Here are this weekend's reading diversions for your personal enjoyment. Have a fabulously HOT weekend!
Your Personality Could Make You Gain Weight: STUDY
Yes, that's right -- type A personalities are more likely to have a higher BMI and impulse shoppers are more likely to go through cycles of losing and gaining weight, according to research recently published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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David Katz, M.D.: Why We Need To Go Beyond The 'Sound Bite' For Health Information
Our society has incubated the evolution of the sound bite and the devolution of civility. This is a perilous pairing if ever there was one -- a pernicious influence on discourse and a constant threat to sense, which is, alas, now far from common. We don't even try to understand one another -- and so, of course, we don't. No understanding means no agreement, which in turns means no progress.
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Stephanie Silberman, Ph.D.: What's Really Causing Your Sleepless Nights?
There are many factors that may cause trouble sleeping at night and even lead to chronic insomnia. You've probably heard about the basic principles of good sleep hygiene, like not drinking too much caffeine during the day, not exercising late at night and not reading or watching TV in bed if you have trouble sleeping. But good sleep hygiene alone may not solve your sleep problem, especially if there is an underlying issue that hasn't yet been discovered. If you aren't sure what's keeping you up at night, it's a good idea to rule out some of these common sources for sleep problems.
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Dr. Michael J. Breus: How TV Takes A Toll On Children's Sleep
Moms and Dads, here's yet another good reason to turn off the television when your child is in the room: a new study suggests that both violence on television and evening TV-watching might disrupt children's sleep.
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Roger Covin, Ph.D: What Makes a Person Likeable?
Human beings possess an innate need to form relationships and belong to groups(1). When social bonds are broken, especially in cases of social exclusion and rejection, there can be significant psychological consequences (e.g. depression and anxiety). As such, there exists a strong motivation for most of us to form connections with other people -- whether it be a friend, an acquaintance or a spouse.
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50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do
Self-reliance is a vital key to living a healthy, productive life. To be self-reliant one must master a basic set of skills, more or less making them a jack of all trades. Contrary to what you may have learned in school, a jack of all trades is far more equipped to deal with life than a specialized master of only one.
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12 Common Causes and Proven Cures for Unhappiness
For the average person happiness is a choice, yet numerous people are unhappy. There are many reasons, but it all boils down to one simple principle: They choose something else over happiness. Because it often takes less effort to be unhappy.
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Want to Lose Weight? Eat the Same Food Every Day | LiveScience
Eating the same foods, day after day, may make you so uninterested in your meals that you start eating less, a new study suggests.
Women who ate macaroni and cheese every day for a week were taking in 100 fewer calories each day than normal by the week's end, the study showed.
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It's hardly the most appetising vegetable side dish.
But tucking into a clump of seaweed at dinner time could help stave off heart attacks, say researchers.
They have discovered key ingredients in the plant that help lower blood pressure, similar to commonly prescribed drugs.
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Mark Frank has spent two decades studying the faces of people lying when in high-stakes situations and has good news for security experts.
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Don't Flirt at Work | Men's Health News
Look, Don Juan, everyone knows you have a way with women—but you'll need to suppress your charm from 9 to 5.
Flirting at work is associated with being unhappy with your job, according to UK researchers who were surprised to find that men who flirted the most at the office were also more dissatisfied with work.
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Crohn's Disease: 15 Healthy Eating Tips
Crohn's disease is a chronic, incurable inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Symptoms include severe belly pain and diarrhea, among others.
Certain foods or eating habits can exacerbate Crohn's disease symptoms, although they aren't the underlying cause or trigger of the IBD, says Sunanda Kane, M.D., professor of gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
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Judith Orloff MD: 7 Rules for Compassionate Communication
Our world is the midst of a quickening. It feels like time has accelerated, that the years keep flitting by faster and faster. This quickening, however, involves more than simply our altered perception of time as we age, our frantic culture, or anxiety about fulfilling our goals in life
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What's A Calorie? (And More Nutrition Buzzwords Defined)
There are a lot of terms that get thrown around in health articles. But do most of us actually know what they mean? Of course you can use the word calorie in a sentence, you know you don't want too many or too few of them -- but what are they? Here, your back-to-basics cheat sheet.
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Why Is It Called a Heat Wave? - NYTimes.com
Much of the country — and now the Northeast — is in the throes of an excessive heat alert. If a heat wave were a storm, like a blizzard or a hurricane, many people would have taken emergency measures, hunkering down, battening the hatches. But a heat wave comes with cloudless days, creating the illusion that it is merely a little more summer than they counted on.
How to Hide From Annoying People on Google+ - NYTimes.com
Google's new social network, Google+, has been open to new members for only a few weeks, yet an estimated 10 million people have already signed up. This means many Google+ users are already facing a problem they had on Facebook: How do you deal with people who want to be your Google+ buddy if you don't really like them that much?
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More Weight on Less Meat - NYTimes.com
Today the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released "Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health," a comprehensive report that suggests what's become a common refrain here and elsewhere: we all need to eat fewer animal products – not just meat, but dairy as well. The guide tracks the lifecycle of the food we eat, from production and processing to consumption and waste disposal. It's tricked out with enough features, graphics, and factoids to keep you busy – or equal parts hopeful and despondent – for a while.
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Why Success Starts With Failure - NYTimes.com
Some of the blogs I follow—Marginal Revolution, Ezra Klein—have given ample attention to Tim Harford's new book, "Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure." So I solipsistically assumed that everybody must be aware of it. But then I happened to glance at this book's Amazon ranking, which as I write is down on the wrong side of 1,500. This is an outrage, people! For the good of the world, a bigger slice of humanity should be aware of its contents.
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Even with exercise, long periods spent sedentary are deemed a health risk - The Washington Post
Anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention knows by now that the government and public health organizations want adults to get a minimum amount of exercise on a regular basis.
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