Research shows that music can affect our brain chemistry and cognitive processes. The right sounds can help us relax, pump us up, or get in the mood for, well, really anything. Similarly, the wrong sounds can cause us stress and make it more difficult to focus.
Air quality is a factor in any game, but just how much can be hard to tell. Pollution can cause a wide variety of problems, including degrading athletic performance. Some doctors even recommend that people who live in cities avoid exercise during commute hours in the morning and evening.
You made it through the winter, and now it’s time to open the windows and let in the sun. Sure, it may shine a little extra light on the laundry, dust, and other chores forgotten during the holiday craziness, but that’s what spring cleaning is for. But with all the cleaning products, ladder climbing, and heavy lifting, things can get hazardous pretty quickly if you’re not careful.
Some of life’s best memories are made in the kitchen. Delicious food has a way of bringing people together, and a warm, inviting kitchen is the heart of any gathering. The trouble is when mouthwatering dinner aromas overstay their welcome, turning your sink, fridge, or trash can into a hazmat-suit-worthy biohazard.
There’s something about short, dark days and unforgiving winter weather that can make life start to feel like one long, gloomy blur. If you find yourself with a constant desire to cancel plans and stay in bed around this time of year, you’re not alone. Around 1 in 20 adults in the U.S. experience a form of winter depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Smart home devices are all about making your life easier and more convenient. Whether you’re interested in saving money on electricity, making your home safer, or improving your indoor air quality, there’s a smart appliance out there that can help. The hard part is knowing where to start.
The indoor office environment has a reputation for making us sick due to mold, cleaning chemicals, infectious coworkers, and quite a few other factors. One benefit offered by working from a home office is a lot more control over indoor air quality, from open windows to electronics.
From preventing snoring to clearing acne, there seems to be nothing you can’t accomplish with a little mouth taping. Wellness influencers are praising the viral TikTok trend as the ultimate key to deeper, more restorative sleep. But social media anecdotes are a far cry from scientific proof.
Cooking can be one of the biggest indoor air quality hazards when proper precautions are not taken. Different cooking methods come along with different degrees of risk. Most of us are aware that burning natural gas to cook indoors will always have a bigger negative impact on air quality than cooking the same thing with an electric stove.
Wintertime in the Northern hemisphere can often require more of us than other seasons. We need to stay warm, participate in festive events, and fight off the inevitable waves of viruses that result from close quarters and noses running in the cold dry air. One way to consider how to keep healthy during the winter season is to stock up on the nutrients and other resources that are used up surviving the holiday season.
Whether it is adding healthy habits or subtracting the unhealthy ones, changing our behavior for the better can be really hard. International Mind Body Wellness Day is on the first Tuesday of 2023, and it is the perfect day to start down the path of wellness. Not with all healthy choices and no unhealthy choices, that is impossible.
Having the right gear in cold weather can be literally life-saving, just like wearing the right masks to protect from airborne pathogens. Most of us know a lot more about masks than we have in the past due to the ongoing global pandemic, but it might not be totally clear how or even if warmth and safety can be combined.