Remember those old wives tales, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” or “Don’t go swimming right after you eat”? Ever wonder if they really work?
According to an article I read on Shine from Yahoo!, here is what scientists are saying about these wives tales.
Ginger is good for upset stomachs: Yes it is. Evidence shows that ginger reduces nausea.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away: That’s an overstatement. However, the peel of the apple is a good source of quercetin, an important antioxidant that helps lower blood pressure, fight asthma and allergies, and prevent heart attacks.
Honey speeds healing: Yes it does. Mild to moderate burns heal faster if you spread honey on them. It is thought that this works because the honey creates a moist, antibacterial environment that promotes tissue growth.
Put butter on a burn: No. There is no evidence of a benefit from butter.
Sleeping in air-conditioning can give you a chill: Maybe. Air conditioners dry out the protective layer of mucus along nasal passages, which likely allows viruses to infect you more easily. Viruses can also reproduce faster inside a cold nose.
If you go out with wet hair, you’ll catch a cold: Perhaps. Some research has indicated that a wet head helps cold viruses take hold, by tightening blood vessels in the nose and making it harder for white blood cells to reach the viruses and fight them off.
Swimming after eating can lead to cramps and drowning: Not completely wrong, but not exactly right either. After you eat, blood gets shunted to your digestive tract and away from exercising muscles, which can lead to a buildup of lactic acid in your muscles. So, swimming a few laps too soon after you eat can cause a sudden cramp.
Chocolate give you pimples: Not exactly. Chocolate bars might trigger an acne flare-up, but if so, the culprit is probably the sugar, milk, and gooey fillings, not the cocoa.
Doesn’t it just bug the crap out of you when something breaks just after the warranty expires? Well, did you know that certain companies purposely design their products to do just that?
It’s called “planned obsolescence”, when something is intended to wear out or stop being useful after a predetermined period of time.
According to an article on Yahoo! Green, here are a couple strategies for dealing with some of the most irritating sources of planned obsolescence.
MP3 Players. These units are rarely upgradable with more memory and their lithium-ion batteries often wear out before the product does.
You can often prolong the life of your device simply by taking good care of it. Keep it clean and out of temperature extremes. Lithium-ion batteries do better if they are not run all the way down.
Ink Cartridges. Many ink cartridges come with proprietary smart chips on them that disable printing when one of the colors falls to a certain level, even if there is enough ink to do the job.
It is recommended that you buy cartridges that allow you to refill the ink because it cuts down on the use of plastic and saves you a lot of money.
For more products and tips, visit thedailygreen on Yahoo! Green.
Taken from an article on Shine from Yahoo!
For those of you who are trying to get that bikini body this year, the “Today Show” nutrition expert, Joy Bauer, offers seven spring diet tips.
Ditch liquid calories. Between coffee drinks, sodas, and super sugary fruit juices, you may be consuming thousands more calories than you realize. Joy suggests that you stick with water, but make it more interesting by tossing in slices of cucumber, lemon, or oranges.
Turn off the TV and head outdoors. Couch potatoes not only NOT burn calories, but consume them as well while they’re just sitting there not paying attention to how many cookies they just ate. Go outside and sweep the streets or something. LOL.
Start dinner with a vegetable first course. Joy recommends starting with a salad or a non-creamy, broth-based vegetable soup because the fiber and water content will expand in your belly and you’ll be less likely to overeat when you get to the main meal.
Love your grill. Grilling makes a cook out of anyone. There’s nothing easier than throwing fish and veggies on the fire.
Strike starchy carbs a few nights a week. Skipping the starchy carbs like pasta, bread, and grains altogether, just a few nights a week, will force you to eat lean protein and vegetables instead. Sure it will.
Close the kitchen after dinner. When you are finished with dinner, put closure on your meal by drinking some herbal tea and flossing/brushing your teeth. Yeah right, you gotta have dessert!
Eliminate the extras. If you can cut out the “in between” eating, it will pay off.
For more healthy eating tips and ideas, check out Joy’s new book “Slim & Scrumptious”.
According to an article on Shine from Yahoo!, here are seven roads that truck drivers and traffic reporters complain about.
I-55 in Louisiana. “The second you cross the Mississippi state line into Louisiana heading south, it’s like driving on a washboard. You can close your eyes and know. I had a cup full of soda one day, and the road literally rattled it right out of the drink holder and all over the floor of my truck. God help you if you think you’re going to play a CD going down there.” – Trucker Kevin Johnson, Rushville, Illinois.
I-22 east of Baton Rouge. “It’s one of our deadliest stretches of highways because it goes from six lanes down to four lanes. They’re widening it now, but just another two exits because they don’t have the dollars to finish. So that will just carry the problem farther down the road.” – Jennifer Marusak, communications director for Driving Louisiana Forward, a campaign committed to improving Louisiana’s highway infrastructure.
I-15 in California (from Barstow to the Nevada state line). “It’s hilly, and the road has a lot of high and low spots. But the real problem is that it’s always so heavy with traffic, and you’ve got gamblers heading to Vegas who are thinking the buffet in Vegas closes at ten o’clock. I gotta get there. If you hit it on a Friday night? Forget about it. You’re out in the middle of the desert and you get to the top of one of the hills, and as far as you can see it’s just a string of brake lights.” – Trucker Matt Boose, Eudora, Kansas.
I-79/I-70 Interchange in Pennsylvania. “If you’re going north on 79 and you need to go west on 70, the ramp is U-shaped. You’ve got to slow down to 25 to get around this crazy U. There is a wall around it that is just beat to pieces where people have banged into it.” – Trucker Clarence Jenkins, Charleston, West Virginia.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-78 and I-80 in Pennsylvania. “Vehicles have gotten wider and bigger since these roads were built, and they’re still very narrow. They’ve also got a lot of hills and curves, and people are always crossing over into the other lane when they go around a curve. Plus, their on-ramps are very short, and there’s not enough time for people to get up to highway speed. So you end up with lots of people running into the back of slow-moving vehicles as they’re getting off a ramp … It seems like they’ve been under construction forever. We like to say they have two seasons in Pennsylvania: winter and construction.” – Trucker Frank Silio, Miami.
I-95 over the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey/New York. Truck drivers hate this two-level bridge so much that they will drive 30 or 40 miles out of their way to avoid it. In addition to some of the worst gridlock in the country, it’s got potholes galore. Then there are the drivers. “You can sit there with your signal on all day, and nobody will let you over. So you’ve got to ‘take the lane.’ Basically you start easing over until finally someone realizes he’s going to get run over unless he lets you in.” – Trucker Kevin Johnson.
The Will Rogers Turnpike (Interstate 44), Oklahoma. “I’ve never driven from Tulsa to the Missouri state line when all four lanes were open the whole way. There is always—always—a mile or two where a lane is closed and you have to merge. I keep wondering, When do we get to pay and use the thing?” – Jeff Brucculeri, traffic reporter, Tulsa.
According to an article on Yahoo! News, there is a way to save about $20 (the price of an ink cartridge) per year. Just change the font in the documents that you print.
Different fonts require different amounts of ink to print, therefore if you use a font that has thinner letters you may not need to change your ink cartridges as often.
The amount of ink a font uses is mainly due to the thickness of its lines. According to an ink researcher at Hewlett-Packard Co., Thom Brown, a font with “narrow” or “light” in its name is usually better than those with “bold” or “black”.
Printer.com, a Dutch company that evaluates printer attributes, tested popular fonts form their ink-friendly ways. Century Gothic and Times New Roman made the top of the list. Calibri, Verdana, Arial, and Sans Serif were next, followed by Trebuchet, Tahoma, and Franklin Gothic Medium. Century Gothic uses about 30% less ink than Arial.
However, just because one font might use less ink, it doesn’t necessarily use less paper. Fonts like Century Gothic, which uses less ink, are also wider and may extend to a second page when printed.
Allan Haley, director of “words and letters” at Monotype Imaging Inc. in Woburn, Massachusetts, said that Century Gothic was actually designed for limited blocks of text such as titles and headlines, not for full documents. Haley still recommends using Times New Roman or Arial for their readability.
All in all, the “greenest” way to save money on ink is not to print at all.
