-
The Vitamin Paradox: Do Nutritional Supplements ‘License’ Unhealthy Behavior?
Huffington Post: Last night I had a chocolate milkshake for dinner. I don't eat like this all the time, but often enough. I eat lots of salads, but I also eat cheeseburgers. And if I'm tired I eat pretzels or skip eating entirely. In short, I'm far from a nutritional purist. But I take a multivitamin every day and have for as long as I can remember. I figure it's the least I can do for my personal health, plus it's easy and fairly cheap. I guess I'm hedging my bets. And I'm not alone: Sales of nutritional supplements have grown dramatically over the past decade or so and now total more than $20 billion a year. More than half of Americans take some kind of vitamin pill.
-
Nickelodeon offers 90s nostalgia with Kenan and Kel, All That and more
The Washington Post: For a contingent of Americans born between 1975 and 1992, Monday night is going to be a childhood fantasy fulfilled. Starting at midnight, Nickelodeon is digging into the archives and airing four classic shows in a block of neatly packaged programming: “The ’90s Are All That.” Go ahead and watch a promo, the one with Kenan Thompson sitting on that bright, orange sofa. Yes, he is on the Snick couch. The Snick couch. “The good old Snick couch!” Thompson is as excited as you are. “That brought back so many memories for me, immediately. Years and years of it, all around that couch.
-
Study Shows Smokers Cling to Old Fears About the Health Effects of Smoking Cessation Treatments
Yahoo Finance: PARSIPPANY, N.J., July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly half of all smokers in the United States attempt to quit at least once per year, yet the majority of these efforts fail. One factor contributing to the low annual rate of successful cessation is that the majority of quit attempts are made without evidence-based treatment such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).Despite doubling a smoker's chance of quitting, cessation aids are still infrequently used.
-
Can riding thrill rides cure what ails you? Well, sort of
National Post: Next Monday in Toronto, people will begin paying $175 to go for a walk. The total distance travelled amounts to only 150 metres, but will leave participants short of breath. It’ll increase their heart rates and elevate their blood pressure. And from a medical perspective, it may be just what their bodies need. The “walk” is the CN Tower’s EdgeWalk, a tour around the observation pod’s outer edge. Located 356 metres (110 storeys) above the ground, the track that supports participants does not feature protective rails.
-
Men in Grief Seek Others Who Mourn as They Do
The New York Times: In 1990, Sam and Gretchen Feldman cashed out on their share of a national chain of men’s apparel stores and retired to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. There, they devoted their time to volunteer work and an active social calendar. The following years were golden ones for the Feldmans, but in 2007 Mrs. Feldman learned she had cancer. She died a year later. The Feldmans had been married 53 years, and Mr. Feldman’s grief was palpable to friends who knew him as a buoyant, resilient personality. “There was a huge hole in my life that no amount of activity could replace,” said Mr. Feldman, now 82.
-
Smash the Ceiling
The New Yorker: In the past few years, the U.S. economy has been beset by the subprime meltdown, skyrocketing oil prices, the Eurozone debt crisis, and even the Tohoku earthquake. Now it’s staring at a new problem—a failure to raise the debt ceiling, which would almost certainly throw the economy back into recession. Unlike those other problems, however, this one would be wholly of our own making. If the economy suffers as a result, it’ll be what a soccer fan might call the biggest own goal in history. The truth is that the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one.
