The Best Strength Training Workout Is Surprisingly Easy

As a fitness columnist, I get lots of questions about the best way to work out. Many of these queries are about strength training: How many workouts per week are necessary? Do I need to lift weights, or are body weight exercises like pushups and lunges enough? Is it better to do a few repetitions of heavy weights or more reps with lighter ones? How many sets are optimal?

The Woman Whose Invention Helped Win a War — and Still Baffles Weathermen

On June 4, 2013, the city of Huntsville, Alabama was enjoying a gorgeous day. Blue skies, mild temperatures. Just what the forecasters had predicted.

But in the post-lunch hours, meteorologists started picking up what seemed to be a rogue thunderstorm on the weather radar. The “blob,” as they referred to it, mushroomed on the radar screen. By 4 PM, it covered the entire city of Huntsville. Strangely, however, the actual view out of peoples’ windows remained a calm azure.

The 4-7-8 Breathing Technique Can Help You Fall Asleep Faster. Here’s How It Works.

There are few things as frustrating as being unable to fall asleep, especially if you have a big day ahead and need your rest. In a recent YouTube video, Doctor Jo, a licensed physical therapist and doctor of physical therapy, demonstrated a simple breathing exercise that she recommends to clients, claiming it can help you drift off nice and quickly, rather than spending hours in bed, staring at the ceiling or counting sheep.

The Definitive Superfood Ranking

Food marketers know that if they call their product a superfood, it’s sure to sell. Take quinoa, for example. In the early aughts, when the ancient grain first became trendy, quinoa prices tripled in the span of five years. (Many Bolivians, who had relied on it as a food staple for centuries, were soon priced out of the market.) The moral here: it’s important to question anything knighted with the superlative.

Why the Avocado Should Have Gone the Way of the Dodo

The avocado is a fruit of a different time. The plant hit its evolutionary prime during the beginning of the Cenozoic era when megafauna, including mammoths, horses, gomphotheres and giant ground sloths (some of them weighing more than a UPS truck) roamed across North America, from Oregon to the panhandle of Florida. The fruit attracted these very large animals (megafauna by definition weigh at least 100 pounds) that would then eat it whole, travel far distances and defecate, leaving the seed to grow in a new place. That’s the goal of all botanical fruits, really. Survival and growth via seed dispersal.

Lots of deep sleep can delay onset of dementia because brain ‘washes itself’

Getting a good night’s sleep can delay the onset of dementia later in life, scientists have discovered.

How people slumber can be used as a “crystal ball” to predict if they will be hit by Alzheimer’s disease in the future, according to the researchers.

Plenty of deep sleep was found to best delay the onset of dementia because it slows the build up of a toxic plaque in the brain called beta-amyloid.