New research from the University of South Australia shows that adopting a healthy diet can reduce the severity of chronic pain, presenting an easy and accessible way for sufferers to better manage their condition.
Exploring associations between body fat, diet, and pain, researchers found that a greater consumption of foods within the Australian Dietary Guidelines was directly associated with lower levels of body pain, particularly among women.
One of the researchers commented, “In our study, higher consumption of core foods—which are your vegetables, fruits, grains, … and alternatives [nuts]—was related to less pain, and this was regardless of body weight.
“This is important because being overweight or obese is a known risk factor for chronic pain.”
“A healthy diet helps the weighty battle with chronic pain,” Science Daily, Dec. 24, 2024.
Bedtime worry about future tasks can contribute significantly to difficulty falling asleep. A small study at Baylor University investigated whether bedtime writing—writing a to-do list versus journaling about completed activities—affected the time it took to get to sleep. Fifty-seven healthy young adults (ages 18–30) completed a writing assignment for five minutes prior to overnight polysomnography recording in a controlled sleep laboratory. They either wrote about tasks they needed to complete in the next few days or about tasks they had completed during the previous few days. Those who wrote to-do lists fell asleep up to 15 minutes faster than those who wrote lists of tasks completed. The more specifically participants wrote their to-do list, the faster they subsequently fell asleep. It might be worth trying!
“Stressed? Writing down a to-do list might help,” BBC Future, Nov. 12, 2024.
See also https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5758411/.
Neurologist Richard E. Cytowic writes that the term multitasking is a misnomer. Your brain simply cannot do it. A computer bogs down the more you ask it to do, and brains respond the same way when multiple tasks vie for attention.
Studies have shown that compared to people in control groups, media multitaskers have more trouble maintaining attention and have a propensity to forget; their anterior cingulate cortex (a brain structure involved in directing attention) is physically smaller than those in the control groups.
Another study found that the more minutes children engaged in screen multitasking at 18 months of age, the worse their preschool cognition and the more behavioral problems they exhibited at four and six years of age.
Our brains lack the energy to do two things at once effectively, let alone three or five. Try it, and you will do each task less well than if you had given each one your full attention and executed them sequentially!
“How Multitasking Drains Your Brain,” The MIT Press Reader, Jan. 7, 2025.
The short-term boost our brains get after we do exercise persists throughout the following day, suggests a new study led by University College London researchers.
The study found that, on average, people aged 50 to 83 who did more moderate to vigorous physical activity than usual on a given day did better on memory tests the day after. Moderate or vigorous activity meant anything that increased the heart rate—it could be brisk walking, aerobics, or walking up a few flights of stairs.
Less time spent sitting and six hours or more of sleep, especially deep sleep, were also linked to better scores on memory tests the next day. Conversely, more time than usual spent being sedentary was linked to worse working memory the next day.
“Short-term cognitive boost from exercise may last for 24 hours,” UCL News, Dec. 10, 2024.
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