Search This Blog

Thursday 3 September 2015

25 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Your Body and Health

1. Rinsing your nose with salt water can help keep you healthy and ward off allergy symptoms.
2. Dogs can smell cancer and low blood sugar. A study showed that it is possible to train dogs to identify, based on breath samples, which patients had lung and breast cancer. For diabetics, the dogs can smell ketones in urine and on the breath when blood sugars are high. Dogs can pick up on other smells that humans can’t when glucose levels drop.
3. Researchers found that people who pass through an entryway near the kitchen tend to eat 15 percent more than those who use the front door.
4. You're more likely to have a heart attack on a Monday, or up to three days after you've been diagnosed with the flu or a respiratory tract infection.
5. You can't get a tan from your computer screen. The Computer Tan Web site was created as a hoax to raise awareness about skin cancer.
6. Obese people spend approximately $485 more on clothing, $828 on extra plane seats, and $36 more on gas each year than their thinner counterparts. An overweight driver burns about 18 additional gallons of gas a year.
7. Smokers are four times as likely to report feeling unrested after a night's sleep than nonsmokers. Smokers often experience withdrawal symptoms at night, thus causing periods of restlessness and waking.
8. Eating fruits and vegetables may help your body make its own aspirin. Benzoic acid, a natural substance in fruits and vegetables, causes people to produce their own salicylic acid, the key component that gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.
9. A 20-minute nap can improve your overall alertness, boost your mood, and increase productivity. In addition, your heart may reap benefits from napping -- a six-year study found that that men who took naps at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-related death.
10. Your kitchen sink is dirtier than your bathroom. There are typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in its drain, and the faucet, basin, and sponge are crawling with germs as well.
11. Four out of five doctors in the UK don't work out enough. Heavy workloads, lack of time and poor motivation contributed to the lack of exercise.
12. Baking soda can whiten teeth, garlic can help treat athlete's foot, and honey can soothe a hangover.
13. Using a food diary can double your weight-loss efforts. Your food diary makes you accountable to yourself and provides you with clues on where the extra calories are sneaking in.
14. Regular exercise can lower a woman's cancer risk -- but only if she's getting enough sleep. The National Cancer Institute followed nearly 6,000 women for almost 10 years. Women in the top half of physical activity levels showed an approximate 20 percent reduction in cancer risk, but sleeping less than seven hours per night resulted in a decreased benefit.
15. Watching yourself run in a mirror can make a treadmill workout go by faster and feel easier.
16. Third-hand smoke -- the particles that cling to smokers' hair and clothing and linger in a room long after they've left -- is a cancer risk to young children and pets.
17. Walking against the wind, in the water, or while wearing a backpack burns about 50 more calories per hour than walking with no resistance. People who wear pedometers also tend to burn more calories and lose more weight.
18. Trained sexologists can infer a woman's orgasm history by observing the way she walks. In other news, men find women who wear red sexier than those who wear "cool" colors such as blue and green.
19. Foreign accent syndrome and exploding head syndrome are real (but very rare) medical conditions. A person with exploding head syndrome experiences a loud, indecipherable noise that seems to originate from inside their head. 
20. Vitamins don't seem to help older women guard against cancer or heart disease.
21. Some men experience pain, headaches, or sneezing as a result of ejaculation. The increased activity in the nervous system during orgasm may be the culprit.
22. Germ-killing wipes can spread bacteria from one spot to another if you reuse them.
23. Oatmeal, citrus fruits, and honey can boost your sex drive and improve fertility. Oats produce a chemical that releases testosterone into the blood supply, vitamin C improves sperm count and motility, and vitamin B from honey helps your body use estrogen, a key factor in blood flow and arousal. 
24. Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they have skipped filling a prescription due to the cost, and 23 percent use pill splitting as a way to save money.
25. Facebook may be good for your health; studies show that staying in touch with family and friends can ward off memory loss and help you live longer.