Healthy Tips from HealthyLife

If you’re looking for an excuse to take in a comedy show with your friends, look no further. According to new research, the physical exertion of having a good belly laugh in the company of friends, as opposed to a polite titter, exhausts us so much we produce protective endorphins that raise our pain threshold and make us feel good.

British researchers found that when we laugh properly, we exhale repeatedly without drawing breath. This is an involuntary mechanism that appears to happen only in humans. This physical effort exhausts us and triggers the release of protective endorphins, which regulate pain and promote feelings of well-being.

The investigators found that watching just 15 minutes of comedy in the company of others increased the pain threshold by an average of about 10 percent. They say laughing with others seems to be more likely to produce this effect than laughing alone. They believe it is the “bonding effects of the endorphin rush that explain why laughter plays such an important role in our social lives.”

The authors of the study say the endorphin “rush” only seems to happen when we have a good belly laugh (one that creases the eyes, as opposed to polite laughter that does not reach the eyes), and when we share it with others. They suggest that the fact that only this type of laughter releases endorphins is because it probably evolved as a way of encouraging us to socialize with each other.

Does the sight of a diamond necklace make your mouth water? If so, you are not alone. According to a recent study, in certain situations people actually salivate when they desire material things, like money and sports cars.

Researchers at Northwestern University examined whether people salivated in response to money. They measured salivation by having study participants put cotton dental rolls in their mouths while they gazed at pictures of money, and later weighed the rolls to measure the amount of saliva. Before the study subjects viewed money, the researchers primed them to feel powerful or to feel that they lacked power. The authors of the study found that participants salivated to money, but only when they were in a low-power state. They say these findings suggest that people salivate to non-food items when the items are desired to fulfill a highly active goal.

In another study, the investigators looked at whether men would salivate to high-end sports cars. They showed one group of men pictures of attractive women and asked them to choose one they would like to date. Men in another group were asked to ponder a visit to the barber. The researchers found that the men with the active mating goal salivated more at images of high-end sports cars than the men who were asked to imagine getting a haircut.

The authors of the study say people may salivate to money and sports cars due to the finding that all objects of desire, whether biological or non-biological, activate the same general reward system in the brain; salivation might simply be the consequence of the activation of this general reward system.

Here’s another reason to add more pears and apples to your diet. According to a recent study, consuming fruit with white edible portions can reduce the risk of stroke by 52 percent.

Researchers in the Netherlands set out to determine whether there was a link between vegetable and fruit color group consumption and 10-year stroke incidence. They studied 20,069 adults with an average age of 41 years; none of them had any cardiovascular disease when the study began. The participants had all filled out a 178-item food frequency questionnaire for the previous year. Fruits and vegetables were classified into several color groups: cabbages, lettuce and other dark green leafy vegetables; orange and yellow colors, most of which were citrus fruits; white colors, 55% of which were apples and pears; red and purple colors, most of which were red vegetables.

The study participants suffered 233 strokes during the ten-year follow up period. The researchers found that stroke incidence was not impacted by the consumption of red/purple and orange/yellow fruits. However, they found that high intake of white fruits and vegetables was associated with a 52% lower risk of developing stroke, compared to a low intake. There was a nine percent lower risk of stroke for every 25 gram increase (the weight of an average size apple) in daily white fruit and vegetable consumption.

Pears and apples are rich in a flavonoid called quercetin, as well as dietary fiber. Other white category fruit and vegetables include cauliflower, banana, cucumber and chicory.

The authors of the study say it may be useful to consume considerable amounts of white fruits and vegetables. However, they say, it’s still important to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables because other fruits and vegetable color groups may protect against other chronic diseases.

Here’s a good reason to get active — and encourage your employees to do the same — at work. According to new research, devoting work time to physical activity can lead to higher productivity.

Researchers at Stockholm University and Karolinska Institute asked workers at two dental care offices to devote 2.5 hours a week to physical activity, distributed across two sessions. Another group had the same decrease in work hours but without obligatory exercise, while a third group maintained their usual schedule of 40 work hours a week.

The researchers found that all three groups were able to maintain or even increase their production level, in this case the number of patients treated, during the study period compared to the same time period in the previous year. The participants who exercised also reported improvements in self-assessed productivity; they perceived that they got more done at work, had a greater work capacity, and were sick less often.

The authors of the study say the increased productivity comes from people getting more done during the hours they are at work, possibly from increased stamina, and also from less absenteeism due to sickness.

You probably think of potatoes as carb-heavy diet saboteurs, but new research may cause you to abandon that stereotype. According to a recent study, just a couple servings of spuds a day reduces blood pressure almost as much as oatmeal without causing weight gain.

Researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania studied 18 patients who were primarily overweight/obese with high blood pressure. The participants ate six to eight purple potatoes (each about the size of a golf ball) with skins twice daily for a  month. The authors of the study used purple potatoes because the pigment, or coloring material, is rich in beneficial phytochemicals. They monitored the patients’ systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and found that the average diastolic blood pressure dropped by 4.3 percent and the systolic pressure decreased by 3.5 percent. Most of the study subjects took anti-hypertensive drugs and still had a reduction in blood pressure. None of the participants gained weight.

It’s important to note that the research was not done with French fries, but with potatoes cooked in a microwave without oil. The authors of the study say high cooking temperatures seem to destroy most of the healthy substances in a potato, leaving mainly fat, starch and minerals. The purple potatoes used in the study are becoming more widely available, but the researchers say a future study using white potatoes will probably produce similar results.

Research has shown that younger adults are better decision makers than older ones, but a new study has proven that theory wrong.

Researchers at Texas A&M University believed the earlier research was biased toward younger brains, so they approached the topic from a different angle. Instead of testing the ability to make decisions one at a time without regard to past or future, as earlier research did, these scientists designed a model that required participants to evaluate each result in order to strategize the next choice, more like real world decision making.

In one experiment, groups of college-age adults and older adults (ages 60 to early 80s) received points each time they chose from one of four options and tried to maximize the points they earned. The younger adults were more efficient at making choices that yielded more points in this portion. In another experiment, the rewards received depended on the choices they had previously made. The “decreasing option” gave more points on each trial, but caused rewards on future trials to be lower. The “increasing option” yielded a smaller reward on each trial but caused rewards on future trials to increase. There were two versions of the test, and the older adults did better on both.

The study authors concluded that the younger adults were better when they only needed to consider the immediate rewards, while the older adults did better when it came to developing a theory about how rewards in the environment were structured, because in this case the more experience you have in this, the better you are at it. They theorize that these results are related to the ways we use our brains as we age, and the fact that older adults have gained wisdom — and a number of reasoning methods — from years of decision making experience.

Do you always snack on popcorn at the movies? Would you eat it even if it didn’t taste good? According to a recent study, you just might, because bad eating habits persist even when the food we’re eating doesn’t taste good.

Researchers at USC gave people about to enter a movie theater a bucket of either just-popped, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn. They found that moviegoers who don’t usually eat popcorn at the movies ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn, as the week-old popcorn just didn’t taste as good. However, moviegoers who indicated that they usually had popcorn at the movies ate about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale. In other words, for those who had a habit of eating popcorn at the movies, it made no difference whether the popcorn tasted good or not.

The authors of the study say that when we’ve repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present. They say these findings have important implications for understanding overeating and the conditions that may cause people to eat even when they aren’t hungry or don’t like the food.

Interestingly, changing the hand with which you eat may make a difference. In another experiment the investigators asked participants about to enter a film screening to eat popcorn (both stale and fresh) with their dominant or non-dominant hand. Using the non-dominant hand seemed to cause people to pay attention to what they were eating by disrupting eating habits. The moviegoers ate much less of the stale than the fresh popcorn when using the non-dominant hand; this worked even for those with strong eating habits.

The study authors suggest when it is not feasible to avoid or alter the environments in which you typically overeat, consider disrupting the established patterns of how you eat through simple techniques like switching the hand you use to eat.

Here’s more evidence of the powerful role hormones play in our lives. According to a recent study, sex hormones strongly influence people’s interests, which affect the kind of occupations they choose.

Psychologists at Penn State University looked at people’s interest in occupations that exhibit sex differences in the general population and are relevant to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. They studied teens and young adults with a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and their siblings who don’t have CAH. People with CAH are exposed to more androgen, a type of male sex hormone, than normal while in the uterus. Females who have CAH are genetically female but tend to have interests more similar to stereotypically male ones.

The authors of the study found that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. They also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced; those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people. The researchers found that females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as surgeon or engineer, and more interest in careers focused on interacting with people, such as teacher or social worker. They did not find any significant difference between males with CAH and males without the condition.

The study authors say these findings suggest that women may not be going into STEM careers because what they’re interested in — people — isn’t consistent with an interest in STEM careers. They say women should be shown ways in which an interest in people is compatible with STEM careers.