Health
Finding good health news amidst a pandemic can be quite daunting. That’s not the case with The Optimist Daily, where positive news is in high supply. Our Health section covers the latest good news from the health sector, featuring solutions ranging from mental and physical health to immunity, nutrition, and cutting edge medical research.
The science behind the effects that physical activity has on your brain
Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of neural science and psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She is also an author and a fitness instructor. She is researching the science behind the extraordinary, life-changing effects that physical activity can have on the most important Read More...
Army study quantifies changes in stress after meditation
For a thousand years, people have reported feeling better by meditating but there has never been a systematic study that quantified stress and how much stress changes as a direct result of meditation until Read More...
Sleeping better under a weighted blanket
If you're a light sleeper, have trouble dozing off, or just generally like the "safe" feeling of being under heavy covers, a weighted blanket may change your sleep for the better. It did for Read More...
Vitamin D may decrease breast cancer risk, study reports
Vitamin D is hailed as a wonder nutrient, capable of lowering a person's risk of different forms of cancer. Recent research now confirms that people with high enough levels of this vitamin in their blood have a significantly lower risk of breast Read More...
Seven ways to improve your memory
Getting plenty of sleep, learning difficult new skills and staying socially active can all help to keep your memory Read More...
Probiotics, prebiotics, and placebos: which is more effective?
Do you take probiotics? The idea of a "healthy gut flora" might have gotten you laughed out of the room just five years ago, but they've slowly become far more accepted and are now firmly in the mainstream. About 1.6 percent of America (3.7 million people) took them either regularly or Read More...
How to break the stress reaction cycle
As hard as it may sound to pull out of this stress reaction cycle, it is possible. The first step in creating any positive change is always raising your awareness of what the cycle is, how you participate in it, and what pains the cycle Read More...
Hawaii becomes the first U.S. state to ban pesticide linked to brain damage
Hawaii has become the first U.S. state to ban a pesticide that has been linked to adverse side effects in humans, including debilitating neurological and developmental diseases. Last year the Trump administration controversially overturned a decision to ban pesticides containing chlorpyrifos. The Read More...
Lowering your blood sugar with the next superfood: Lentils
Spikes in blood sugar levels are increasingly linked to inflammation as the root cause of many degenerative diseases from cancer to Alzheimer’s. So, it’s great news that a new study shows that eating lentils can lower blood glucose by up to 35 Read More...
A bloodless malaria test by Ugandan inventor won Africa’s top engineering prize
The $33,000 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation has been awarded to a 24-year old Ugandan engineer for his invention of a bloodless malaria test. Before now, small blood samples taken from suspected patients in hospitals or pharmacies were used to test for malaria but with Matibabu, the device Read More...