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.
Common probiotics can reduce stress levels, lessen anxiety
Probiotics, or beneficial live bacteria that are introduced into the body, have become increasingly popular as a way to improve health and well-being. Previous studies have shown a direct correlation between gut microbes and the central nervous system. Now, researchers at the University of Read More...
Vitamin D supplements may benefit children with Autism spectrum disorder
Vitamin D supplementation improved symptoms of autism in a recent trial. Studies have shown an association between the risk of autism spectrum disorder and vitamin D insufficiency. In this latest study, 109 children with autism spectrum disorder were randomized to receive four months of vitamin D3 Read More...
Unconscious brain training beats phobias without the stress
No need to face your fears, they could be made to just melt away. A new way of curing phobias can nudge people into unconsciously thinking about their fears, helping them to unlearn their associations of fear in a stress-free way. Phobias are usually treated with “exposure therapy”, Read More...
Could this cooler help combat global hunger?
About 15 percent of the world’s population lives without electricity. When it comes to meeting this segment of the global population’s needs, solar lights, water filters and cook stoves tend to get the most attention. But the team behind Evaptainers, an electricity-free mobile Read More...
Scotland wants to introduce a law that will mean no one goes hungry again
The Scottish Government is considering enshrining a ‘right to food’ in Scots law. It is one of a number of recommendations being looked at following the publication of a report by the Independent Working Group on Food Poverty earlier this year. The group said that while enshrining Read More...
Sea Hero Quest: the mobile phone game helping fight dementia
A mobile phone game that tests spatial navigation skills and has been played by 2.4 million people, has become the largest dementia study in history and raised hopes of a breakthrough in diagnosing the disease. Sea Hero Quest, a collaboration between Alzheimer’s Research UK, Deutsche Telekom, Read More...
How exercise might keep depression at bay
Exercise may be an effective treatment for depression and might even help prevent us from becoming depressed in the first place, according to three timely new studies. The studies pool outcomes from past research involving more than a million men and women and, taken together, strongly suggest that Read More...
This startup is making meat without killing any animals
A Bay Area-based startup called Memphis Meats has figured out how to make a real meatball in the lab using beef cells, no livestock required. This is fantastic since lab-grown meat doesn’t need to snack on grain to survive nor does it produce methane when being made unlike real livestock. Yes, Read More...
Electric fields can stimulate deep in your brain without surgery
It’s one of the boldest treatments in medicine: delivering an electrical current deep into the brain by implanting a long thin electrode through a hole in the skull. Such “deep brain stimulation” (DBS) works miracles on people with otherwise untreatable epilepsy or Read More...
First home brain implant lets ‘locked-in’ woman communicate
A woman in the Netherlands is benefitting from a new form of brain implant that’s helping her regain control over the functions of communication that were taken away by ALS, also known a Lou Gehrig’s disease. The implanted device can detect the woman’s brain activity and turns them into Read More...