Heart Health Essentials
There can be no heart health without regular exercise—by now, this is gospel. And with studies cropping up that link physical activity to a raft of other benefits (from lower risk of depression to improved eye health), some doctors want us to think of exercise as medicine.
But if moving is medicine, what’s the right prescription?
News of marathon runners dropping dead mid-run has fuelled the perception that endurance sports aren’t necessarily healthy. In fact, risk of sudden death during a long-distance race is exceptionally low: less than one in 100,000, or safer than driving, according to recent U.S. data. If tackling a fitness challenge keeps you motivated, there’s no reason to stop. But if you struggle with a love-hate relationship with the gym, research suggests that moderate exercise is just as good for maintaining optimal heart health.
In one 2014 study, a team led by researchers at Texas’s Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine probed the cardiovascular function of 101 adults over 60 years of age with varying commitments to physical activity. Those who exercised less than twice a week over the decades fared worse than those who logged more fitness time. More surprisingly, the men and women who consistently exercised four to five times a week scored nearly as well as athletes who worked out almost every day and engaged in regular competitions.
Unfortunately, data worldwide has found that the majority of adults do not reach even minimum requirements for physical activity—in Canada, only 15 per cent do. To the couch-inclined, cardiologists say that anything is better than nothing. But the sweet spot is more than three sessions a week-advice enshrined in the World Health Organization’s physical activity guidelines, which state that adults should log at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity a week (and add in strength training). The type of activity doesn’t matter, as long as it raises the heart rate—most forms of yoga, while beneficial in other ways, don’t count. For the sake of our tickers, we need to get comfortable with a bit of sweat.
Here are seven household items that are fitness equipment in disguise.
Veteran Profile: Kenneth William Munro
Born in Oak Lake, Man., on January 16, 1922, Kenneth joined the Artillery on July 12, 1940, and was first stationed on Water Street in Winnipeg. On December 15, 1940, he was shipped overseas and arrived in Greenock, Scotland, before being sent to a military camp in England. In mid-June of 1944, he left for the East India Docks in London, then crossed the English Channel to France.
Kenneth was taken prisoner by the Germans on July 21, 1944, right before he was to be married in England.
After being taken prisoner by the Germans, he spent the next ten months in a German POW camp near the town of Limburg. He was liberated by the Americans in August 1945. Ken passed away in May 2017.
For more profiles by Veterans Voices of Canada, click here.
The Norwegian Booktown You Have to See
Looking at the remote village of Mundal in Fjærland, Norway, you would immediately be charmed by the enchanting waterfront wooden houses, towering mountains, and impressive glaciers. But the biggest draw for visitors just might be its reading material. (Check out the ten best cities for book lovers.)
The cute bokbyen—Norwegian for “booktown”—prides itself on the many used bookstores scattered around, but they’re no ordinary libraries. The tiny town has a population of just 300 but is home to a collection of a whopping 150,000 used books. (Discover 13 unusual international customs you never knew existed.)
Ten years before the booktown became the reading hub it is today, you could only get to Fjærland by boat. The first road to the valley was built in 1986, and now there are bus routes to get in from the north or the south. In 1995, Mundal officially became the first “booktown” in Norway, filling old ferry waiting areas, sheds, grocery stores, and more with reading material. If you lined the shelves up side-by-side, the town’s library would span four kilometres of secondhand books.
Some of the stores are large and let readers spend hours browsing the massive library. Others are humble outdoor shelves, relying on the honor system for bookworms to pay for their new reads. The booktown is officially open for business from May through mid-September, though you can buy from its extensive library online all year. (See if you can get your hands on one of these 14 famous books in Fjærland.)
Once you’re ready to crack open some new reading material, hunker down in an outdoor bench. Even the most gripping story might not be able to keep your eyes away from the stunning landscape. From Fjærland you can get a stunning view of Bøyabreen and Supphellebreen—branches of the largest glacier in continental Europe—jutting into the valley.
Check out these literary landmarks every book lover has to visit!
If You Like This Drink, You Might Be a Psychopath
Psychopaths can be picky. For example, if you’re waiting in line at your local coffee shop and the guy in front of you is unnervingly insistent on his coffee being black, you might just be in the queue next to a psychopath. But when happy hour rolls around, how are we supposed to weed out the mad among us?
According to Men’s Health, you need to keep your eyes peeled for those lime wedges and quinine-laced bubbles because psychopaths love the bitter bite of a gin and tonic. A study conducted by Austria’s Innsbruck University ran two trials on a research group of 953 participants, with eyes toward finding a link between food and drink preferences and “malevolent personality traits.” (Discover the rarest personality type in the world.)
One half of the experiment involved the participants assessing a list of bitter, sour, sweet, and salty foods and drinks on a scale of one to six. The other half of the study involved a personality questionnaire which would gauge each participant’s levels of “Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, everyday sadism, trait aggression, and the Big Five factors of personality.” (Here’s what your eye colour can reveal about your health and personality.)
The paper cites several studies which link a bitter food/drink preference, also known as “Supertasting,” to “increased emotionality” and differences in food consumption habits, but makes a point to mentioned that “To our knowledge, this is the first research linking taste preferences to antisocial personality traits.” The study may be the first of its kind, but the authors claim that it stands on solid footing.
“The data thereby provide novel insights into the relationship between personality and the ubiquitous behaviours of eating and drinking by consistently demonstrating a robust relation between increased enjoyment of bitter foods and heightened sadistic proclivities,” notes the study.
If your blind date is taking his dessert with a grain of cacao, maybe take his eerie kindness with a grain of salt. And if your discussion turns to music, keep an eye out for these tunes—psychopaths do have musical preferences, after all.
The Importance of Facial Features
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but that is easier said than done. No wonder a firm handshake and confident smile are some of the proven ways to make a good first impression.
But according to psychologist Leslie Zebrowitz at Brandeis University, it’s not the shape of your eyes or the size of your nose that matters most. People will most likely judge you based on four rather unusual facial features, instead. (Find out the daily habits of naturally charming people.)
Zebrowitz’s research, which was recently published in the journal Current Direction in Psychological Science, examined how we form first impressions of other people. By analyzing how our brains react to certain faces, she boiled the most favourable facial characteristics down to four traits: babyfaceness, familiarity, fitness, and emotional resemblance.
Babyfaceness describes people with “baby faces,” or those who have large eyes, short chins, round faces, and large foreheads. According to Curiosity, “Seeing a more baby-like face could make us treat that person more kindly, given our evolutionary soft-spot for youngins.”
Likewise, the more familiar and “fit” (read: healthy) your face looks, the more people will judge you as someone who is “likable, intelligent, and capable.” And lastly, showing positive emotional expressions on your face is a good sign of what Zebrowitz calls “emotional resemblance.” While you can’t control all of these factors, you can improve your emotional resemblance by using body language that builds trust naturally.
So the next time you meet someone new, forget about putting your best foot forward—and put your best face forward, instead.
Check out 9 Meaningful Ways to Use Body Language to Get What You Want!
New hope for treating Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 per cent of cases. There’s not a lot you can do to prevent it or treat it, though eating this could decrease your risk. Now, a promising new study from Tel Aviv University suggests that hyperbaric oxygen treatments may improve symptoms experienced by patients with Alzheimer’s.
What are hyperbaric oxygen treatments?
Used for health conditions as varied as autism, lupus, and sports injuries, the therapy involves breathing in pure oxygen in a pressurized room or chamber in which air pressure is increased to twice that of normal air. According to the study researchers, “the added oxygen stimulates the release of growth factors and stem cells, which themselves promote healing.”
For the study, scientists built a custom-made hyperbaric oxygen chamber for mice bred to develop Alzheimer’s. Over the course of 14 days, the researchers gave the mice hyperbaric oxygen treatment for an hour each day. At the end of the two weeks, the analysis of the mice suggested that the treatment had alleviated some of the damage and symptoms of Alzheimer’s compared to mice who didn’t get the treatment. The treated mice had 40 percent less of the brain plaque associated with the disease; inflammation in the brain had dropped by a similar percentage.
Although the study was performed on mice, the treatment shows promise for human application. Lead researcher, Uri Ashery, PhD, of Tel Aviv University’s Sagol School of Neuroscience and the Faculty of Life Sciences, told ScienceDaily.com that, “We have now shown for the first time that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can actually improve the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease and correct behavioral deficits associated with the disease.”
Testing in humans is next, say the researchers. In the meantime, bear in mind the everyday habits that reduce the risk of dementia.
Got a “been-there, done-that” feeling about Europe? Here’s the gem you’ve most likely overlooked!
Europe is full of incredibly beautiful destinations—take London, Paris and Dubrovnik, for instance. But with so many picturesque locations to visit, unfortunately, some hidden beauties can be overlooked. Ever heard of San Marino? If not, let us introduce you to the seriously underrated and least-visited country in Europe.
According to the World Tourism Organization, San Marino only had 60,000 tourists visit in 2016, which is less than any other European country. The gorgeous microstate is only 23.6 square miles and has a population of 32,140, according to the World Atlas.
If you’re visiting from Italy, there’s a cable car that will lift you up to Mount Titano, which is where San Marino is situated. Yes, this small country is located on a mountain. In other words, the views of Italy hugging the bottom of the cliff and the glistening Adriatic Sea in the distance are absolutely astonishing.
But the views aren’t the only reason why San Marino should be on your bucket list. Despite how small this microstate may be, it’s steeped in history. Its capital (also named San Marino) is even listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s home to convents from the 14th and 15th centuries, an 18th-century theatre, and a basilica from the 19th century. Perhaps the most famous works of architecture are the country’s three medieval fortresses, which can also be seen on their flag: Guaita, Cesta, and Montale Tower. (Brush up on your history at the World’s 10 Greatest Museums.)
Besides its gorgeous medieval layout, San Marino is also a tax-free country—which is another draw-in for tourists. Even with its tax-free policy, the country manages to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world (based on GDP per capita), according to the World Atlas.
The best part? San Marino is a perfect getaway year-round! Whether it’s covered in glistening snow or illuminated by the summer sun, San Marino is a must-see destination for anyone. Here are 5 More Holiday Travel Destinations You Never Thought of Visiting!
Check out 10 More Beautiful and Wildly Underrated Cities in Europe!
It turns out there’s a downside to being nice…
There are many simple ways to be nicer to people, and we like to believe that all that kindness and consideration will be appreciated. However, a new study indicates that being nice may not do us any favours down the line.
According to a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, people who are nice—defined as sensitive to unfairness or inequity—are more likely to show symptoms of depression than people who tend to be selfish and egotistical.
For the experiment, lead author Dr. Masahiko Haruno and a team of researchers looked at whether the pattern of thinking that’s considered “pro-social” (meaning self-sacrificing and willing to promote equity) was linked with longer-term clinical symptoms of depression. They started by giving nearly 350 people a personality test to determine whether they were more “pro-social” or “individualist” (selfish and primarily concerned with maximizing their own resources). Then they measured people’s desire to share financial resources with those less fortunate. By examining the brains of pro-socials and individualists using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they were able to see which areas of the brain are activated during specific situations. (Here are tips on How to Deal With a Depressed Spouse.)
Turns out, the brain images were quite different between the two types of people. In situations in which money was unequally distributed, pro-social people showed high activity in the amygdala (an evolutionary region of the brain associated with automatic feelings, including stress), while individualists had increased amygdala activation only when others received more money. There was also a different pattern of activity between the two groups in the hippocampus, another primitive brain region involved with automatic stress responses. (Check out the Scary Things That Happen to Your Brain When You’re Stressed.)
The researchers then followed up with a common depression questionnaire called the Beck Depression Inventory to see whether these patterns of brain activity were linked with depression symptoms within the prior two weeks. Turns out that having a prosocial pattern of brain activation was associated with more depression. The dynamic remained true when researchers followed up with participants a year later. (Watch out for these other hidden signs you might have high functioning depression).
According to the researchers, nicer people are more vulnerable to depression because they are more likely to experience extreme empathy, guilt, and stress. And this emotional sensitivity is wired into the deepest and most automatic regions of the brain—places that are easy triggers for depression.
Fortunately, not all hope is lost for inherently kind people. Dr. Mauricio Delgado, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University, tells Scientific American: “Although the average pro-social may have a sensitive amygdala—and hippocampus, the other primal stress-related brain region in the study, there are plenty of other higher-order brain regions involved in depression, including the prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with regulation of these automatic feelings.”
By training higher-level brain processes (like the pre-frontal cortex) through talk therapy, pro-socials can learn to control and combat their more primal emotions. And the more they can use the pre-frontal cortex to tamp down amygdala-driven stress, the less likely they will be to fall into depression.
[Source: Scientific American]
Here are 13 Depression Treatments Worth Discussing With Your Doctor.
Tempted to switch to a shorter line? Read this first!
It seems like a scene out of a sitcom. A group of friends are waiting in line at the movie theatre/coffee shop/grocery store and spot another line that is shorter. One friend goes rogue and jumps to that line, much to the chagrin of the friends who stay put. The line-jumper ends up getting service later, while the original liners take joy in the comeuppance. Cue laugh track.
We make the same assumption in real life, that a shorter line means a shorter waiting time, but is this valid? Researchers at Harvard Business School actually examined the practice of line-jumping, and the results show something entirely different.
The study focused on a concept called “last place aversion,” a person’s desire to not be last or in lower ranking than others. This concept can apply to knowing that you make less money than others, knowing that you are low in social hierarchy, and, of course, being last in line. In fact, lead study author Ryan Buell said that people last in line are almost 20 per cent less satisfied than if someone is behind them. (These nine quirky habits prove you’re smarter than everyone else.)
The first half of the research involved Buell observing customers at a multi-checkout grocery store to provide a point of reference for line times. The second half of the study involved a one-minute online survey for a separate group of participants, but there was a catch. In order to reach the survey, participants had to wait in a virtual line, with options to stay in their current line, switch to a secondary queue, or leave the waiting area entirely.
The study found that people who are last in line are four times as likely to line jump. One in five participants opted to switch to the other line but, on average, increased their wait time. The people that switched lines once waited 10 per cent longer, while people that switched lines twice ended up waiting 67 per cent longer.
“When we join a queue, we tend to make the most rational choice we can, which usually means joining the shortest queue,” Buell said. “But if we see a line moving faster, we might switch without having enough extra information, and we can often get it wrong.”
In other words, your last place aversion can cloud your judgment without taking other factors into account, like how many items everyone in a checkout line has. So if you want to avoid this folly, keep those eyes focused on the line you’re already in. Jumping around definitely won’t save you any time. (Here’s the one productivity trick the greatest thinkers in the world had in common.)
[Source: The Guardian / Lifehacker]
Want to make the most of every second of the day? Here’s what successful people do on their morning commute!
How *not* to address the Queen (should you have the chance to meet)
Let’s say you find yourself face-to-face with Queen Elizabeth. What would you do? Many people might get tongue-tied upon meeting the British monarch—not to mention any other member of the royal family. (Considering how much the royal family is worth, we don’t blame you!)
But if you do manage to stay calm, there are certain things one must say and do to abide by the royal family’s strict etiquette rules. Anything from holding your teacup wrong to descending the stairs incorrectly could land you in the royal doghouse.
Another major faux-pas: You should never refer to the Queen as Queen Elizabeth. While “Queen Elizabeth” is a part of her official title, it is considered rude to address her by her full name.
You should always refer to Queen Elizabeth as “Your Majesty” instead, according to Rachel Kelly, a public relations executive at VisitBritain, the U.K.’s official tourism office. After the first reference, you may use a simple “ma’am” when speaking to the Queen.
What if you happen to brush shoulders with any other member of the royal family? “Whatever you do, don’t call them nicknames,” Kelly told ABC News. And you might want to avoid uttering the words banned from the royal family’s vocabulary, while you’re at it.
That’s not to say that the royal family members are always sticklers for protocol, though. Here’s the one royal rule that Prince William and Kate Middleton always break.
[Sources: ABC News, CheatSheet]
We’re counting down the Queen’s Top 10 Canadian Milestones!
