Reap The Health Benefits Of Laughter By Watching Funny Youtube Videos
When it comes to stress relief, laughter may seem like a whimsical fix, but it really works, according to the Mayo Clinic. Short-term, youre enhancing your intake of oxygen-rich air, which helps your heart, lungs, and muscles. Plus, youre releasing feel-good hormones like endorphins, which can ease tension and add to an overall sense of well-being. Research has even linked humor and laughter to improved immune function, since it can produce antibodies and activate the bodys protective T-cells.
Listen To An Uplifting Podcast
There’s plenty of difficult and challenging news in the world today, and it can be tough to take a break from it. But it’s worth making the effort. One good way? Listen to a podcast that not only gives you good advice on self-care but also makes you feel lighter and brighter. Here are some picks to get you started: Feel Better, Live More,Where There’s Smoke, Inspire Nation, and Good Life Project.
Swap Out One Coffee For Decaf
Caffeine is one of the most researched substances, with more than 10,000 studies to date, according to a review published in November 2017 in Food and Chemical Toxicology. Not surprisingly, thats led to a wide range of conclusions, but one thats fairly consistent is that having too much can lead to less-than-ideal effects, the researchers conclude. They note that getting more than 400 milligrams of caffeine daily can affect your central nervous system, gastrointestinal system, and sleep quality. Check your consumption with this chart from the Center for Science in the Public Interest . Too much caffeine can even increase anxiety and stress. So enjoy your buzz, but try limiting your daily amount.
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Take A Long Relaxing Bath
Why is a warm bath so incredibly relaxing? Research suggest one reason may be that it reduces inflammation. According to a study in the December 2018 issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, just one hot bath can calm your stress response. Another reason is that you’re simply allowing yourself to take a break, Carter says. “You’re taking time away from your to-do list and things you think you ‘should’ be doing,” she says. “When that happens, you automatically feel like you’re dropping into self-care mode.”
Take An Online College Course
Staying a lifelong student is a great way to boost your brain power and practice self-care, according to Scott Kaiser, MD, director of geriatric cognitive health for Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Best of all, plenty of colleges and universities across the globe have put free courses online, so you can audit classes from Stanford, MIT, Harvard University, Sorbonne University, and many more, via platforms like Coursera and edX. Try starting with Yale’s incredibly popular free class about happiness, The Science of Well-Being. Dr. Kaiser says that the brain responds favorably to cognitive challenges , and in turn, that can increase your levels of hormones like serotonin and dopamine.
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Enjoy The Healing Power Of Baking
Self-care comes with the idea of nourishing yourself, on every level. And doing something creative can promote that feeling of well-being, says productivity expert Tonya Dalton, of Asheville, North Carolina, author of The Joy of Missing Out: Live More by Doing Less. That can include baking, because for many people that act of creating something delicious feels like pressing a reset button.
Plus, she adds, its an easy project for including other family members, like a spouse or kids. That can give you a sweet burst of social time that ends with a delicious result.
These Five Habits Can Save Your Heart Heres How
According to hard data, five harmful habits herald the coming of heart disease. These five are smoking, being inactive, carrying too many pounds, eating poorly, and drinking too much alcohol.
Alone and together, they set the stage for artery-damaging atherosclerosis and spur it onward. They do this by deranging metabolism and changing how cells and tissues work. They also disturb the markers of health we worry about so much: blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. All too often, the end result of these five habits is a heart attack, stroke, peripheral artery disease, valve problem, aortic aneurysm, or heart failure. And the damage they cause isn’t limited to the cardiovascular system, but extends to the kidneys, bones, and brain.
What can making better choices do for health and longevity? Consider this provocative finding from the Nurses’ Health Study. Nonsmoking women with a healthy weight who exercised regularly, consumed a healthy diet, and had an alcoholic drink every other day were 83% less likely to have had a heart attack or to have died of heart disease over a 14-year period, compared with all the other women in the study. The results were almost identical in a similar study in men. In these two studies, more than two-thirds of all cardiovascular events could be chalked up to smoking, excess weight, poor diet, and drinking too much.
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Use Social Media Mindfully
Social media and other virtual tools allow you to connect with friends and family even when youre apart. But they can also have unintended consequences if and when using them becomes excessive or too consuming. How can you make sure youre using them wisely? The more personal your social media interactions, the better, experts say . Use it intentionally. Be selective about who you follow and what tools youre using. And take time to disconnect. If youre feeling isolated, make a point to call a friend or family member once in a while, rather than shooting out another text or Facebook comment.
Russert Did Well On A Stress Test In Late April What Does A Stress Test Tell You And If You Do Well On One Does That Mean You’re In The Clear
Patterson: The critical question is what does it not tell you. Stress tests don’t tell you about the presence of vulnerable plaque. Plaque doesn’t have to obstruct blood flow to be vulnerable. The only thing that a stress test will tell you is if you have enough plaque to obstruct blood flow.
The fact he had a normal stress test is good prognostically it put him in a lower-risk bundle. But it doesn’t take his risk down to zero and it does nothing to identify whether he had plaques that were vulnerable and at risk for rupture.
Ostfeld: Every test is different and needs to be interpreted differently. But if someone has an excellent stress test, that would predict a very low risk of a short-term event and is largely reassuring. However that does not obviate the need, of course, to continue to have a healthy lifestyle and to be sure problems are well controlled.
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Figure Out What Works Best For You When It Comes To Hacking Stress
Everyone deals with stress in different ways, and the stress-buster that works for you may not work for your best friend. Take Everyday Healths stress personality test, developed with mental health expert Heidi Hanna, PhD, a member of the Everyday Health Wellness Advisory Board, to help you better understand your stress personality and some of the best ways to cope with the challenges you face.
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How Would Someone Find Out That They Have That
Ostfeld: There are a handful of ways that we can predict future risk and/or specifically screen for atherosclerosis that may not be clinically apparent. Routine screenings are things like cholesterol and high blood pressure and diabetes — things that, if elevated or present, may significantly increase your future risk of heart disease. Those should be part of routine evaluation. Other tests include a blood test looking for inflammation in the body one blood test is a high-sensitivity CRP test. But it is not clear that checking this blood test will always modify how we treat the patient.
There are more expensive tests that can be performed that look directly at blood vessels, looking specifically for atherosclerosis. Two such tests are a carotid ultrasound test that looks at the thickness of the blood vessel, something we call an IMT … if it’s thick, that suggests that there is atheorscloerosis present.
Another imaging study is a heart CT can or heart CAT scan, which can look for calcium in the blood vessels and or look at the blood vessels themselves to see if signs of atherosclerosis are there.
Zipes: Heart scans can be useful. In general, they’re expensive and generally not paid for by insurance, but if someone can afford it, yes, that’s a very reasonable thing to do.
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If Someone Already Has Atherosclerosis Is The Goal To Prevent It From Worsening Or Is The Goal To Undo It
Ostfeld: The goal is to make the person as healthy as possible and to improve the health of the blood vessels as much as possible. We’ve learned that many of our therapies, although they may not change the absolute amount of atherosclerosis in a blood vessel, they improve the health of that blood vessel very much. So it may be that the health of the blood vessel itself is the key aspect. We know that a healthy lifestyle and appropriate medical therapy can improve the health of the blood vessels, so those things are obviously very important.
Give Yourself A Diy Facial
Why limit your home spa experience to a DIY mani-pedi when you might have all the ingredients for a facial in your pantry? Face masks can be really beneficial for your skin because theyre occlusive, meaning they seal in their ingredients against your skin until you wash off the mask giving those ingredients time to absorb. Check out some recipes like the oatmeal and turmeric face mask from Karissa’s Vegan Kitchen, the oatmeal avocado face mask from Fit Foodie Finds, or a range of honey-based face masks from Don’t Mess With Mama.
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What Is Thought To Be The Closest Thing We Have To A Magic Bullet Against Heart Disease
Exercise and physical activity are about the closest things you have to magic bullets against heart disease and other chronic conditions.
When a coronary artery becomes blocked the result is?
The heart is a muscle and needs a supply of oxygen-rich blood like every other muscle in the body. If one or more of the coronary arteries becomes narrowed or blocked, blood flow to the heart can slow down or stop. Coronary artery disease can cause a heart attack.
which cholesterol profile would place someone at greatest risk for heart disease?cholesterolcholesterolcholesterolrisk for heart disease
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Cook Yourself A Nourishing Meal
We need food to survive, and taking time to prepare a meal that satisfies your taste buds and is good for you is definitely one way to practice self-care. Past research has found that cooking can be therapeutic, meeting some of our fundamental needs, like giving us a sense of agency, belongingness, and connectedness and it allows us to express our creativity.
Choose a comforting recipe, whether its a chicken noodle soup that your mom used to make or a healthier take on mac and cheese that tastes just as good as the original version. And give yourself the time in the kitchen you need, so it doesnt turn into a chore or feel like a slog. Savor the experience, and then savor the food you made.
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Start Or Maintain Your Home Garden
Whether you have a magnificent and expansive yard or you’re nestled into an urban jungle, you can tailor a home garden to your needs. Multiple studies have shown that gardening has mental health benefits, according to a review article published in March 2017 in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports.“Tending plants, indoors or outdoors, brings a level of engagement to the task, and that adds to the benefits we see with interacting with nature,” says Viren Swami, PhD, a researcher and professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England.
Outdoors? Try a quick garden builder like the Seedsheet , which gives you a head start on your green thumb with seeds embedded in weed-blocking fabric. Indoors, you can start a shelf of succulents or try an herb garden with your culinary favorites. Check out optimal lighting conditions and what type of maintenance is required for seeds and plants before you buy .
Tim Russert’s Death: Questions Answers
Get Answers to Questions About Tim Russert’s Heart Attack — And Your Own Risk
June 16, 2008 — Newsman Tim Russert’s death last Friday from a heart attack caught many people by surprise.
NBC News reports that Russert, 58, collapsed at work and that resuscitation attempts were made at a nearby hospital, to no avail.
Russert’s doctor, Michael Newman, MD, says an autopsy showed that the heart attack was caused by cholesterol plaque rupturing in a coronary artery and that Russert had an enlarged heart.
Russert was known to have coronary artery disease that was well controlled with medication and exercise he had performed well on a stress test in late April, according to NBC.
WebMD spoke with three cardiologists — none of whom was treating Russert — about Russert’s death:
- Cam Patterson, MD, chief of the division of cardiology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- Robert Ostfeld, MD, cardiologist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
- Douglas Zipes, MD, past president of the American College of Cardiology and distinguished professor of medicine at Indiana University.
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Regular Physical Activity Is ‘magic Bullet’ For Pandemics Of Obesity Cardiovascular Disease
- Date:
- Florida Atlantic University
- Summary:
- The statistics on regular physical activity in the U.S. are bleak only about 20 percent of Americans engage in recommended levels of regular physical activity and about 64 percent never do any physical activity.
In an editorial published in the current issue of Cardiology, professors from the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University have evaluated the totality of evidence and conclude that regular physical activity bears the closest resemblance to a “magic bullet” to combat the worldwide epidemic of obesity and cardiovascular disease.
The statistics on regular physical activity in the United States are bleak only about 20 percent of Americans engage in recommended levels of regular physical activity and about 64 percent never do any physical activity. In Europe, the statistics are not much better with only 33 percent who engage in physical activity with some regularity, while 42 percent never do any physical activity.
“If regular physical activity were a pill, then perhaps more people would take it,” said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.P.H., co-author of the article titled “Regular Physical Activity: A ‘Magic Bullet’ for the Pandemics of Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease,” and the first Sir Richard Doll Professor and senior academic advisor to the dean in FAU’s College of Medicine.
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The Mescaleros And Other Work
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Strummer gathered top-flight musicians into a backing band he called the Mescaleros. Strummer and the band signed with Mercury Records, and released their first album in 1999, which was co-written with Antony Genn, called Rock Art and the X-Ray Style. A tour of England, Europe, and North America soon followed.
This is my Indian summer … I learnt that fame is an illusion and everything about it is just a joke. I’m far more dangerous now, because I don’t care at all.
| Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros |
| Problems playing this file? See media help. |
In 2001, the band signed with Californian punk label Hellcat Records and released their second studio album, Global a Go-Go. The album was supported with a 21-date tour of North America, Britain, and Ireland. Once again, these concerts featured Clash material ” rel=”nofollow”> London’s Burning”, “Rudie Can’t Fail”, “ In Hammersmith Palais“), as well as covers of reggae and ska hits ” rel=”nofollow”> The Harder They Come”, “A Message to You, Rudy”) and the band regularly closed the show by playing the Ramones‘ “Blitzkrieg Bop“. He covered Bob Marley‘s “Redemption Song” with Johnny Cash.
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Avoid Nonstop News Consumption
Its important to stay informed and alert to critical updates in your area, especially those that affect your health. But no one needs to listen to the same alerts and see the same headlines repeatedly, especially during times when the news can be upsetting. Experts recommend limiting news consumption to two or three sources a day to help cope with the anxiety it may bring, and checking in at regular times throughout the day for updates. Consider making one of your sources a local news source. And if you can, avoid checking the headlines just before bed.
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What Would You Want Women To Keep In Mind Because It’s The No 1 Killer Of Women As Well
Patterson: My comments to women are these. The No. 1 disease women are afraid of is breast cancer, but the No. 1 cause of death in women is heart disease. The second point to make is symptoms of heart disease are frequently much more subtle in women and much more difficult to diagnose, so women shouldn’t allow themselves to be judged by the same standards as men in terms of whether or not they’re having symptoms of heart disease or whether or not they’re at risk for heart disease.
Ostfeld: Women are approximately six to seven times more likely to die from heart disease than they are from breast cancer. Clearly, you do not want either, but it highlights how critically important it is for women to take their heart health very seriously as well.
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