Sunday 19 April 2015

It Only Takes 5 Days of Indulging in Fatty Foods to Mess with Your Muscle Function

No matter how much you try to eat healthy, things happen—you indulge in daily bacon cheeseburgers with a side of piña colada on vacation or end up ordering takeout a lot in one week.

We’ve all been there, which is why we’re filing this news under “terrifying”: A new study from Virginia Tech has discovered that eating a high-fat diet for just five days can change the way your body’s muscles processes nutrients. That can lead to weight gain, obesity, and diabetes, among other long-term health issues.

Saturday 18 April 2015

Why the FDA Can't Be Totally Sure Your Food Is Safe

You read all food labels and stay away from artificial ingredients. You nosh on plenty of whole fruits and vegetables daily and squeeze in some lean protein at every meal. But what about the ingredients lurking in that gluten-free pasta you're about to cook? You may be putting yourself at risk without even knowing it.

There's a certain level of trust we put in the hands of food manufacturers. But it seems an antiquated law may be allowing them to slip in new ingredients without prior approval from the FDA. The Food Additives Amendment, which has been around since the 1950s, allows manufacturers to self-proclaim ingredients "generally recognized as safe" (or GRAS), after which they can be used in products without any special warnings on the packaging.

What Happens to Your Face When You Use Expired Makeup

You know you’ve done it—we're talking about using a makeup product that's way past its expiration date. After all, you shelled out major dough for that mascara, so why would you want to toss it once the date on the tube has come and gone?

But expiration dates serve a bigger purpose than merely getting you to buy another product. That’s because old makeup not only works less efficiently—it can do major damage to your skin. You’ve been warned, ladies.

Sunday 12 April 2015

7 Secrets of Female Masturbation

Your recipe for masturbation is pretty simple: A bottle of lube, an open Xtube browser, and a five-finger grip deliver results in no time flat. But women’s solo sessions are a bit more complicated.

They can’t do it wherever they want, they don’t always care about reaching orgasm, and they definitely aren’t flipping through Fifty Shades as much as you’d imagine. So how do women masturbate? Read on to discover the secrets of what happens behind closed doors.

This Daily Habit May Cause a Deadly Stroke

Here’s another reason to close out your tab early: Drinking too much alcohol during your middle-age years can raise your future stroke risk, finds new research from the University of South Florida.

In the study, “heavy” drinkers—defined as people who downed more than two beverages a day—had a 34 percent greater risk of stroke during the 43-year follow-up than those who consumed less than half a drink a day.

That third daily cocktail increased the participants’ stroke risk even more than diabetes or high blood pressure did, at least until they hit the age of 75.

4 Steps to Resolve Any Fight with Her (and Get Straight to the Makeup Sex)

It’s not shared hobbies or amazing sex that make a relationship great—although those don’t hurt.

It’s how you and your partner fight, says Wendy Walsh, Ph.D., founder of relationship resource site AskALoveGuru.com.

“Conflict is normal,” Walsh says. If you can resolve spats before they turn into blowups, the friction can bring the two of you closer together rather than tear you apart.

Plus, sparring could save your life: A recent University of Michigan study finds that spouses who suppress their anger die earlier than those who argue regularly.

Here’s your plan to defuse any fight and get straight to the fun part: makeup sex.

Saturday 11 April 2015

5 Easy Ways to Make Her Horny

As a guy, you’re probably the one who initiates sex in your relationship. It’s not that your girlfriend isn’t in the mood, or doesn’t want as much sex as you do—you’re just the one who rings the dinner bell 99.9 percent of the time.

Why is that? “This comes from many things, but one of them is that women are afraid that if they step out of traditional gender roles, they won’t be seen, accepted, and appreciated as feminine being,” says psychologist and relationship expert Tracy Thomas, Ph.D. “It also becomes another area where she could potentially fail, and be rejected—and most women are terrified of being rejected.”

But you can fix this, Thomas says, by creating an atmosphere in which she doesn’t feel like she needs to be perfect. “You want to get her in the mood—make her horny—but what does that mean?” Thomas says. “What you really want is to make her feel like it’s safe for her to let go, like she can surrender to her sexual desires.”

How Many Long Runs Should I Do Before a Marathon?

It seems like common sense that to prepare for a marathon—an event that includes a heck of a lot of running—your training should also include a heck of a lot of running. That’s why marathon preparation dogma preaches that you need to do one long, 12 to 26 mile run each week.

The problem: That often puts too much mileage on your body, says Mark Conover, director of the cross-country and track-and-field programs at California Polytechnic State University.

“The key is to get to the starting line fresh,” says Conover. “You don’t want to arrive at the marathon as damaged goods.”

Stop Stress in 60 Seconds

Severe stress can do more damage than just turning your hair gray and making you shorter. People with chronic stress have a 59 percent increase in their odds of stroke over the next decade, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.

For every single-point increase in test scores measuring stress levels, study participants’ risk of stroke jumped 19 percent. Study authors think chronic activation of the fight-or-flight response may trigger your body’s inflammatory response to go into overdrive, impeding blood flow to the brain.

Thursday 2 April 2015

How to Have Sex for an Hour!

You’ve tried crunching baseball stats. You've mentally replayed your last round of golf. You've outlined the steps to making your favorite sandwich. But the more you try to slow yourself down during sex, the faster you finish—and you’re not alone.

“Premature ejaculation is a problem that affects almost every man at some point in his life,” says Thomas J. Walsh, M.D., a urologist at the University of Washington.

Dr. Walsh says there are primarily two methods of dealing with your speed issues: physical and psychological treatments. While physical remedies target the sensations you feel during sex, psychological solutions address your worry, stress, or other mental factors that may explain your quick trigger, Dr. Walsh explains.

Here, he and other experts break down a few of the most helpful techniques for dealing with premature ejaculation (PE). But be warned: Dr. Walsh recommends trying these out on your own before attempting them during sex.

The Dangerous Disease That 25% of Men Over 40 Have (and Often Don’t Know It)

Your medical history might have some serious holes in it. Nearly 80 percent of people with a common liver disease aren’t diagnosed, finds a new study from Baylor College of Medicine.

In the study, researchers determined that participants had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)—an often-symptom-free accumulation of fat in the liver—if their lab work showed persistently elevated liver enzymes and no indication of organ-damaging factors like hepatitis or excessive alcohol use.

Why Working Out With Your Girlfriend Helps You Build Muscle Faster

The first time I joined a gym, I was 24 and scrawny. The jacked guy at the front desk said all new members received a T-shirt and asked me for my size. Small, I said. He threw me a muumuu.

“This is a large,” he replied. “It’s all we have. Once you start lifting, you’ll fill it out.”

Hardly. I lasted 8 months.

But then I proposed to Jen, a onetime runner and yoga nut who had largely abandoned those pursuits to sit around with me. With our upcoming nuptials, the threat of shame finally loomed large: If we didn’t shape up and sharpen our softening bodies, we’d be gathering our loved ones together for a display of our shortcomings.

Drink This, Sleep 90 More Minutes A Night

No, it's not whiskey. New research from Louisiana State University finds that drinking tart cherry juice twice a day can help you sleep nearly 90 more minutes a night.

Researchers had seven older adults with insomnia drink eight ounces of Montmorency tart cherry juice twice a day for two weeks, followed by two weeks of no juice, and then two more weeks of drinking a placebo beverage. Compared to the placebo, drinking the cherry juice resulted in an average of 84 more minutes of sleep time each night.

Cherry juice is a natural source of the sleep-wake cycle hormone melatonin and the amino acid tryptophan, says study coauthor Frank L. Greenway, director of the outpatient research clinic at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at LSU.

Why Your Grandparents Are Having Better Sex Than You

The perfect 50th anniversary gift? Lingerie.

Married couples’ sex lives start to rebound after half a century together, a new study from Baylor University finds.

Researchers interviewed older spouses about their bedroom habits. True to conventional wisdom, the longer a couple had been married, the less often they slept together. That’s because sex with the same person can get less exciting as the years tick by, says study author Samuel Stroope, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Baylor.