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.
Life Hacks
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!
If you have nightmares about work, you’re not alone. According to a survey by Monster.com, 55% of us have work-related nightmares.
Dr. Robert Stickgold is the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School and he says work nightmares typically happen to people with stressful jobs. For example, surgeons dream of making deadly mistakes……office workers lose all their electronic files……and actors dream about being onstage and drawing a complete blank. But the most common work nightmares are: Fighting with the boss……Being late for an important meeting……and getting fired.
But surprisingly, Dr. Stickgold says work nightmares can be GOOD for us, mentally.
They’re our brain’s way of role-playing a situation, or trying to process an unresolved problem. And Stickgold says work nightmares are also our brain’s way of making sure we’re prepared for any of our worst-case scenarios.
Here are the top germ “hot spots” to avoid according to microbiologist Dr. Kelly Reynolds from the University of Arizona.
First, the absolute dirtiest spots in airports are the touch screens on self check-in kiosks! In fact, a study found the average airport touch screen contains over 200-thousand potentially illness-causing bacteria and fungal cells per square inch…… Which is FOUR TIMES MORE than the average household toilet seat!
Also, beware the reusable bins at the security checkpoint. According to the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, HALF of those bins carry the viruses that cause common colds! And a “significant” number contain dangerous waste matter – due to all the shoes and bags loaded into them, which were recently touching the ground!
Finally, as you’re waiting to board your flight, try to avoid touching chair armrests at the airport gate. Research shows those are on par with public toilet seats when it comes to the amount of illness causing germs they contain. That’s because they get cleaned less frequently than the seats on planes…… and they’re constantly being touched by people who’ve just been eating food, changing diapers, or using the bathroom.
Right before your next big meal – take a brisk 5 minute walk.
Because 5-minute micro-bursts of exercise can boost your energy and decrease fatigue, and keep cravings under control. That’s according to the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
That little bit of extra movement is enough to increase blood flow, which could play a role in helping you feel alert. Being active also suppresses hunger. Plus, aerobic activity before a meal can help keep levels of unhealthy triglyceride-rich proteins in check in the bloodstream.
The exercise encourages the body to release hormones that actually work to clear unhealthy particles from your bloodstream. It also makes your arteries more flexible.
So a short 5 minute power walk before a meal can keep your eating in check and your heart healthy.
Do you worry that you – or someone you love – is at high risk for age-related cognitive decline, like dementia or Alzheimer’s? Here’s an early sign to watch out for: Walking more slowly than usual.
A team from Monash University in Australia led by Dr. Taya Collyer kept tabs on nearly 17 thousand retirees over a 7-year period. Study participants took periodic tests to measure memory, mental speed, verbal fluency, overall cognitive decline, and walking speed.
The result: Those walking at least 5% slower than the previous year, were at higher risk for dementia.
Dr. Collyer believes a declining walking speed is linked to shrinkage in the hippocampus, the brain area linked to memory, learning, and spatial navigation.
The good news is: We can slow the progress of age-related cognitive decline with consistent exercise! Psychologists from the University of Pittsburgh had seniors begin walking 10 minutes a day – and gradually increased it to 40 minutes a day. The result: Study participants increased the size of their hippocampus by up to 2%, which shaved 1 to 2 years off their brain’s actual age.
Again, we now know one of the early signs of cognitive decline is a slower walking speed.
We deal with so much uncertainty in the world – from canceled flights, to shipping delays, to higher prices! So, how can we effectively set goals and move forward in life?
According to time management expert Laura Vanderkam, consider these words when making plans: “Hold the NEAR future tightly, hold the FAR future lightly.” Meaning, if you’re making plans for the next two weeks, Vanderkam says absolutely nail down as many details as possible.
But if you’re making plans for the next six to 12 months, go ahead and take some action – like reserving a wedding venue or buying plane tickets for a vacation, but don’t stress over the specific details just yet. And beyond a year, she says, you shouldn’t make concrete plans at all…… just think in terms of what your long-term intentions are.
Vanderkam says when you adopt this mindset – to hold the near future tightly, and the far future lightly – it allows you to focus your energy on the short-term plans that are the most likely to yield results…… while minimizing the disappointment that comes when plans suddenly have to be changed or canceled!
And that way, you can continue to move toward your longer-term goals, without being caught off guard every time life throws a curve-ball!
Hold the near future tightly, and the far future lightly
Here we go with the latest on speed-learning.
The next time you need to watch a training video for work, or anything educational, and you’re short on time……Go ahead and speed up the video!
Researchers say you’ll learn the information as well as if you just played the video at regular speed. This is the latest from the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology.
For the study, they had subjects watch a selection of videos at normal speeds and others at much faster speeds. Then, they were tested on the subject matter. Even they were surprised by the results.
When the videos were played 2 times faster than normal, people scored just as well as when the videos were viewed at a regular speed. The researchers say a slightly faster presentation does NOT over-tax a person’s working memory.
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