James' World 2

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For a brief time in 2017, fidget spinners were inescapable. They lined the shelves of department stores and gas stations, and teachers struggled to manage the sudden influx of twirling plastic devices in classrooms.

But fidgeting didn’t start with the spinner.

Whether it’s flicking a pen, tapping our legs, or fiddling with our hair, fidgeting has long been a standard piece of the human behavioral puzzle. While the science on exactly why we fidget isn’t completely settled, research has already provided us with some strategies we can employ to help make it more productive for our cognitive processes—and less distracting for the people around us.

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The good news is that upping our current step counts by even a few thousand additional strides most days could be a reasonable, sufficient — and achievable — goal.Credit…TraceyAPhotos/iStock

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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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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. 

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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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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.  

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