Posts

When left ignored, an innocent foot pain or leg pain can become a chronic problem. Even the smartest walkers can be hobbled as a result of a walking-induced pain or a nagging old exercise injury that walking has aggravated. As bothersome as the initial problem can be, the real damage is what happens next. You stop exercising, misplace your motivation, and lose muscle tone. To make sure a debilitating walking injury doesn’t prevent you from reaching your fitness goals, we asked leading experts for advice on how to avoid aches and treat the most common walking pains....

Project co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz say they’re still refining the prototype, but the proposed technology will sense glucose levels in tears with a wireless chip (about as wide as the tip of a ballpoint pen) sandwiched between two layers of soft contact material. Then, it would alert diabetics when glucose levels are heading in the wrong direction, perhaps with mini LED lights. If it sounds futuristic, it is....

Scientists have known that exercising, say 30 minutes a day, five days a week can help protect bones. However, some past research suggested that too much exercise might be bad for your bones. Hoping to end the confusion, researchers in this new study checked bone mineral density in more than 12,000 adults, concentrating on the hips and lumbar spine—two of the most common spots for fractures—and also asked participants how much exercise they got in a typical week....

To find out what effect this had on motivation, researchers divided (and tested) 115 participants in three groups: Group one did planks and an abdominal exercise for as long as they could; group two exercised alongside a video recording of someone who was slightly better than them; and group three did the same as group two, only their recordings also gave verbal encouragement, such as “You can do it!” Participants in the video groups were told they could stop when their partner did....

The research: Hoping to learn more about the ties between BMI and mortality, the study team examined the health data of more than 246,000 people. At first, their findings supported the older research linking “overweight” BMIs in the 25-to-29.99 range to the lowest mortality rates. But after adjusting their findings to exclude people with preexisting illnesses and smokers—two groups that tend to have lower body weights despite their poor health—the study authors found BMIs at the high end of “normal” had lower mortality rates than people in the “overweight” category....

Check out the 4-step, all natural allergy solution. MORE: Are Allergy Forecasts Completely Bogus?

“There are as many different kinds of phobias as there are different kinds of people,” says Jerilyn Ross, MA, LICSW. In the classic sense, a phobia is “an irrational, involuntary, inappropriate fear reaction that generally leads to an avoidance of common everyday places, objects, or situations,” she says. In the real sense, though, a phobia is the fear of fear itself. “A phobia is a fear of one’s own feelings and impulses....

Having a low-energy day? Sometimes the problem is lack of sleep (in which case, these sleep tips can help), but even if you’re well rested, certain diet or exercise habits can bring on a slump. And surprisingly little things—like the size of your Starbucks order or how you decorate your office—can hurt or help your energy levels. Make some of these tweaks to power through your day. Have bran for breakfast....

A hot bath rekindles your metabolic fire, so it’s a good idea to luxuriate in hot water with healing fragrances. But be careful not to do this too often—Sebastian Kneipp, one of the founders of the Natural Medicine movement and father of hydrotherapy, said that a hot bath a week is a pleasure, but a hot bath every day will weaken your system. Like eating a slice of cake, taking a hot bath is a treat, but bathing in hot water regularly puts you at an increased risk for developing a disease because it reduces your good brown fat....

MORE: The 9 Foods Most Likely To Make You Sick Even non-life-threatening cases of food poisoning can make you feel miserable, resulting in dizziness, queasiness, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, headache, and fever. (Here’s 4 signs you have food poisoning.) Toxic bacteria get into food in a variety of ways, generally as a result of inadequate cooking or processing. In any case, once inside you, these bad bugs attack your intestines....

Eat to beat belly fat Believe it or not, your body actually doesn’t want to store fat. And the secret to lasting weight loss does not come down to complicated calorie-counting and weight-loss gimmicks. Instead, it’s about working with your body’s natural hunger and sleep rhythms to curb cravings, burn fat and send your energy levels soaring. (In as little as 30 days, you can be a whole lot slimmer, way more energetic, and so much healthier just by following the simple, groundbreaking plan in The Thyroid Cure!...

Minimize saturated fat with a smart protein choice. Beans or tofu have less sat fat than animal sources, but you don’t have to go vegetarian. Stick with extralean cuts like beef sirloin, pork tenderloin, and skinless chicken breast, and be careful about portion sizes (3 ounces per bowl max). For more flavor, lightly brown extralean meats in a bit of olive or canola oil before adding to the soup. Limit sodium by preparing your own stock from scratch, which gives you full control over the saltshaker....