Try this self-test to check your balance.
Act like you’ve been pulled over for a DUI and walk in a straight line, putting one foot directly in front of the other – with the toes of your back foot touching the heel of your front foot.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Nancy Trevanian Tsai says, see how many steps you can take like that without wobbling off center. If you can’t take more than 4 steps, your balance needs work.
So try standing in that same position – one foot directly in front of the other – and raise your hands high above your head. Hold that position as long as you can. Because with good balance, you’re less likely to fall and injure yourself. And that’s important because 20% of elderly hip-fracture patients die within a year due to complications from the trauma.
You can also try tai chi. A study found that people who do tai chi once a week have much better balance
Life Hacks
If you find yourself so stressed out that you just can’t fall asleep, try this tip: Wiggle your toes for 60 seconds.
That’s a little do-it-yourself reflexology – a type of massage that triggers pressure points in the body to relieve tension and treat illness.
Reflexologists say that a good toe-wiggling helps release energy in the feet, and triggers a relaxation response that gradually spreads through the whole body……
You’ll be able to drift off quickly, and then stay asleep.
Did you know that we tend to have our most creative ideas right around mid-morning.
That’s according to Cornell University neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter. And he recommends taking advantage of that creative brainpower surge by making your environment totally quiet for half an hour – between 10 and 10:30AM.
He says that half-hour of quiet will help increase communication between 11 different areas of our brain – which can boost our concentration and productivity by up to 67%. And as an added bonus, that 30-minutes of quiet can boost our mood for the next two hours.
So, grab a pair of earplugs – or noise canceling headphones – and get ready for a surge of creativity!
When you’re leaving home, how often do you go to the bathroom “just in case” before you leave? Well, experts say it’s a habit we should STOP.
This comes from Dr. Fei Zang, a pelvic floor therapist. She says, normally, when we have to “go,” it’s because receptors in our bladder have sent signals to our brain, saying our bladder’s “full.”
But when we regularly force ourselves to go – when our bladder’s NOT full – it can desensitize receptors in a way that makes our brain think we need a bathroom break, even if our internal tank is only at half, or even a-quarter, of its capacity. And that often leads to even MORE frequent urges to go.
Ideally, Dr. Zang says, if you can sleep all night without a bathroom visit, that’s a sign of healthy bladder control. And if you’re regularly hydrating throughout the day, it’s fine to go every two or three hours.
But here’s the bottom line: Forcing yourself to pee “just in case” is an unhealthy habit that could lead to bigger problems in the future.
I’m about to reveal the “sweet spot” for sleep that can help you maintain good mental and physical health.
Once we reach middle age, we need to sleep a certain number of hours each night to maintain good health. And that number is 7. No more, no less.
Researchers at the UK’s University of Cambridge analyzed data from nearly half a million people aged 38 to 73.
The result: 7 hours a night was the optimal amount of sleep for cognitive performance. The data also showed that fewer than 7 hours of sleep AND more than 7 hours was linked to reduced mental processing speed, visual attention, memory, and problem-solving skills.
Study participants who slept 7 hours a night also experienced less anxiety and depression, and higher overall wellbeing, compared to when they slept longer or shorter periods of time.
The researchers say one reason is that getting less than 7 hours a night means people are getting less “deep sleep.” And without that restorative deep sleep, damaging proteins build up in the brain, which is one of the hallmarks of dementia. Too little sleep also hurts the brain’s ability to flush out toxins, which can trigger inflammation and age-related brain diseases.
And sleeping more than 8 hours a night after middle age is linked to depression.
So, to maximize your brain function in middle age and beyond? 7 hours is your sweet spot.
If you want to stick to a budget and save money, both of those things can be accomplished with one technique……and it’s going viral.
It’s the “cash stuffing” trend, which has nearly 400-million views on TikTok. All you need is some cold, hard cash and a set of envelopes.
You start by dividing up your envelopes into categories and labeling them. For example, date night, rent, utilities, vacation, et cetera.
Then divide up your cash into the respective category, or envelope, it’s allocated for.
That’s it – you’re just putting cash in envelopes……so what’s the big deal?
Well, credit cards and payment apps raise the risk of overspending – because they’re so fast and easy……And it doesn’t seem like you’re spending real money. But according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and MIT, when we use cash money – we actually feel psychological pain. They’ve seen this in brain scans. It’s a fact that we spend less frivolously when we pay with cash.
Also, when you pay with cash, you can only spend what you actually have.
So there you go… that’s the “cash stuffing” trend.
According to the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, snuggling your dog can lead to a 166% reduction in anxiety!
But we now know your dog benefits too! In a recent study, owners either petted their dog for 3 minutes – or ignored them – and then the owners left the room, leaving their dog alone for a while.
What they found was: The dogs whose owners had petted them remained calmer and had a lower heart rate when their owner left the room – which is an indication of reduced stress – compared to the dogs who weren’t petted.
So the journal researchers recommend that before you leave the house, give your dog some love and attention, especially a little petting. It’ll help with separation anxiety, leaving them calmer in your absence. Just don’t make a big deal about walking out the door.
This can be tough because if your dog is like my dog, she hangs out by the door. I’ve thought about tunneling out of the house but my wife thinks I’m nuts.
Here’s good news if you’re thinking about your golden years……
Retirement can make you healthier!
Researchers from the University of Sydney studied the lifestyle habits of over 25-thousand working adults over age 45. They looked at things like their activity level, smoking, diet, alcohol consumption and sleep patterns.
Three years later, when around 11 percent of the participants had retired, they followed up to see how their habits had changed. And it was mostly for the better!
The researchers found that retirees were more active than those who were still working……and they sat less. In fact, on average, retired people got an additional 93 minutes of physical activity each week. They also got more sleep, sat one hour less each day – and women, in particular, were more likely to quit smoking after retirement.
Why are you so tired today? It could be from all the sugar you ate yesterday!
Because, according to the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, eating a lot of sugar is linked to lighter, more disrupted and less restorative sleep. In fact, the more sugar you eat during the day, the more often you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night.
And even if you don’t fully wake up, the sugar in your system can prevent deep sleep, making you feel exhausted the next day. And the same goes for eating a bunch of refined carbs, like white bread and pastas. Because they turn to sugar in the body and delay the release of the sleep hormone melatonin.
So, the journal scientists suggest we cut back on sugar and refined carbs and get more fiber in our diet. Fiber improves sleep because it digests slowly and keeps blood sugar steady. And a higher fiber intake is associated with more time spent in the deepest, most restorative stage of sleep.
If you walk for exercise, try this trick to increase your pace: Walk and chew gum at the same time.
According to the Society for Neuroscience, it’ll help you walk faster! That’s because we tend to chew gum more quickly than we walk. We chew about 75 times per minute, but walk only 60 steps per minute. But our brains aren’t great at processing two speeds at once. So you’ll
subconsciously start to walk faster – at the pace of your chewing.
In a study at Old Dominion University, both young and older participants had the same results……They walked faster to keep pace with their chewing rate. So if you want to walk more quickly, pop a piece of gum!
Now there’s even more data connecting walking speed to a longer life. 7 years longer. Here’s the latest from the Journal of the American Medical Association:
For their experiment, researchers followed nearly 5 thousand adults between ages 40 and 85 for 10 years. They had their study participants wear activity trackers to gauge their levels of aerobic exercise. And the Participants also answered questions about their exercise habits.
After crunching the numbers, the researchers found that study participants who raised their heart rates with daily, brisk walking, specifically, taking a 10 minute power walk once a day…. boosted their life expectancy by 7-10%, on average. And taking a brisk half hour walk boosted life expectancy by a full 17%.
The science is clear: Spending just 30 minutes a day raising your heart rate could lengthen your life by up to 7 extra years!
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