Tag: health

What Happens When You Drink a Gallon of Water a Day?

I am that person who hates drinking water. Where others enjoy a satisfying thirst quencher, I suffer through a barrage of sulfur, algae, swimming pool, and old metal pipes. Most days I avoid the issue entirely, subsisting on coffee, herbal tea, and the occasional LaCroix. But a few months ago, I began to suspect that chronic dehydration was the reason I continually felt tired and achy. So, in an effort to overcompensate my way to better life habits, I decided to slosh through a feat known across the internet as the Water Gallon Challenge: drinking a gallon per day for a month, with the promise of glowing skin and a lot more energy. Given my taste sensitivities, I went the filtered route and brought with me a hoard of limes, cucumbers, and sea salt, plus an emergency stash of electrolyte mix and a journal to track my energy, yoga performance, and bathroom breaks. Here’s how it went.

Individual Circadian Clocks Might Be the Next Frontier of Personalized Medicine

For as long as Seemay Chou can remember, she has gone to bed at midnight and woken around 4:30 a.m. Chou long assumed that meant she was a bad sleeper. Not that she felt bad. In fact, sleeping just four hours a night left her feeling full of energy and with free time to get more done at her job leading a research lab that studies bacteria. “It feels really good for me to sleep four hours,” she says. “When I’m in that rhythm, that’s when I feel my best.”

When You Eat Breakfast and Dinner Could Affect Your Levels of Body Fat

Waiting ninety minutes for a brunch table is annoying, but a report in the Journal of Nutritional Science indicates that doing so has the potential to be a promising weight loss technique. Moving back breakfast and dinner time, they show, can have profound effects on the way your body processes meals, akin to the effects of intermittent fasting. Research like this, the authors say, sheds light on new ways of effective dieting. It turns out that what you eat is deeply intertwined with when you eat it.

‘Fat Burning Zone’? The Best Way to Exercise to Burn Fat

When it comes to losing weight, people often want know the best way to shed excess pounds – and there’s no shortage of fad diets or fitness crazes claiming to have the “secret” to fat loss. One theory even suggests that exercising at around 60% of your maximum heart rate will bring our bodies into a so-called “fat burning zone”, optimal for losing weight.

A New Connection Between the Gut and Brain

It is well known that a high salt diet leads to high blood pressure, a risk factor for an array of health problems, including heart disease and stroke. But over the last decade, studies across human populations have reported the association between salt intake and stroke irrespective of high blood pressure and risk of heart disease, suggesting a missing link between salt intake and brain health.

The Forgotten Art of Squatting Is a Revelation for Bodies Ruined by Sitting

Sentences that start with the phrase “A guru once told me…” are, more often than not, eye-roll-inducing. But recently, while resting in malasana, or a deep squat, in an East London yoga class, I was struck by the second half of the instructor’s sentence: “A guru once told me that the problem with the West is they don’t squat.”

A high-carb diet may explain why Okinawans live so long

The search for the “elixir of youth” has spanned centuries and continents – but recently, the hunt has centred on the Okinawa Islands, which stretch across the East China Sea. Not only do the older inhabitants enjoy the longest life expectancy of anyone on Earth, but the vast majority of those years are lived in remarkably good health too.