Category: health
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Routine, Sleep and Premature Death
Sleeping for less that six hours a night is correlated strongly with an increased risk of premature death over a 25-year period (a 12% increase in the likelihood of your premature death, to be exact). That’s the conclusion from an extensive report (studying 1.5 million people) convincingly showing the link between quality sleep and one’s…
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Health and Alcohol Intake (Men, Women, Wine)
A longitudinal study of almost 20,000 U.S. women is showing signs that moderate alcohol consumption (“one or two alcohol beverages a day”) can lower the risk for obesity and inhibit weight gain: Over the course of the study, 41 percent of the women became overweight or obese. Although alcohol is packed with calories (about 150…
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Sleep and Weight Loss
While asleep our metabolic rate increases such that we lose more than three times the amount of weight than if we are awake (awake but lying dormant, of course): 1.9g/min compared to 0.6g/min. This increase in ‘caloric expenditure’ is not yet fully understood, but there are a number of reasons why we may lose more…
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Sports Drinks and Dehydration
More for the parents of athletic children, this article from The New York Times‘ Well blog still contains some useful all-round advice on hydration during exercise. In the comments the author also links to this urine colour test for dehydration. When [exercising children] were offered grape-flavored water, they voluntarily drank 44.5 percent more than when…
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Alcohol in Moderation: Not So Good, Maybe
Moderate alcohol intake has long been lauded as an ingredient of the healthy lifestyle; being good for your heart and your longevity. According to a growing number of vocal psychologists, however, studies showing health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption are purely correlatory and any advice coming from them should be taken with caution. From an…
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Cognitive Benefits of Exercise
Walter van den Broek (AKA Dr Shock) provides a summary of the research on the neuroscience of exercise, or: the cognitive benefits of an active lifestyle. Exercise… improves learning and intelligence scores. increases the resilience of the brain in later life resulting in a cognitive reserve. [attenuates] the decline of memory, cortex and hippocampus atrophy…
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A More Positive View of McDonald’s
The Washington Post talks to Jim Skinner, the McDonald’s CEO, and presents a positive viewpoint of McDonald’s. McDonald’s exemplifies the role of small businesses in Americans’ upward mobility. The company is largely a confederation of small businesses: 85 percent of its U.S. restaurants — average annual sales, $2.2 million — are owned by franchisees. McDonald’s…
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A New Look at Health Insurance and Gym Use
From Tyler Cowen’s Markets in self-constraint: A Danish gym chain is now offering membership free of charge, with the only caveat that you have to show up, in order for the membership to be free. If you fail to show up once per week you will be billed the normal monthly membership fee for that…
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Exercise and the Placebo Effect
Can the placebo effect work with exercise and fitness? Two Harvard psychologists decided to find out, and the results were startling. 84 maids at seven carefully matched hotels [were quizzed on] how much exercise they got. Fully a third of the women said they got no exercise at all, while two-thirds said they did not…