Hello Yahoo Life readers! My name is Kaitlin Reilly and I am here to share the best health and wellness tips of the week.
Are your friends all about Whole30? Is your spouse experimenting with a fasting regimen like Prolon? This week I spoke to dietitians about whether nutrition challenges are ever worth trying. The answer? Maybe … if you’re using the challenge as a stepping stone to improve your overall diet with more nutritious foods, as opposed to a quick fix that you’ll abandon when the challenge is over.
One easy challenge that will boost your fiber, vitamin and mineral content? Eat fruits and vegetables at every meal for a week, whether that’s blueberries on top of oatmeal (more on those berries later!) or even just some arugula on your sandwich. Research from 2022 found that consistently eating a few servings of fruits and veggies a day is just as good for your health as walking 4,000 extra steps.
Take a peek at your local weather forecast and look at your horoscope for some astrological guidance. Then check out the small steps you can take to make your week healthier and happier.
🍉 Stay hydrated by eating more fruit
Staying hydrated is a good goal since doing so helps you avoid headaches and kidney stones and even helps manage your weight. However, simply drinking a ton of water isn’t what you should aim for, Dr. Jaclyn Tolentino, an osteopath, recently told Parade. That’s because without electrolytes like sodium, potassium and magnesium, which you won’t find in tap water, your body will “struggle to truly absorb and retain the water you’re drinking,” Tolentino explained.
Instead of chugging water to increase your hydration, focus on including more water-rich foods with electrolytes in your diet, such as watermelon, bananas, figs, avocados and oranges. Working out intensely for more than an hour or spending time in the heat? Grab an electrolyte packet.
🍵 Turn matcha into a snack
It’s green. It’s earthy. It’s everywhere. I am, of course, talking about matcha, the antioxidant-rich Japanese green tea powder that is skyrocketing in popularity globally. While you can sip it hot or over ice in place of your daily coffee for a caffeine kick sans the jitters (thanks to its L-theanine content, which alters the effects of the stimulant) that’s not the only way to enjoy it. Try making matcha-infused protein balls: food blog Clean and Delicious has a recipe that mixes raw cashews, pistachios, dates, cranberry and coconut with matcha for an energizing bite you can enjoy as an afternoon snack.
🫐 Grab some blueberries
Here’s a good reason to grab a handful of blueberries: Research published in the journal Nutrients found that eating 1.5 cups of blueberries a day could improve some important health markers. The study found that when people ate daily servings of blueberry powder equivalent to that amount of fresh blueberries, they had better cholesterol levels and increased gut bacteria that helped absorb antioxidants.
An easy way to sneak more blueberries into your diet? Use them in overnight oats. Add rolled oats, your milk of choice, a nut or seed butter, chia seeds and a large helping of frozen blueberries to a container, then let it sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, you’ll have a quick, fiber-rich breakfast.
Strength training is great for maintaining bone and muscle mass, which is especially important as you age, but for many people, spending a ton of time in the gym can be a drag. The solution? Try supersets, sports physiologist Mike Israetel recently told Men’s Fitness. Supersets mean you’re performing two exercises back-to-back with no rest in between — and they allow you to target different muscle groups while scaling back your workout time. You could do a set of dumbbell shoulder presses, which target the upper body, followed immediately by goblet squats that focus on your lower half.
Seeking other ways to cut down on your time spent exercising? Try HIIT workouts — aka high-intensity interval training — in which you alternate between all-out effort for a short amount of time, like 30 seconds, and then recover before repeating.
📱 Make scrolling work for you
In today’s hectic world, it’s all too easy to get sucked into doomscrolling, even as research suggests that doing so can negatively affect your stress levels, attention span and even mental health. One suggestion for scaling back these negative consequences comes from psychologist Lienna Wilson, who told Real Simple this week to consider setting aside specific time blocks to scroll quality content — and be mindful of which outlets you consume. (Provocative opinion pieces that leave you enraged are worth opting out of entirely, for example.)
Give yourself permission to scan a few of your preferred news sources for an hour after dinner, and then distract yourself from your phone by finding a great book to read instead. That way, you’ll feel like you’re in the know about important news without falling into a pit of gloom. Plus, by giving yourself a buffer between scrolling and bedtime, your sleep is less likely to be affected by the latest scary article you just read.
🍽️ Skip late-night meals
Grabbing a late slice of pizza sounds like a good idea at the moment, but a study suggests it could be bad for your heart. Researchers from Mass General Brigham found that eating during nighttime hours, like many night shift workers do, can raise blood pressure and increase your risk of blood clots, even if your sleep and calorie intake remain the same.
While the study is small, there are other reasons to avoid eating later at night, even if your work or life schedule aligns with it: Research previously linked eating 45% of your daily total calories after 5 p.m. to impaired glucose tolerance (aka higher blood sugar levels) and eating after 9 p.m. with a higher risk of stroke. Plus, if you eat late at night and then hit the pillow shortly after, your sleep is more likely to be disrupted by gastrointestinal issues like acid reflex.
🐟 Get in your omega-3s
If you’re seeking to support healthy aging, ramp up your intake of omega-3s, which are fatty acids with anti-inflammatory properties. A recent study published in Nature Aging found that participants who took 1-gram supplements of omega-3 fatty acids slowed their biological aging by a month each year.
Getting omega-3s from whole food sources, which can also add to muscle-boosting protein, is easy: a 3-oz. serving of salmon offers about 1.8 grams of omega-3 fatty acids, a 1-ounce serving of walnuts contains about 2.5 grams and a 1-ounce serving of chia seeds contains 5 grams. Make a salmon salad for lunch, sprinkle walnuts on a yogurt bowl or mix chia seeds into a smoothie.
🍌 Eat bananas
No monkey business here: April 16 is National Banana Day, which is just one more reason to embrace this portable fruit. Bananas are full of potassium, which can help lower blood pressure. Want the most bang for your banana? Pairing the fiber-rich fruit with a source of healthy fat or protein, like nut butter in a sandwich or protein powder in a smoothie, helps keep you full, slow digestion and stabilize blood sugar levels.
🧄 Go for garlic
April 19 is National Garlic Day. Ward off vampires — and high blood pressure! — by skipping the extra salt on your dinner and going for naturally sodium-free garlic powder instead. It’s good for your brain, too: Garlic has natural anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, which help reduce your risk of diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Not a fan of garlic breath? There are ways to avoid it. Consider having yogurt prior to eating garlicky food: The fat and protein mix can alleviate your stinky breath. Or finish your meal with a raw apple, which naturally deodorizes your mouth.