in other languages.)

Still racking your brain for more words that start with an X? You might want to stop because the Oxford English Dictionary only lists a mere 400 words that begin with the letter X. Here are a few more words to complete your list of five: xenization, xenagogy, xenial. But we wouldn’t expect people to know those off the top of their head because it’s a lot easier to show a xylophone on an ABC placemat for kindergarteners than xenization—which means the act of travelling as a stranger.

In fact, in Noah Webster’s Compendious Dictionary, which he published in 1806, there was only one word listed under the letter X: xebec, defined as “a small three-masted vessel in the Mediterranean.” In 1828, when he put together his American Dictionary, that number had only risen to 13. The number of words starting with the letter X continued to rise until it reached the 400 that we have today.

Next, check out these four mind-blowing facts about the English language.

Ever wondered why all calico cats are female?

The occurrence of male calico cats is theoretically impossible. Ordinarily, male cats have XY sex chromosomes, while females have XX. The X chromosomes carry the genes for coat colours. Therefore, female cats inherit their coat colour from both their queens (XX) and their toms (XY). To create a calico (or tortoise-shell) pattern, one of the X chromosomes must carry the black gene and the other the orange gene. If a black male and an orange female mate, the result will be a half-black and half-orange female offspring-a calico. A black female and an orange male will also produce a calico female.

Usually, the male kitten inherits its coat colour from the queen alone, since the Y chromosome determines its sex but has nothing to do with its coat colour. A male black cat mating with an orange female will produce an orange male; a male orange cat and black female will produce a black male kitten.

Geneticists have discovered that only one of the two X chromosomes in females is functional, which explains why you usually can make a blanket prediction that any male offspring will be the colour of the queen. But occasionally, chromosomes misdivide, and a male calico is born with an extra chromosome-two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. If one of the X chromosomes carries the orange gene and the other the nonorange, a calico will result.

Note that the presence of the extra X chromosome doesn’t in itself create the calico. If both chromosomes are coded for orange or black, the offspring will be that colour rather than a combination.

Abnormal chromosome counts are unusual but not rare. Most cat cells contain nineteen pairs of chromosomes, but sometimes a mutation will yield one extra chromosome or double or triple the normal number.

Although male calicoes are oddities (according to Judith Lindley, founder of the Calico Cat Registry International, approximately one male calico is born for every 3,000 females), the cat breed experts we consulted indicated that they are normally healthy and have excellent life expectancies. But, unlike their female counterparts, male calicoes do tend to have a common problem-their sexual organs are often malformed, so they are usually sterile. Don’t miss these 10 warning signs of cancer in cats.

Would you recognize these 15 signs your cat is secretly mad at you?

Safety Measures

The vendor stalls of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Street Market are piled high with ’80s action-movie DVDs, parasols, hand-knitted booties and Justice League comics—a trove of treasures for all types. The sprawling social enterprise gives sellers, many of whom are living on low incomes, a chance to earn extra money. It buzzes with the chatter and convivial chaos typical of such places, but in 2016, when the city’s opioid issue became a full-blown crisis, that flurry of activity turned ominous.

At the time, community activist Sarah Blyth was working as a manager at the market, which is located in an area that is popular with drug users. She started witnessing more and more overdoses—sometimes up to five a day. (According to a B.C. Coroners Service report, fentanyl-detected deaths increased in Vancouver from 32 in 2015 to 280 in 2017 due to the potent opioid narcotic contaminating the drug supply.)

“Whenever there was an overdose, someone would come screaming, ‘Narcan, Narcan, where is it? Do we have enough?’” says Blyth, referring to the nasal spray version of naloxone, a drug used to block the effects of opioids, especially in overdose situations. “I thought, We need to be more organized than this. The market is filled with hundreds of people, and we only have a few minutes to respond.”

When there was a death up the street, Blyth and two market volunteers decided things had to change. In September 2016, unsanctioned by the market or any agency, they established a pop-up overdose prevention site nearby. They put up a tent, secured some Narcan, found a volunteer trained in administering naloxone and started a GoFundMe page to raise money for supplies and honorariums for their volunteers. In 2017, the pop-up—now called the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) and supported by Vancouver Coastal Health—received more than 100,000 visits, saw more than 300 overdoses and logged zero deaths.

Blyth knows that doing the right thing sometimes means doing what many consider to be wrong. From Nanaimo to Ottawa, nurses and harm-reduction workers have come to the same conclusion, as the opioid crisis places them in the difficult position of having to take illegal action to save lives. It was Blyth who inspired nurse Leigh Chapman and her fellow volunteers to open a pop-up safe-injection site in Toronto’s Moss Park neighbourhood in the summer of 2017.

Several cities, including Kamloops, Edmonton, London, Toronto and Montreal, have approved supervised safe-injection sites in the past two years. But unlike the pop-up versions, sanctioned sites take some time to establish—and the number of overdoses continues to balloon. While making it easier for people to inject drugs safely is controversial, Blyth says it’s a matter of public health. “In order to really help people, we need to change our opinions and the way we’ve addressed the crisis. We’re not going to police our way out of this.”

In December 2017, OPS moved into a building owned by B.C. Housing. The organization is open seven days a week and has between 300 and 500 visitors daily. Blyth, now the executive director of OPS and of the Downtown Eastside Street Market, oversees 30 trained volunteers, all members of the Downtown Eastside community.

Joy is a peer-support worker at OPS and a recovering opiate addict. “Me being able to relate with using needles, and being able to relate with being homeless, it helps. I understand what they’re going through,” she says. Joy credits OPS with supporting her to quit using. “Working here, I’m changing my life.”

Helping others should never be optional, says Blyth. “Saving a life isn’t something you don’t do if you can.”

Next, read about the retired trucker pairing drivers with dogs looking for a ride.

What Do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex…Do?

It’s official: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. If you want to get specific, their full titles are His Royal Highness The Duke of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton, and Baron Kilkeel and Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex. Queen Elizabeth II conferred these honours on the couple on their wedding day, May 19, 2018, a date you probably have memorized by now.

Royal family experts and fans alike correctly speculated that these would be their titles. The Queen has traditionally conferred a dukedom to senior male members of the royal family as a wedding gift; that’s why Prince William and Kate Middleton became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge upon their marriage as well. (Here’s why Meghan isn’t called a princess.)

As for the location, it had to be a dukedom without a scandalous reputation. For example, the New Yorker reports that one Duke of Clarence was executed by his brother and another duke of the same title was involved in a gay prostitution ring scandal. Needless to say, the titles of Duke and Duchess of Clarence likely weren’t an option.

The history behind the Sussex dukedom is less scandalous, but not without controversy. There was only one previous Duke of Sussex, Prince Augustus Frederick, the ninth child of King George III. The title became vacant upon his death in 1843. Although the Duke had two children with Lady Augusta Murray, their marriage was not approved by his father, the king, and the couple eventually separated, deeming the kids illegitimate for the title, the Washington Post reports. That separation is also why Meghan is the very first Duchess of Sussex.

However, what makes these titles so significant for Prince Harry and Meghan is that the former Duke of Sussex supported the abolition of the slave trade—a serendipitous fact, considering the Duchess’s African-American heritage. He also supported the removal of restrictions on Jews, Catholics, and dissenters. These liberal political stances eventually estranged him from his father and the court, according to the Royal Collection Trust.

With a limited number of respectable titles for the Queen to bestow, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were almost givens for Prince Harry and Meghan—but no other titles could have been more appropriate. These two, as individuals and as a couple, are known for the times they have broken royal protocol and their willingness to take matters into their own hands. They, like Prince Augustus Frederick, have strong, progressive beliefs, but fortunately, live in a time when the royal family is progressing as well. They have the tools and the drive to make the societal impact the previous Duke never could.

That the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been given these titles, then, seems to be a powerful work of fate, one that may foreshadow the changes they will impart on the world through a legacy that was never supposed to exist.

Next, be sure to check out the 13 royal rules Meghan Markle needs to follow now.

What coming to Canada was like in the 1920s

My parents arrived at the port of Halifax, on December 18, 1927, from a small village in Poland. The first thing that impressed my father was a banana. He’d never seen one before and didn’t know if he should eat the peel. He soon found out when he attempted to do so. Nonetheless, his first words upon landing were, “Canada is a good country.” (Here are 13 often-overlooked reasons it’s great to live in Canada.)

From Halifax, they travelled on the Canadian National Railway to Toronto, arriving at Union Station, which had just opened a few months prior. My mother was in absolute awe. “This is Toronto?” she said, taking in the grandeur. She had no idea what she was coming to.

My father came over, literally, with only the clothes on his back, and had to borrow five cents to buy a memorial candle to light in memory of his deceased father. He was given a helping hand by another Jewish family who had arrived in Canada before him. My father got a job as a presser in a factory on Spadina Avenue and continued working there for 40 years.

Every year, we went to the Canadian National Exhibition, better known as The Ex, to see the new items that were going to be produced in Canada: cars, stoves and refrigerators. We would also get to see the new fashions that my father would be working on in the coming year.

All travel around the city was via the Toronto Transit Commission. We had the greatest respect for the drivers who got us safely to where we were going. (These 50 things will have you falling in love with Toronto all over again.)

My mother loved going to the movies. As soon as my father would get home from work, she would leave for the movies, after she’d given him dinner. We lived by Brunswick Avenue and Bloor Street, so she had three choices of theatres: the Bloor, the Midtown and the Alhambra. At that time, the theatre gave out free place settings, so depending on which part of the place setting you needed, that was the location you chose. I still use those dishes today and have also passed some of them on to my daughters and their families.

When my sister got married, she and her husband moved to Windsor, Ont. We all loved taking the train to visit them. That is also how we went to Expo ’67 in Montreal. While there, we went to a cousin’s cottage in Sainte Agathe in the Laurentians. We were all impressed to hear my cousin conversing with others in French.

In general, everyone made do and life was much simpler. There was no health care, so different groups of people set up societies, paid dues and hired a doctor to service their needs. When my mother saved up money, she shopped at Eaton’s and referred to Mr. Eaton as her Uncle Timothy. My parents could not afford to travel much on their budget, but by working hard they succeeded in raising children and grandchildren. Excursions were a Sunday picnic lunch on the grass at either Queen’s Park or Centre Island.

It has been more than 90 years since my parents first came to Canada and so much has changed. But the one thing that has not changed nearly a century later is the sentiment that my father expressed when he first arrived: Canada is a good country.

These 10 Canada Day photos perfectly celebrate the True North Strong and Free.