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A Comfort-Food Conundrum. How Cocoa And Flavanol-Rich Foods Can De-Stress Better Than Mac n Cheese

Filed Under: Better Living Through Chemistry

A Comfort-Food Conundrum. How Cocoa And Flavanol-Rich Foods Can De-Stress Better Than Mac n Cheese
cocoa flavanol stress cup of hot chocolate on wooden table

Miracles Of Nutrition Chemistry Are Easy To Miss. For Better Or Worse:

Picture this: Another stressful day at work; or the disco. Another deadline. Another skip-lunch-and-grab-anything-quick part of your life.

Before you know it, something tells you to reach for that mac & cheese, pizza, or burger.

-Classic comfort foods that somehow always have a bit too much fat. And not just the good kind.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

Scientists have just discovered something fascinating about this daily stress+eat cycle.

And potentially, a way to protect ourselves from its damage…

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Caffeine Vs. Alzheimer’s: Your Daily Cup Of Fear May Have Some Bodacious Brain Benefits

Filed Under: Mind/Brain

Caffeine Vs. Alzheimer’s: Your Daily Cup Of Fear May Have Some Bodacious Brain Benefits
caffeine alzheimers hand throwing coffee near mountain

You Are What You Eat? … Now You Are What You Drink!:

Recently, a news piece came out on the world’s “Blue Zones”.

These were allegedly places where lifespan is unusually high.

But then we found out that it wasn’t some miracle, it was just bad record-keeping and insurance fraud.

As bad as that is, it doesn’t invalidate the basic ideas.

Good social networks and regular physical and mental activity are important to longevity.

The other one it doesn’t change is groups of people with varying health practices give researchers a ton of different experiments to test.

And another one of those is how food & drink can impact memory-function and ultimately brain health…

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More Longevity Magic! Weightlifting Helps Zombie-Cell Clean Up With Tiny Trash Collectors

Filed Under: Exercise

More Longevity Magic! Weightlifting Helps Zombie-Cell Clean Up With Tiny Trash Collectors
weightlifting zombie cells hand holding 5kg dumbell

The Biochemistry Of Weightlifting’s Benefits Is Anything But Simple:

The straw-man. A gross oversimplification. Easy. Cheap. But inaccurate.

That’s how a lot of us deal with some ideas. It’s easier to oversimplify just so we can understand.

But the tradeoff is nuance and sophistication for speed and forward momentum.

And for decades, it seemed as if exercise nuts and gym-rats were just glorified meat-heads.

We also thought the exercise they did was just as one-dimensional. Overachieving for dimwit-narcissists.

But we were all wrong…

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Catch-Up Sleep Not Just For Late-Night Partiers. It May Actually Help Out Your Heart, Too!

Filed Under: Disease

Catch-Up Sleep Not Just For Late-Night Partiers. It May Actually Help Out Your Heart, Too!
catch up sleep heart cat under comforter

Don’t Hustle-Culture Yourself Into An Early Grave Like Gary Vee!:

We Americans all love us an underdog.

Somehow, a Rocky Balboa or a 13 colonies rose up to fight a superior enemy and won.

And what did those underdogs do?

Among other things, they found good ways to catch up!

Well, for a long time !SCIENCE! thought that sleeping-in on weekends to catch up on any loss was useless.

!SCIENCE! was wrong, and a team from China just entered a new addition to Tony Schwartz’s big statement that sleep is even more important than food…

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Everyday Plutonium. How One Of Mankind’s Worst Ingredients (Sugar) May Be Killing You. One Cell At A Time.

Filed Under: Aging

Everyday Plutonium. How One Of Mankind’s Worst Ingredients (Sugar) May Be Killing You. One Cell At A Time.
sugar cellular aging white crystals on black

The Phantom Menace Of Sugar In Your Diet:

We’ve talked about Freakonomics-type stuff here before in any of the “Stealth Health” posts.

But sometimes, things you might need to know get weirder than that.

Because there are good things that are really easy to forget like hydration and mindset.

There are other things that can be much more dangerous, though. Sort-of like living in a house that has black mold you don’t know about.

Still worse than that is a risk that’s been glossed-over with some kind of marketing varnish or PR-massaging.

It looks like a team from UCSF may have found another addition to this list…

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Count Your Blessings And Practice Some Gratitude. You Just Might Live Longer Because Of It!

Filed Under: Mind/Brain

Count Your Blessings And Practice Some Gratitude. You Just Might Live Longer Because Of It!
gratitude longevity hand written journal page

Mind-Over-Matter Shows Promise Yet Again!:

Unless you’re a member of The “Woo-Woo” Club, things like mindset may simply not occur to you for health; until somebody mentions it.

How many of us were a bit too unfairly-dismissive when Grandma said something like, “Count your blessings.”?

That’s not health & wellness, right?

H&W is all about yoga mats, AG1, gym-memberships, and Bryan Johnson-sized supplement bills!!!

At least the Mindfulness-Meditation crowd would push back a little bit; though not as forcefully as a meth-toothed practitioner of CrossFit.

But it’s starting to seem like even the overlooked corners of your mentality could be the small change that creates a big difference…

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Longevity & The Mediterranean Diet – Can You Live To 100 With The Help Of Some Tiny But Tasty Biochemistry?

Filed Under: Aging

Longevity & The Mediterranean Diet – Can You Live To 100 With The Help Of Some Tiny But Tasty Biochemistry?
mediterranean diet longevity white wall chairs greece

Can A Better-Than-Average Diet Actually Make You Live Longer?:

Back about 2,000 years ago, an Ancient Greek doctor advised us to use food as medicine.

While we might look on this today as quaint, it still might be true.

One theme that comes up a lot recently is getting your vitamins from your diet and not in pill form.

There are even a few scary pieces of research out there as to why.

Equally scary is the research on Health & Wellness’ polar opposite, Ultra-Processed Food, which seems like a gut-bomb of serious proportions.

But something that can get easily overlooked is what happens when you start eating better instead of just not eating junk…

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The Stealth Health Of Being Outdoors. Even Informal Surveys Confirm Nature’s Mental Health Mojo

Filed Under: Mind/Brain

The Stealth Health Of Being Outdoors. Even Informal Surveys Confirm Nature’s Mental Health Mojo
outdoors mental health two hikers going toward mountain

A Few More Reasons Why Being Stuck Inside All Day Is No Bueno:

So it’s great to find out interesting health tweaks and tips from study sources.

It’s even more interesting to chase down Old Wives’ Tales and check if any of the crazy stuff your grandmother taught you is right.

Somehow it can be encouraging when you find evidence from simpler, more social sources.

A trusted-colleague can sometimes be more helpful than a guy in a lab coat.

And this time, it looks like Joe Sixpack is bringing his perspective to one of the old Stealth Health factors we discussed several times in the past…

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Note: For informational purposes only. Should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, recommendations, or substitute for professional care.