Last week, we got some terrible news: In 2020, the number of drug overdose deaths in the US reached their highest point ever recorded — more than 93,000, according to preliminary federal data.
And then this week, we got some more terrible news: Life expectancy in the US fell by 1.5 years — the worst decline since World War II. Most of that was due to Covid-19. But some of it was driven by the increase in overdoses.
All of that is to say that America is currently dealing with a big overdose crisis, as it has been for more than two decades.
But this isn’t because we have no solutions to the opioid epidemic.
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Firefighters and paramedics respond to a drug overdose during the Covid-19 pandemic on May 6, 2020, in Brooklyn, Maryland. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images
If you’re looking to burn fat, stop spinning that stationary bike and pick up some weights.
Strength training can be more efficient than cardio alone to develop an athletic physique, trainers say (and it won’t make you bulk up automatically).
Certain weight lifting exercises require your whole body to engage, torching calories and building muscle at the same time. If you want to change your body composition and become leaner or stronger, lifting is a great place to start.
For best results, focus on compound movements, aim for slow and steady progress, and adjust your eating habits to support your new routine.
The pointe de Pen-Hir is a promontory of the Crozon peninsula in Brittany, to the southwest of Camaret-sur-Mer. On a clear day, there are views to the Pointe du Raz and the islands of Sein and Ouessant and to Pointe Saint-Mathieu. The cliffs are as tall as 70 meters (230 ft) high.
It is the site of the Monument to the Bretons of Free France, known as the Cross of Pen-Hir and inaugurated by General Charles de Gaulle in 1960. It is intended to bear witness to the group of Free French Bretons who founded Sao Breiz in Great Britain during the Second World War. It was created in 1949-1951 by architect Jean-Baptiste Mathon and sculptor Victor-François Bazin
Each year, you’ll spend a total of about 24 hours brushing your teeth. No, you can’t just marathon it on Dec. 31 and then forget about it for a whole year. You’ve got to make sure you’re doing it right, day in, and day out—unless you want to have fewer teeth than your great-great-grandparents.
The best sources of advice for top toothbrushing technique are the best-practice guidelines from both the American Dental Association and the British Dental Association. They’re largely identical, but if you put them together, you’ll get the closest thing you’ll ever have to a brushing bible. We also interviewed Dr. Richard Niederman, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion at New York University’s College of Dentistry, to get some adult supervision.
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Brushing your teeth properly can be a truly divine experience. Photo by Goby via Unsplash
When cardiologist Ethan Weiss concluded his 12-week study of weight loss and intermittent fasting, the results surprised him. The randomized trial set up by Weiss, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, split participants into a control group and another group who ate all their meals between noon and 8 p.m. He expected to find more weight loss in the fasting group. But the results he published in JAMA Internal Medicine last fall showed something else: that those following the time-restricted eating schedule lost roughly the same amount of weight as those in the control group. What’s more, the weight they did lose was lean muscle mass, and not fat.
Randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard when it comes to scientific studies. Yet when it comes to figuring out how to lose weight, or which sort of diet is best, it’s often the case that different trials yield much different results, even when participants follow similar nutritional plans. (Another 12-week trial of time-restricted eating showed the opposite effect of Weiss’s study: Participants who followed a time-restricted schedule lost weight without losing muscle mass.)
This muddle is enough to leave anyone scratching their head. And it points to a bigger issue in the science of weight loss: There’s a lot that researchers have figured out, but there’s still no consensus on the single optimal diet or way to lose weight—and there might not ever be.
Xalapa is the capital city of the Mexican state of Veracruz and the name of the surrounding municipality. In the 2005 census, the city reported a population of 387,879, and the municipality of which it serves as municipal seat reported a population of 413,136. The municipality has an area of 118.45 km². Xalapa lies near the geographic center of the state and is the second-largest city in the state after the city of Veracruz to the southeast.
The name Xalapa comes from the Classical Nahuatl roots xālli [ʃaːlːi] “sand” and āpan [aːpan] “place of water”, which means approximately “spring in the sand”. It’s classically pronounced [ʃalaːpan] in Nahuatl, although the final /n/ is often omitted. This was adopted into Spanish as Xalapa.
The complete name of the city is Xalapa-Enríquez, bestowed in honor of a governor from the 19th century, Juan de la Luz Enríquez. The city’s nickname, City of Flowers (Spanish: La ciudad de las flores), was given by Alexander von Humboldt, who visited the city 10 February 1804. The reference is also related to the city’s older colonial history. According to folklore, the Spanish believed that Jalapa was the birthplace and home of the world’s most beautiful woman, la Florecita, which literally means “little flower”. The residents of Xalapa are called Xalapeños or Jalapeños, which is the name given to the popular large peppers cultivated in this area. Wikipedia
If you’re looking for a quick, personal-trainer-approved way to burn out your shoulders, back, chest, and arms, an upper-body circuit workout can be a fantastic choice for your next routine.
Circuit training—where you go through a bunch of exercises without resting between them—is one of the most efficient ways to work all the upper-body muscle groups you’re targeting. Plus, when you don’t take any rest, you get a cardio boost along with the strength-building benefits of weight training, like getting stronger, maintaining bone density, and offsetting an age-related decline in muscle mass.
This workout, created by NASM-certified personal trainer Alicia Jamison, a trainer at Bodyspace Fitness in New York City, predominantly uses pulling and pushing exercises to fire up your entire upper body. “By hitting all of those muscle groups, you’re avoiding muscle imbalances, which can lead to injury,” Jamison tells SELF.
Pulling exercises get your muscles to contract as you pull your arms toward your body—whether you’re using a weight or not. For this workout, Jamison chose the bodyweight pulldown and single-arm row to light up the muscles in the back of your body, like your rhomboids (the upper-back muscles that help you retract your shoulder blades) and your latissimus dorsi (the wide muscles that stretch from your armpit to your spine). Strengthening those back muscles helps with posture, especially if you spend most of the day sitting down, she explains.
Our homes are our sanctuaries—a fact that became clear to a lot of people this past year when they suddenly had to spend all their time there. But your indoor air might be dirtier than you think, and that could be making it uncomfortable at home, and potentially even make you sick.
There are a few things you can do to help and devices you can buy, like an air purifier, a dehumidifier, and a humidifier. But they aren’t cheap, so you don’t need to spend the money on anything if you aren’t already struggling with your indoor air quality. These are potential tools, not necessities. While their names are self-explanatory, it’s not as easy to figure out when each one is actually needed in your home. We talked to experts, read research reports, and tested some products. Below is what we found, and what we advise.
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You’ll be seeing more air purifiers in schools and offices as the world deals with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Read on to see which devices make sense for your home. Photograph: Getty Images
A supernova (/ˌsuːpərˈnoʊvə/ plural: supernovae /ˌsuːpərˈnoʊviː/ or supernovas, abbreviations: SN and SNe) is a powerful and luminous stellar explosion. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. The original object, called the progenitor, either collapses to a neutron star or black hole or is completely destroyed. The peak optical luminosity of a supernova can be comparable to that of an entire galaxy before fading over several weeks or months.
Supernovae are more energetic than novae. In Latin, nova means “new”, referring astronomically to what appears to be a temporary new bright star. Adding the prefix “super-” distinguishes supernovae from ordinary novae, which are far less luminous. The word supernova was coined by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky in 1929.
The most recent directly observed supernova in the Milky Way was Kepler’s Supernova in 1604, but the remnants of more recent supernovae have been found. Observations of supernovae in other galaxies suggest they occur in the Milky Way on average about three times every century. These supernovae would almost certainly be observable with modern astronomical telescopes. The most recent naked-eye supernova was SN 1987A, the explosion of a blue supergiant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of the Milky Way.
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Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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An image from Pointe de Pen-Hir
Science
James' World 2 