O'Reilly Health

You’re heading to the market. You need to pick up eggs, cheese, milk, bread, tomatoes, carrots, and string beans. Can you keep those items in mind by repeating them to yourself? You arrive at your usual market, but it is unexpectedly closed. A passerby gives you verbal directions to a new market. Can you close your eyes and visualize the route? Both activities tap working memory — that is, your memory for information that you need to actively keep “in mind” and manipulate often.

We use this type of memory every day. For example, when we are comparing two or more options — whether dinner entrees, health plans, or mutual funds — we are using our working memory to keep the details of the different options in mind.

The frontal lobes direct the components of working memory

The two...

As one of the five major senses, you could argue that our sense of smell is the least important. Sight, hearing, touch, and taste may poll better than smell, but try telling that to someone who has lost their sense of smell entirely.

The truth is that loss of the ability to smell comes with a significant cost, because olfaction serves several purposes that affect quality of life and even safety, including

• stimulation of appetite
• enhancement of the sense of taste
• alerting you to which foods should not be eaten (if they’re rotting, for example)
• warning you of danger (as with smoke warning of fire).

Loss of smell can also be a sign of illness. For example, sinus infections, sinus tumors, and neurologic diseases such as multiple sclerosis may be associated with a reduced sense of smell...

One of the things on my summer bucket list each year is to grill outside. It’s fun, delicious, and gives me a break from the hot kitchen! This grilled citrus chicken recipe is a great addition to the grilling repertoire. It’s easy to make and packed with flavor that the whole family loves.

Why Sweet and Savory?

The combination of sweet citrus and honey with the savory flavors of herbs and spices give this dish the classic combination that everyone loves. It turns out there is a scientific reason for this! According to a Delish article, researchers have discovered that salt enhances the absorption of the sugar in a food, making the combination of biological benefit to the body.

Chefs also find that flavor layering (which is what you do when you add more than one flavor to a dish) ...

All medications come with a dose of risk. From minor side effects to life-threatening allergic reactions, every decision to take a medication should be made only after the expected benefits are weighed against the known risks. You aren’t on your own in this: your doctor, your pharmacist, and a trove of information are available for your review. Recently, I wrote about how newly approved drugs often accumulate new warnings about their safety, including a gout medication that garnered a new warning due to an increased risk of death. Now, according to a new study, the common prescription pain medication tramadol may earn a similar warning.

Tramadol is unique

When first approved in 1995, tramadol was not considered an opiate (like morphine or oxycodone) even though it acted in similar ways...

The following is a letter I wrote to my child’s school upon finding out some of the ideas they were trying to force upon her and her classmates as it relates to vaccines:

With the school year nearing its end my daughter recently brought home quite a sizeable pile of papers which have accumulated over the course of the year. Reading through them I became extremely dismayed when I came across a printout of a Washington Post article titled, ‘Measles Spreading Across U.S. to Record High.’

The packet was essentially a propaganda sheet that could’ve been written by the pharmaceutical lobby itself. What made it so offensive was that it wasn’t just an article but in fact a sales pitch which attempted to sell our children on the ‘pressing need’ for receiving the MMR vaccine.

In my opi...

Glyphosate is one of the active ingredients in Roundup® – the most commonly used herbicide in the world.  Most of us are exposed to glyphosate every day, often without realizing it.  In fact, an estimated 93% of Americans have glyphosate in their bodies, with children having the highest level, according to a 2015 study by the University of California at San Francisco.  Glyphosate can be found in breast milk, drinking water, rain samples, and the food we feed our families.playgrounds,parks,  school grounds, and yards.   So, how can you escape it?

It’s nearly impossible to completely avoid glyphosate, but there are steps you can take to dramatically reduce your exposure.  Here’s how and why I protect myself from glyphosate.

Why I Protect Myself from Glyphosate:

1. Glyphosate is a...

Most every pregnant mom experiences morning sickness and even afternoon sickness, night sickness or any time during the day. You see, nausea can be debilitating. And probably a billion pregnant moms are enduring nausea right now and are unfortunately mostly powerless to stop it or even prevent it, but it’s not because of the reason you think it is – it’s not because well, you’re pregnant, even though pregnancy would seem to be the most obvious reason. There is actually a bigger cause of nausea during pregnancy that is far less obvious, even though it is actually the bigger cause of nausea or said another way, seriously exacerbates the slight nausea that is already there, but in either case, this bigger cause makes it all worse.

The Bigger Cause

Are you ready? The bigger cause of al...

Did you know that the FDA doesn’t require nutrition facts
for alcoholic beverages?? Does this mean that innocence is bliss when it comes
to alcohol and your diet plan?? What you don’t know doesn’t count or doesn’t
hurt you?? Well, the waistline seems to respond regardless of the data. Wine
has been called the “nectar of the gods” and beer has developed into a brewery
on every corner. Alcohol is a pleasurable beverage many people enjoy; which
type is a matter of personal preference, availability, and sometimes culture.

A bottle of wine has about 750 calories compared to a six
pack of beer that has about 900 calories. This means that if you had a standard
glass of wine every night (6oz), that’s 1260 calories added up for the week. Having
a standard pint of beer (14oz) each nigh...

Right now the world is experiencing an epidemic that is projected to get much, much worse. It’s an epidemic of dementia, affecting 50 million people and millions more of their caregivers — staggering numbers that are projected to triple by 2050.

The dementia crisis is such a massive worldwide issue that the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a strategic public health action plan, including compiling an organized database of quality dementia research and creating guidelines for the prevention of dementia. The guidelines have just been published, a 96-page document that is summarized here, as well as in this post.

Dementia is a progressive, heartbreaking deterioration of brain functioning associated with aging...

One simple change in the kitchen can make a big difference in reducing waste and saving money: switching to entirely to cloth instead of paper.

This is one easy change that I resisted for a long time but wish I had made the switch much earlier. I think the idea of removing paper products in the kitchen is much more daunting than it actually is to switch.

I have many friends who cloth diaper but who still resist the idea of using cloth instead of paper towels and napkins in the kitchen (kitchen messes are less gross than poopy diapers in my opinion… at least most of the time!).

If you’ve never considered the idea of using cloth in the kitchen before, I’d encourage you to give it a try...

What a cute topic is the one I’m going to share with you.

Because to talk about beauty, is one of the things that motivates me a lot, because I find beauty in a woman, a man, a flower, a puppy a kitten, a twilight, the Descent of the sun on a beach, in short everything.

But don’t worry, today we’re just going to write about the outer beauty of a man and a woman, and what they need to be more beautiful, we will talk about, the beauty in the sold, in the hearth, in the spirit.

Yes, today I want to talk about where the beauty of a human being, how we can realize when we know someone, how beautiful is. Through my years I have had the honor and disappointment of meeting many people, in the countries that I have lived and visited.

I Will tell you a secret, I am of the people who do not judge any...