Health & Wellness Research Weblog | HealthTrekker

Health & Wellness Weblog With Tips And Hacks

Buy Me A Coffee
For information only. This content is not medical care, advice, diagnosis, or recommendations.

Could Music Actually Be Exercise For The Brain That Works Better Than Cross-Words, Sudoku, Or Lumosity?

Filed Under: Aging

Could Music Actually Be Exercise For The Brain That Works Better Than Cross-Words, Sudoku, Or Lumosity?
music benefits brain city street jazz group


It’s Time To Pick Up The Flugelhorn & Join Your Local Jazz Band!:
So except for Juggalos, I think many of us want to improve as time goes by and to retain as much of our capabilities as possible.

Faygo and face-paint are mercifully off-the-menu for most upright-walking mammals. -Except Lemurs.

So to do this, there are nutritional components, supplements, and others, with of-course physical exercise being the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

But are there other things we could do to keep our marbles, like sudoku, cross-words, or social-networking?

Or is dopamine-driven curiosity the key?

Well, researchers from China are finding some very interesting quirks about an old human activity that might help, too…

Read More >

Broccoli A Superfood? I Have A Gut Feeling The Study’s Right And It Protects You From The Inside Out

Filed Under: Better Living Through Chemistry

Broccoli A Superfood? I Have A Gut Feeling The Study’s Right And It Protects You From The Inside Out
broccoli gut superfood lego superman dusk sky


Quit Sake-Bombing Your Guts And Eat Your Broccoli Instead!:
So unfortunately in the health & wellness space, the term Superfood is as overused as a pair of gas station flip-flops in the southern US.

Especially after the blow-up of Açaí failing to triple your metabolism and burn off all your fat just because it’s from Brazil.

So sometimes we can be a little bit wary of using an overused term.

But ever since we found out An Apple A Day really does keep the doctor away, some of the advice we would’ve gotten from Mom about things like eating our vegetables doesn’t seem that far off-base anymore.

And as SCIENCE gets weirder and more in-depth, it too is finding out that once again, Mom was right.

In the case of Broccoli, this might actually make a huge difference…

Read More >

Junk Food Vs. Your Brain: How Sugary UPF Food Alters Your Wiring And Makes You Hate The Healthy Stuff

Filed Under: Nutrition

Junk Food Vs. Your Brain: How Sugary UPF Food Alters Your Wiring And Makes You Hate The Healthy Stuff
junk food brain sprinkle donut on white plate


I’m Addicted To You, Snack Food! Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic?:
It seems as time goes by, we’re hearing about the influence of ultra-processed foods at an increasing rate.

Whether it’s a tribe in the Amazon that develops obesity and other health problems a year after Nestle drops off a shipment.

Or the increasing amount of “Junk Food” that Westerners are eating as obesity rates rise.

The insidious part of it is these fast & cheap foods are chockablock with all kinds of things that are just not healthy.

Like weird additives, fats, and high-concentrations of dietary crack cocaine.

And some researchers from the US & Germany are finding out that’s only where the problems start…

Read More >

Exercise Vs. Prescription Meds For Depression & Anxiety. A Suprisingly-Strong All-Natural Remedy Wins!

Filed Under: Exercise

Exercise Vs. Prescription Meds For Depression & Anxiety. A Suprisingly-Strong All-Natural Remedy Wins!
exercise medication depression man silhouette sunrise


You Can Actually Run Away From The Dark Clouds Of Depression & Anxiety:
For some time now, psychologists and sufferers alike have been trying to decode the puzzles of Anxiety & Depression.

How can we fix them and why do they happen in the first place.

Well, at least more than the Lao Tzu quote on it tells us.

And quite recently, there have been some real controversies over whether or not the medications we have for them even really work; or how.

Given all the wandering-about with different doses, types, and figuring out treatment-resistant problems, who could blame them?

As you might have guessed, some rockstar (sorry, Paul Stanley!) researchers looked into many different ways to treat these mental health problems, and they came back with one really promising answer…

Read More >

Heavy Metal Strikes Again! This Time It’s In Your Dark Chocolate And That Could Be A Slayer Of Your Health

Filed Under: Better Living Through Chemistry

Heavy Metal Strikes Again! This Time It’s In Your Dark Chocolate And That Could Be A Slayer Of Your Health
heavy metals chocolate horizontal hexagon towers


Dark Chocolate Gets A Valentine’s Day Massacre, Thanks to CR:
In general, we like to think that the things we buy at the store are safe.

And every day we put a lot of trust in producers to that effect.

But once in awhile, a piece of research comes out to call that into question.

Not that this one is as crazy as the work showing most chemicals we use are not thoroughly-tested.

But it’s close, as an investigation in the recent past by Consumer Reports put a real spectre over this year’s Valentine’s Day.

Because the dark chocolate a lot of people were going to exchange turned out to have unsafe levels of heavy metals in it.

The story gets still worse because even though CR’s print article just went out, these investigations have been going on for years…

Read More >

Meditation’s Effect On Gut Health. Ancient Asian Secret Proves Mind Over Microbes Not Just A Fantasy

Filed Under: Mind/Brain

Meditation’s Effect On Gut Health. Ancient Asian Secret Proves Mind Over Microbes Not Just A Fantasy
meditation gut health golden temple on hill


Meditation Vs. Gut Health. Maybe Ancient Practices Were Pretty Clever After-All?:
A doctor friend once told me that when he went to his first lecture class the professor started it with this statement,

“Half of what we’re about to teach you is wrong. The problem is, we don’t know which half.”

How many times have people turned to supplements, kung fu, ufos, etc. to fix a problem that wasn’t getting solved in the standard way?

Probably more than once. Even with their less-than-great record of success.

So it will come as no surprise that as modern science advances, it occasionally circles-back to what used to be ancient superstition.

And a small team from China is making the case yet again, that meditation is a kind of magic…

Read More >

The Benefits Of Stress: Whittling It Down To The Right Type And Amount Might Be Good For Your Brain

Filed Under: Mind/Brain

The Benefits Of Stress: Whittling It Down To The Right Type And Amount Might Be Good For Your Brain
stress brain benefits woman biting pencil work


Stress Benefits For Your Brain. Nietzsche’s Freakonomics Of Small-Dose Poisons:
Most of the time, it’s important to stay on the straight & narrow path.

Balance is an idea that’s been curated for millennia for good reason.

But when anyone really starts exploring something, it involves new territory that’s bizarre and weird before it gets figured-out.

It’s always Freakonomics before it becomes economics.

Just like the animal venoms that can kill a person in full-doses, but are helpful at ones several orders-of-magnitude smaller.

And freakily-enough a UGA team found out that one of the things poisoning many of us today can be helpful, in much smaller doses…

Read More >

Exercise And Epigenetic Magic: How A Little Workout Makes Lots Of Small Changes Add Up To Something Big!

Filed Under: Better Living Through Chemistry

Exercise And Epigenetic Magic: How A Little Workout Makes Lots Of Small Changes Add Up To Something Big!
exercise epigenetics binary code on screen heart


Exercise & Epigenetics. Changing Your Routine Changes You From The Cells Up:
Sometimes beauty is a lot more than skin-deep.

But we often feel out the context in which something is expressed, and then instinctively accept that notion as the whole truth about it.

That’s one of the ways we can make assumptions about exercise.

It’s just there to vaguely get us in some kind of shape, burn some amount of calories, and hopefully lose us some weight, right?

Or is it something more? Like The Hawthorne Effect, which says you can’t even measure a system without affecting it?

Washington State researchers think they may have the beginning of an answer…

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