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.

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.

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.