The New Year is a great time to make resolutions about improving your health and wellness, but as we all know, it can be really tough to stick to your resolutions, especially when it’s January and it’s cold outside. But now that spring is here, perhaps it’s a good chance to revisit some of the top health and wellness trends for 2012 and see how these fit into your lifestyle for the rest of the year.

Read the full post on Top Health Trends for (the rest of) 2012.

There was a great interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” recently about the surprising health benefits of yoga. Western science/medicine is learning more about the health benefits of this ancient spiritual practice. Yoga is not just about flexibility and meditation, it can also lower your blood pressure, improve cardiovascular function and lower the risk of various diseases.

Eli Broad, a science writer for the New York Times, has written a new book called The Science of Yoga, which explores the history, risks and rewards of yoga. There is much more to yoga than most people might expect.

Read the full post on 5 Surprising Health Benefits of Yoga.

America is one of the most sleep-deprived countries in the world. According to a recent survey from the Phillips Center for Health and Well-Being, 37% of Americans feel that they do not get enough sleep. Lack of sleep can interfere with people’s lives and undermine people’s physical and mental health in numerous ways.

When people are sleep deprived they are more likely to have car accidents, get sick, suffer from high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and other ailments. Sleep deprivation also is linked to poor job performance, since people’s memory and mental sharpness is impaired when they don’t get enough shut-eye.

Read the full post on Americans are sleep deprived. Here are tips for getting more sleep..

Ask most Americans for their favorite food, and you’re likely to hear a wide range of answers, everything from hot dogs and hamburgers and pizza to tacos, egg rolls, steak, stirfry or pierogies. We’re willing to bet the farm that no one will say “insects.”

Perhaps this is egocentric, because eating insects is not unusual if you look at the dining habits of other countries. Countries as diverse as Thailand, Mexico and many other places feature deep-fried insects, insect eggs and insect larvae as part of the traditional diet.

Read the full post on Should we eat insects to fight world hunger?.

According to a Gallup survey, 67% of Americans drink alcohol. Beer is the most popular drink, with 41% of Americans saying that they drink beer most often. Alcohol is part of the social fabric, with people enjoying drinks with friends after work, while watching sports, and while celebrating happy occasions.

But how much drinking is “too much?” According to recent research from the CDC, although most Americans drink responsibly, there are troubling signs that more Americans are binge drinking. And there are many ways that binge drinking can harm your health and affect the health of people around you.
What is binge drinking? 

Read the full post on 7 surprising facts about American binge drinking.

I know what you’re thinking; “What? But Jobs passed away due to poor health?” This may be true, but consider this: Steve Jobs was a hero to millions of people, and probably the world’s best-loved CEO (and gave way to the idea that we can “fall in love” with a CEO). When he died last year, there was an outpouring of public sympathy that has never been seen for any other business person.

Read the full post on 4 lessons that Steve Jobs can teach us about healthy living.

In the past few years, smartphone technologies have transformed the way people interact with their everyday lives, making it easier to connect with friends, be productive on the go, and access information about anything, anywhere. But one of the even more recent exciting developments has to do with the way that smartphones can improve our personal health and wellness.

With mobile and location-based apps, smartphone users now have the ability to track their personal athletic performance, measure their results and try to improve over time. One of the apps that runners use to run faster, longer and smarter is called RunKeeper. I interviewed a friend of mine who uses RunKeeper, Max Lambert, a consultant in Houston, Texas, for his thoughts on how RunKeeper has been beneficial to his life as a runner.

Read the full post on 3 surprising ways the RunKeeper app can improve your fitness.

People all over the world drink over 2.25 billion cups of coffee each day. Coffee is one of the world’s most popular beverages and one of the world’s most-traded commodities. Over 150 million Americans drink coffee each day, consuming over 22 gallons of coffee per year, per person. People love coffee for the caffeine, the flavor, the stimulating effects, the ability of the drink to focus the mind and sharpen the intellect. But what is all this coffee actually doing to our health? Is coffee “good for you” or “bad for you?” How can we find out?
There have been many studies conducted about the health effects of coffee, but these studies often have unclear or contradictory results. Some studies show that coffee benefits our health or reduces the risk of certain diseases, while other studies show that coffee has health risks as well.
Here are a few of the overall benefits (and possible risks) that science seems to have discovered in coffee (Source: Wikipedia).

Read the full post on Coffee: is it good or bad for your health?.

One of the most surprisingly entertaining and informative books I’ve read during the past few years was “A History of the World in Six Glasses,” by Tom Standage. This book is a history of six of humanity’s most popular drinks: beer, wine, liquor, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola. It discusses how each of these drinks were discovered/invented and how they came to be widely consumed.

There are interesting stories about the history and health effects of each drink, as well as the broader social trends that made each drink popular at each point in time. There’s a lot we can learn about human health and wellness by taking a closer look at these Six Glasses.

Read the full post on What can Six Drinks teach us about health and wellness?.