Kills 99.9% of Germs -- Sometimes. Fit Body, Fit Mind? Your Workout Makes You Smarter. As everybody knows, if you do not work out, your muscles get flaccid. What most people don’t realize, however, is that your brain also stays in better shape when you exercise. And not just challenging your noggin by, for example, learning a new language, doing difficult crosswords or taking on other intellectually stimulating tasks. As researchers are finding, physical exercise is critical to vigorous mental health, too. Surprised? Although the idea of exercising cognitive machinery by performing mentally demanding activities—popularly termed the “use it or lose it” hypothesis—is better known, a review of dozens of studies shows that maintaining a mental edge requires more than that.
Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content. Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus. Debunking Canadian health care myths. Posted: 06/07/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT By Rhonda Hackett As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one. Often I'll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner's nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one's merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.
Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. Yet, the debate rages on. As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system. Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care. In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Myth: There aren't enough doctors in Canada. Obesity Not Just an American Problem Anymore. Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter. In 1865 Friedrich August Kekulé woke up from a strange dream: he imagined a snake forming a circle and biting its own tail. Like many organic chemists of the time, Kekulé had been working feverishly to describe the true chemical structure of benzene, a problem that continually eluded understanding.
But Kekulé’s dream of a snake swallowing its tail, so the story goes, helped him to accurately realize that benzene’s structure formed a ring. This insight paved the way for a new understanding of organic chemistry and earned Kekulé a title of nobility in Germany. Although most of us have not been ennobled, there is something undeniably familiar about Kekulé’s problem-solving method. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content.