Teen smokers are better at getting friends to start than nonsmokers are at getting friends to quit.“What we found is that social influence matters, it leads nonsmoking friends into smoking and nonsmoking friends can turn smoking friends into nonsmokers,
An awareness of our own death is potentially extremely distressing. Go ahead and contemplate your own mortality. How does it feel? Would you be surprised to learn that it can potentially improve your mental health to think about your death more often?
by Peter Bongiorno, ND, LAc. One group of researchers in Virginia suggests that hydrotherapy may be useful to treat cancer and chronic fatigue as well as depression. Cold exposure therapies may actually be the best choice for depressed patients. According to Hippocrates, water therapy "allays lassitude."
We can work with plant spirits for our own personal guidance and healing, but when we call upon plant spirits to engage in the healing of another, a particular type of dynamism is added to the healing process. Plants are community beings that are here to serve the community as a whole so that when we step beyond our own personal needs...
Oxytocin is released with a warm hug, a grasped hand, or a loving gaze, and it increases libido. The hormone kicks into high gear during and after childbirth, helping new mothers bond with and breastfeed their new babies. While oxytocin is found in both young boys and girls, it is not yet known when levels of the hormone start to decline in humans, and what levels are necessary for maintaining healthy tissues.
It’s often said that no-one really knows what sleep is for. Sometimes it’s as if this lack of surety means its functions are relatively unimportant or even vestigial, like an appendix to the story of our life. How we evaluate life has long since focused on the daytime – what we think and feel when we’re awake.
- By Asgar Ali
Nearly a third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted, according to the UN’s World Resources Institute. It is a sad irony that we waste so much food – especially fruit and vegetables – but still fail to feed the world’s ever increasing population. We need to start minimizing the amount of food that is produced and then lost.
Eating good food promotes overall health and well-being, but what you eat may also impact how you feel. Research suggests that not only can the food you eat affect your mood, but that your mood may influence the foods you choose to consume.
- By Liz Pleasant
Fewer high school students smoked cigarettes in 2013 than in previous years, while more adults are delaying health care because they can't afford it. These are among the insights of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest annual report, released in May.
You might work the upper body one day and the lower body the following day, split up by cardio and repeated. Another strategy is to do a split routine so you can focus on each muscle group separately. Remember they need a break to recuperate because you are focusing on them.
The average child in the US snacks three times a day. Concerned about the role of snacking in obesity, a team of researchers set out to explore how eating frequency relates to energy intake and diet quality in a sample of low-income urban school children in the Boston area.
Factors such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress reduction, and spiritual connection provide the foundation for a strong immune response. Everything you do -- everything you touch, breathe, eat, and think affects your immunity. How you live your life is the most powerful resource...
Eating an organic diet for a week can cause pesticide levels to drop by almost 90% in adults, research from RMIT University has found.The study, led by Dr Liza Oates found participants' urinary dialkylphosphates (DAPs) measurements were 89% lower.
- By Kat Duff
Our bodies change physiologically, continually altering the amount of sleep we need, the kind we get, and the time of day we are best able to get it as we progress through the life cycle. We assume and relinquish many responsibilities, encounter differing environmental conditions, and make lifestyle choices that impact...
For those of us who suffer from migraine disease, chronic stress can drain our energy and lead to adrenal crisis. Meditation, coupled with deep abdominal breathing, can be helpful in regulating our response to stressful situations, as well as in aborting and preventing migraine attacks and strengthening our kidneys.
Different measures of physical abilities can be assessed to determine how old someone is including walking speed, standing balance, the speed they can rise from sitting. We found that hand grip strength, a measure of upper-body strength, is consistently a good indicator of future mortality and susceptibility to disease.
When I investigated the threats posed to our global food system by climate change and the environmental damage caused by industrial agriculture — as well what people are doing to fix these problems, I became familiar with...
Contrary to popular belief, people who are experiencing food poverty are not ignorant of what they should eat as part of a healthy diet or even where to buy affordable food. There is a wealth of research showing that the most important factor for having a healthy diet is access to affordable healthy food.
There is a metal metabolism defect, often present in autism, which makes mercury especially toxic for autistic children. Even with a normal system, an infant can't handle mercury. Bile is needed for the process of eliminating mercury from the body, but an infant's liver does not produce bile.
Just as there is no single cause of cancer, there is no single remedy. Therefore when approaching a complex disease like cancer it is important to formulate a balanced protocol that addresses: the characteristics of the disease; diet, environment, and lifestyle; organ weaknesses and the overall deficiency or excess of the person.
Tai chi, a traditional Chinese form of exercise, may help older adults avoid getting shingles by increasing immunity to varicella-zoster virus and boosting the immune response to varicella vaccine, according to research supported by the National Institute on Aging and NCCAM.
It's that time of year: Bicyclists young and old are lubing chains and dusting off cheap supermarket bikes, top-of-the line Treks and everything in between. A bike, of course, offers a way to get exercise, reduce your carbon footprint or just have fun. But biking activity, in large part, is driven by the pedaling opportunities available in your community.
At first glance, one would think that the causes of diseases are as numerous and diverse as the diseases themselves. However, careful observation will show that, fundamentally, all illnesses share one cause: the deterioration of the terrain, the body’s internal cellular environment...