Are you hungry for social interaction?
Last April, Chrissy Teigen sarcastically confessed, “I have hit the double-digit mark on quarantine weight gain, so that’s fun!!” Justin Bieber and Gayle King have also admitted to pandemic padding.
Well, it’s more than inactivity that’s got them — and you — putting on weight. Seems “hungry for love” is not a metaphor. Isolation may make you crave food.
Neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently had volunteers undergo isolation and then food depravation and found when socially isolated participants looked at photos of people enjoyably interacting, the “craving signal” in their brain was similar to the signal produced when they viewed pictures of food after they had fasted.
So a smart pandemic weightcontrol plan involves more than great nutrition (no red or processed meats, ultraprocessed foods, or added syrups and sugars) and regular activity (150300 minutes a week, even if indoors). You want to learn to ease your aloneness — and reduce your food cravings — even when you’re all by yourself!
1. Enjoy totally absorbing activities. Try gardening, painting, hiking, knitting — anything you love to do.
2. Fill your home with music. A 2020 study in the journal Music & Science found that listening to enjoyable music works as what the researchers call a social surrogate.
3. Feel awe. Looking at beauty in artwork or in photos of landscapes will help ease your sense of deprivation.
4. Read autobiographies of folks who have overcome major challenges to help you stop “just me” thinking.
We hope this inspires you to overcome loneliness — and reduce your cravings — by nurturing your spirit.
Is your fight against COVID19 going up in smoke?
The next Batman, Robert Pattinson, has been caught smoking and vaping — and he contracted COVID-19 in September. A coincidence? Maybe not. It turns out both smoking and vaping substantially increase your risk of contracting the virus — probably by altering your immune response to infection. According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology, electronic cigarette users (just like tobacco cigarette users) have a very depressed immune response to influenza virus infection, suggesting increased susceptibility to COVID-19.
This insight comes on the heels of a Stanford University School of Medicine study that found teens and young adults who vape are five times more likely to contract COVID-19 than non-vapers. If they vape and smoke cigarettes, they’re seven times more likely.
If you’ve been vaping to stay off cigarettes or you smoke cigs — or both — it’s important to stop. You’ll protect your lungs from damage that makes them a target for respiratory infections, and you’ll spare your immune system changes that weaken your ability to fight off the flu and COVID-19.
• There are Food and Drug Administration-approved smoking-cessation products. Check out ones you see online at www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/daf/. Type in a brand name to see if it’s safe and effective.
• Download the quitStart app from smokefree.gov on Google Play and the Apple App Store. Carry support in the palm of your hand!
• And manage your withdrawal symptoms with smoking-cessation products, like a nicotine patch or gum, exercise, deep breathing, meditation and distraction, such as playing a digital game.
Type 2 diabetes? Quick, frequent exercise can help your heart
When Sherri Shepherd, former co-host of “The View,” was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, she promptly modified her diet and started doing short bouts of lower body exercise. “Those squats are trying to take me out!” she told Parade magazine.
Sherri’s commitment to blasts of exercise appears to be the right prescription for her condition. A new study, published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, finds that people with Type 2 diabetes benefit significantly from short, frequent sessions of leg-centered resistance activities — especially if they are sedentary or have desk-bound jobs.
The researchers tested the femoral blood flow and blood pressure of 24 obese adults with Type 2 diabetes after three seven-hour-long sessions. In the first one, the participants, ages 35 to 70, sat all day with no breaks for exercise. In the second, every 30 minutes, the participants did three minutes of exercises that included squats, leg lifts, and calf raises. In the third, they took a six-minute exercise break every 60 minutes to do those same exercises.
Blood vessel dilation and blood flow improved significantly with intermittent exercise. Duh! But the surprise was that the best results came from putting out three minutes of effort every half hour — cutting the risk for cardiovascular events by around 18 per cent. Seems just 180 seconds of movement that engages large muscles in the lower body (glutes, quads, calves) every 30 minutes is your ticket to reducing vascular impairment if you have Type 2 diabetes. You can do that!
Getting a leg up on legumes
Legumes — what the heck are they anyway? And why can’t you just say “beans”? Well, the word legumes first appeared in
English around 1600 and comes from the Latin verb “legere” — to pick a crop. And what a crop it is!
Legumes include beans — and much more. Among the thousands of types, favorites include butter, pinto, lima, navy, black-eyed, cranberry, cannellini, red kidney, adzuki, black and soya beans; chickpeas; peas, split peas; and lentils. When they’re dried, they are called pulses (not because they’re good for your heart, although they are). And if they’re ground, they produce glutenfree flour for pastas, falafels and breads.
The many pluses of pulses? They’re an excellent source of plant protein (especially chickpeas, split peas and lentils) and provide many other nutrients, such as iron and zinc. Their high fiber content also makes them heart- and gastrohealthy (even if you can get a touch gassy).
Unfortunately, popnutritionists say some of legumes’ phytochemicals — specifically lectins, phytates and tannins — interfere with your digestion and block absorption of nutrients. But that’s not the case if the legumes are soaked, cooked, boiled, sprouted or fermented. Those techniques substantially reduce the dose of those anti-nutrients and increase the bioavailability of legumes’ highly beneficial vitamins and minerals. Boiling ’em for 10 minutes does the trick. Canned beans need to be sufficiently heated, too.
So bean me up, Scotty. Because replacing meat with legumes several times a week can help control blood sugar levels, reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease and increase your lifespan.
Breaking the mould
Last year, we found out that astronauts circulating about 240 miles above Earth in the International Space Station have to scrub down the interior of their ship to beat black mould that is smoldering in the walls. Scientists now know spores of the two most common types of mold on the ISS, Aspergillus and Penicillium, can survive X-ray exposure at 200 times the dose that would kill a person. Fortunately, molds are not particularly harmful unless you have an allergy or hypersensitivity to them. That can trigger asthma and hay fever-type symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, red eyes and skin rash.
You may worry that you have much-feared black mould. Well, one study in Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology says the “symptoms of memory loss, inability to focus, fatigue, and headaches ... were reported by people who erroneously believed that they were suffering from ‘mycotoxicosis.’ Similarly, a causal relationship between cases of infant pulmonary hemorrhage and exposure to ‘black mould’ has never been proven. Finally, there is no evidence of a link between autoimmune disease and mold exposure.”
Still, you do not want mould in the house, damaging walls, tile grout or worse. So, use a dehumidifier in damp areas, repair leaks and drips pronto, and prevent moisture from pooling outside your home. If you have to remove mouldy, porous materials on walls or ceilings, check out the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Mold Remediation in Schools and Commercial Buildings” at epa.gov — it’s got great info for anyone to use.