Categories
HEALTH

5 Benefits of Dancing

Dancing is a fun activity that allows you to get much-needed exercise without really thinking of it as a chore. It helps you interpret music and put movement to the sounds. Here are five benefits of dancing. 

Improves Your Cardiovascular Health 

Dancing boosts your heart rate, which helps you stabilize things at rest. You’ll get quality blood flow and learn breath control to help you later in life. 

Great for Balance 

Whether you’re doing ballet, jazz, tap, or another dance form, you learn how to balance your movements and hold different positions. It allows you to gain more control over your body. It’s important having this in your arsenal for better dexterity.

Gets You Ripped 

You utilize your body weight to help you develop a clean musculature. This allows your body to have a leaner physique and get you in great shape. 

Gives You a Place to Get Out Your Frustrations

When you’re dealing with a stressful situation, you can turn on the music and get into a zone. You can explore movements and go until you get tired. It’s your safe place to help you get through challenging times. 

Build Long-Lasting Friendships

When you take dance courses or join a dance troupe, you can find like-minded people. It helps you build strong relationships and network with people from different backgrounds. It gives you a chance to explore more things and expand your world. 

Categories
HEALTH

5 Benefits of Green Tea

Green tea is not just something to drink to keep warm in the winter or have once you’re sick. There are various things that make it an ideal drink to have every day. Here are 5 benefits of green tea. 

It’s a Natural Stimulant

If coffee makes you too jittery in the morning, you might want to switch to green tea. It has a high amount of caffeine but not as much as coffee. Also, it slowly releases in the body to help keep your energy more sustained throughout the day. 

Boosts Your Metabolism

It has phytonutrients that may help you lose weight. Combine it with cinnamon or ginger to help you get more thermogenic properties for better fat burning. 

Can Help Stabilize Your Blood Sugar

The flavonoids in green tea can decrease glucose levels. It’s perfect for diabetics to stabilize their blood sugar levels. 

Can Keep You Looking Youthful

The antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties can improve skin elasticity to help you rejuvenate your look. 

Helps You Relax

Green tea has a chemical compound called theanine, which actually puts you in a relaxing mood. It can feel soothing to drink green tea while you unwind after a long day. 

Categories
HEALTH

5 Benefits of Gardening

Gardening is much more than putting your favorite set of flowers in a pot or growing some fresh vegetables for the season. You can make it a fun experience that you enjoy each time you’re outside. Here are 5 benefits of gardening.

Can Help You Boost Your Immune System

When you’re gardening, you spent a lot of time in the sun. Getting Vitamin D helps you build a stronger immune system to fight off different cancers, infections, viruses, and more.  

Good to Boost Your Memory

As much as gardening is a physical activity, it takes some memory power as well. You’re doing cognitive thinking by knowing how to plant seeds, water them properly, and maintain them in a specific manner. It’s a good thing for elders to do in their spare time. 

Soothes Your Mind

The combination of sun and creativity can help ease your mind. Gardening is a solid method to relax and take your mind off of things. 

Gives You a Sense of Achievement 

You’re watching something you started from just a few seeds blossom into something fruitful. It boosts your confidence because you become more self-reliant on your abilities. You know you can start something and get to completion. 

Encourages You to Eat Healthier

Growing fruits and vegetables can encourage to start adopting a more organic diet. You may start getting into better shape as well from the exercise you do in the garden. It’ll take you from a sedentary to an active lifestyle. 

Categories
HEALTH

6 Benefits of Cycling

If you’re an adult, the last time you may have ridden your bike was in your teenage years. It was just a fun activity to do with your friends or just to go to your local arcade/ice cream spot. However, it’s actually beneficial to your health. Here are 6 benefits of cycling. 

Builds Your Leg Muscles 

One of the obvious things about cycling is it increases your leg strength. You’ll develop strong hamstrings, quads, and calves from regular bike riding. 

Great Core Workout

Due to how you sit or stand on the bike, you’ll use stabilizer muscles for balance as you build your midsection. 

Improves Your Mental Health

You can get some fresh air and go cycling to relieve your stress. You’ll let the endorphins fly as you enjoy some fun exercise. 

Spending Time With Loved Ones

You can make it a group activity where you spend time with your family and friends.

Low-Impact Choice

You may not go for a run outside because you have weak knees or sore joints. A bike ride can be less intense and you won’t place so much pressure on your lower half.

Gets You Active

If you have diabetes, hypertension, or anything else, biking can get you active again to help you get your body in great shape. 

Categories
HEALTH

5 Benefits of Hiking

There’s nothing like working up a good sweat with a hike. You can do it by yourself or get a group of friends to join in on the action. Here are 5 benefits of hiking.

Great for Balance

Not only is it great for engaging your stabilizing muscles, but you work on your balance as well. Hiking has different levels and types of terrain. You’ll become more aware of your surroundings and understand how your body adapts to them. 

Builds a Solid Lower Half

From your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and calves, you build great muscle definition and mass by going on hikes. If you carry a heavy back with you, you can also develop some strong back muscles. 

Helps You Lose Weight

Hiking is great cardio. You’re walking miles and miles for sometimes hours at a time. If you don’t like to run or play sports, hiking can be a great way for you to shed pounds and develop a lean physique.

Clears Your Mind

You get a chance to get away from the noise of the city and your busy work schedule. When you have clarity and a place to calm yourself, you can get more out of life. 

Develop Stronger Bonds With Your Friends 

Hiking brings people together. Maybe someone is trying to get into shape or going through a stressful time. It can be a great way to clear the air and find a place for a private conversation. Also, you can motivate others by pushing them through the tough trek. 

Categories
HEALTH

6 Benefits of Eating Leafy Greens

You may have shied away from leafy green vegetables as a child because they didn’t look too appealing next to burgers and fries. However, they have some great benefits to help you in your older age. Here are 6 benefits of eating leafy greens. 

Can Help Keep Bloating In Check

You might have a diet that’s high in sodium and fat. Leafy green like spinach has ample potassium to help you get more fluid balance into your system. You’ll notice that gut shrinking down in time. 

Keeps a Youthful Face 

Dark leafy greens have beta carotene in them to reduce fine lines and wrinkles in your skin. The cell turnover also helps you create a healthier appearance, which is great for keeping your face looking great as you mature. 

Better Balance for Sugar

Whether you’re trying to cut back on sugar or you have diabetes, leafy greens help to give your body balance. It’ll regulate your blood sugar to something more manageable so you don’t experience the effects of sugar spikes. 

Building a Healthy Immune System

There are a lot of alkalized leafy greens to help you repair oxidative damage to your body. You’ll improve your immune system and experience less inflammation.

Boosts Brain Function

Leafy greens have different elements in them, such as B9 to help transfer messages from your brain to other parts of your body. In fact, elder people who have regular leafy green diets can slow cognitive decline. 

Great for Weight Loss

Leafy greens can help you keep full while being low in calories. 

Categories
HEALTH

5 Reasons to Start Eating More Carrots

While you may have some carrots with your beef stew, a crunchy snack, or even in your carrot cake, there are some great health advantages of eating carrots. Here are 5 reasons why you should start eating more carrots. 

Great for Your Hair

It makes your hair thicker, longer, and gives it a beautiful shine. 

Helps Your Skin

The beta carotene in carrots helps give your skin a beautiful glow. Just watch your carrot intake because you don’t want it to turn an orange-yellowish color. Not to mention, it’ll help you prevent wrinkles due to the Vitamin A content. Vitamin A makes for elastic and firm skin.

Good for Oral Health

You’ll enjoy a brighter smile due to the keratin and Vitamin A. It helps you fight plaque and strengthen your tooth enamel. 

Can Keep Your Vision Together

As you begin to age, your vision is one of the first things to deteriorate. Regular carrot intake can help slow the effects of macular degeneration.

Detox Your System

Carrots also make for great juicing recipes. The fiber and Vitamin A content can help flush toxins out of your system.

Categories
HEALTH

6 Health Benefits of Ginger

You may use ginger to spice up your desserts or to add to your morning tea. However, it’s much more than that. It helps you in your everyday life. Here are some health benefits of ginger. 

Helps You Treat Nausea

Remember those candied gingers you would get back in the day from your grandparents? Well, they knew that a bumpy ride to school or a road trip might give you motion sickness. Ginger helps you fight off nausea.

Can Help Diabetics

Ginger is good for lowering blood sugar levels, which can help diabetics prevent spikes. 

Reduces Inflammation

The antioxidant properties make it great for keeping your inflammation in check. If you experience things like arthritis and other chronic pain, ginger can be used as a pain relief source. 

Can Help Keep Cancer at Bay

The anti-cancer properties can help inhibit cell growth you see most prevalent in lung and breast cancer. 

Good for Mouth Health

Can keep your oral health optimal by keeping mouth bacteria under control. Good for preventing periodontal disease. 

Eases Menstrual Pain

It’s great for women who deal with cramps and other pain during their periods. 

Categories
HEALTH NONE SCI Science

A first: Micromotors used to treat stomach infection

For the first time, nanoengineers have successfully used micromotors — tiny magnesium-based engines no bigger than half the width of a human hair — to treat a bacterial infection in the stomach, according to a statement by the University of California at San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

The findings are published in the Aug. 16 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

The micromotors are released into the stomach where they swim about rapidly neutralizing gastric acid and releasing antibiotics. Each micromotor has a round magnesium core and is fueled by the reaction of gastric acid with the magnesium, which produces a blast of tiny hydrogen bubbles that propels the micromotor around inside the stomach.

The micromotors are biodegradable and the magnesium cores along with their binding polymer layers are dissolved by the stomach’s gastric acid without harmful effects.

Delivery of drugs to neutralize gastric acid and treat bacterial infections, such as ulcers, by micromotors avoids the use of proton pump inhibitors, which currently are employed to suppress gastric acid production but have several unwanted side effects, including diarrhea, headaches, and depression.

“It’s a one-step treatment with these micromotors, combining acid neutralization with therapeutic action,” said co-first author Berta Esteban-Fernández de Avila, a postdoctoral scholar at UC-San Diego.

The researchers tested the micromotors — loaded with a dose of the antibiotic clarithromycin — in mice infected with Heliobacter pylori. They gave the mice one antibiotic-filled micromotor once daily for five consecutive days.

Once the treatment regimen was complete, analysis of the bacterial count in each mouse’s stomach showed that treatment with micromotors was slightly more effective than conventional treatment using proton pump inhibitors.

While the work is still at an early stage, the results look promising, according to the researchers, who say their work opens the door to the use of micromotors as delivery vehicles for the treatment of diseases.

Categories
HEALTH Research SCI

Green public spaces decrease depression in city dwellers, study says

A new study suggests that greening vacant urban land decreases feelings of depression and increases overall mental health for residents in its proximity. The interesting findings could have implications for all cities across the United States, where approximately 15 percent of land is considered “vacant.”

“Dilapidated and vacant spaces are factors that put residents at an increased risk of depression and stress, and may explain why socioeconomic disparities in mental illness persist,” said lead author Eugenia South of the University of Pennsylvania. “What these new data show us is that making structural changes, like greening lots, has a positive impact on the health of those living in these neighborhoods. And that it can be achieved in a cost-effective and scalable way—not only in Philadelphia but in other cities with the same harmful environmental surroundings.”

Interestingly, the study revealed that interventions of trash clean-up did not significantly alter self-reported mental health.

“The lack of change in these groups is likely because the trash clean-up lots had no additional green space created,” said co-author John MacDonald, Ph.D., a professor of criminology and sociology at Penn. “The findings support that exposure to more natural environments can be part of restoring mental health, particularly for people living in stressful and chaotic urban environments.”

The study reveals how turning blighted neighborhood environments into green regions can create better trajectories for residents’ mental health.

“Greening vacant land is a highly inexpensive and scalable way to improve cities and enhance people’s health while encouraging them to remain in their home neighborhoods,” said senior author Charles C. Branas of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

“While mental health therapies will always be a vital aspect of treatment, revitalizing the places where people live, work, and play, may have broad, population-level impact on mental health outcomes,” he added.

The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.