Do pregnant women who drink alcohol have smarter and healthier kids?
rst off, nobody disputes that moderate, heavy and binge drinking during pregnancy can have serious negative consequences on a fetus. That said... Via Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy: Some studies, usually European in origin, lift the spirits. There's no apparent reason to avoid light drinking, according to one at the University of London of nearly 12,500 mothers and their three-year-old children. Reading the results, I contemplate swapping my wheatgrass for a tequila shot. It…
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This is what is most responsible for your happiness
's the little things. Very happy people don't experience more happy events than less happy people. It's more about perspective and how depression-prone you are -- and getting enough sleep helps too. Via 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior: Ed Diener and Martin Seligman screened over 200 undergraduates for levels of happiness, and compared the upper 10% (the “extremely happy”) with the middle and bottom 10%. Extremely happy students experienced no greater number of…
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Quick little things you can do to increase long term happiness
rvard happiness expert and author of "The Happiness Advantage", Shawn Achor gives some science based tips for increasing well-being. Via CNN: In The Happiness Advantage, I challenge readers to do one brief positive exercise every day for 21 days. Only through behavioral change can information become transformation. • Write down three new things you are grateful for each day; • Write for two minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours; • Exercise for…
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Can alcohol be good for your brain?
derate drinkers are 26 percent less likely to develop dementia when they get old. Might be due to the alcohol or to drinkers being more social in general. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: An Australian study of more than ten thousand people found that moderate drinkers are about 26 percent less likely than abstainers to develop dementia in later life. The difference may be due to biology (alcohol’s anti-inflammatory properties) or psychology:…
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What do we do with our leisure time: what truly makes us happy or what’s easy?
do what's easy. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: Studies have found that American teenagers are two and half times more likely to experience elevated enjoyment when engaged in a hobby than when watching TV, and three times more likely when playing a sport. And yet here’s the paradox: These same teenagers spend four times as many hours watching TV as they do engaging in sports or hobbies.…
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This Will Keep You Calm When The Stakes Are High
nie Murphy Paul's great piece in Time Magazine answers the question: Reminding yourself of the high stakes makes intuitive sense as a motivational strategy—but it will actually impede your performance. Instead of spurring you to new heights, it’s likely to increase anxiety and undermine your confidence. Research shows that reminding yourself how unimportant the event is in the big scheme of things is a better tactic... A number of studies she mentions have shown that exercises like writing about our most cherished…
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10 ways a little bit of writing can solve all your problems:
iting has been shown to help people: Feel happier. Lose weight. Get over a break-up. Improve memory and increase learning. Get a job. Speed healing. Strengthen relationships. Follow through with their goals. Get over the past. Reduce worrying and increase performance. Don't like writing? How about a little more reading? It can: Treat loneliness. Make you a nicer person. Join over 135,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
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Orgasms Make You Live Longer
a Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex: Are there other nonsexual health benefits to be derived from orgasm? Affirmative, say Rutgers University sex researchers Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple. Their readable and comprehensive The Science of Orgasm says that people who have regular orgasms seem to have less stress and enjoy lower rates of heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and endometriosis. They also appear to live longer. British researcher G. Davey Smith and two colleagues calculated that…
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