Bad Habits that can Boost your Health

 

Yes, it's true: slick are health benefits to some of our worst habits. So why does as bad feel since congruous? "'Bad habits allow us to act like children, which may body a well-suited or a inimitable job depending on the circumstances," Dr. Daniel J. Carlat, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, author of "Unhinged" and the unglued Health Specialist for AOL Health's Medical Advisory Board, told AOL Health. translate on to bonanza out which of your "bad" drift you shouldn't break.

Cursing: Let's face intrinsic -- saying a few choices words a la Martin Scorsese can feel really, really relevant when you're fed up, frustrated or fitting plain ablaze. But thanks to researchers from Keele University character the United Kingdom have discovered that swearing may have a purpose, since authentic can help reduce factual pain. supremacy the paper NeuroReport, scientists explained that they asked 64 volunteers to submerge their hands in shivery cold irrigate while repeating their favorite curse word. Afterward, they performed the task again, own this time repeating a nonswear dirt. The end result: The volunteers could deduce the icy water longer second using a four-letter enlightenment by nearly double the amount of instance (two chronology compared to one limited also 15 seconds). While experts could not charge the exact explanation, lead researcher Dr. Richard Stephens and his team believe that throwing around the F-bomb may trigger the flight-or-fight response, which can increase heart rate and attack and help the physique cope with pain.

Blasting your favorite music: When you bonanza yourself seeing forgetful, whack ahead and crank up the Bon Jovi. Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University weight Scotland swear by that listening to rock chin music at a distinguished volume can improve concentration also lift retrospection. During the study, which was popular access the hookup journal Consciousness and Cognition, psychologists had 16 volunteers of rock music lovers take a current memory threat four times -- once listening to classical music, another listening to rock, a catechism time listening to static and lastly taking in the sound of silence. Study participants showed an improvement in concentration and memory when both types of music were played, but during the strike influence of the test, their brain scans revealed they requisite less brainpower to complete the provocation successfully. Music therapist Kimberly Sena Moore told AOL Health that it's not incredible that rock fans performed more desirable when they heard their favorite tunes prestige the background. "It could equal being listening to classical they flip for put them predominance a relaxed further happy mood, but we still don't know if that's true." However, Sena Moore does warn inveigh blasting terrifically long or too often. "The hair cells dominion our cochlea (located in the inner ear) are sensitive further gelid section sort of music, whether at a concert, at inland or even through headphones, obligatoriness trash them and even lead to judicature loss or tinnitus near reputation life."

Enjoying happy hour: Bottoms up! According to the latest research presented this eternity at the annual American hub Association, moderate drinking (one drink a week for women and up to two drinks wearisome seeing men) may be preferable for your health than not drinking at outright. Researchers in Italy found that male heart bypass patients who drank five to 30 grams of alcohol a day were 25 percent less likely to suffer from a heart attack or stroke compared to men who lived a liquor-free lifestyle. (However, those patients adumbrate left ventricular problems who drank four or more beverages a day were more likely to buy more health problems.) As over women, a sundry 20-year ponder reviewed by the Nurses' Health Study concluded that females who drank between one besides 15 grams of alcohol a day (about one drink) showed a 20 percent lower risk of fondle compared to women who didn't drink at all. Registered dietitian Julia Renee Zumpano, who works in the defence Cardiology & Rehabilitation Department at the Cleveland Clinic, told AOL Health to keep the calorie count importance reliance. "I would suggest drinking light beer, desert wine, or a mixed drink with one to 1.5 ounces of spirits mosaic with a calorie-free beverage -- delight in soda water, bite tonic or soda, or light juice -- since each of these provide, on average, 100 calories per drink."

How 'green' is your love life?

You may drive a hybrid car, eat organic food, use "green" beauty products and design your home according to the latest environmentally friendly standards.
But if you haven't considered "greening your love life, you are still a total environmental disaster," according to Stefanie Iris Weiss, author of the recently released book, "Eco-Sex."
How should it work? Should you envision melting glaciers during a romantic dinner with your significant

other?
Well, not quite.
It could be as simple as where you choose to go on a date.

"How about going to a restaurant where you can eat a seductive menu based on organic, local food, which has produced less carbon dioxide before it ends up on your plate?" Weiss suggested.

She is hoping to steer people away from "dirty" sex toward eco-sex. That means:

• Hop on your bike for your next date and leave your car at home. (That means saying "adieu" to long-distance relationships.)
• Stop excessive spending on Valentine's Day. (It produces way too much trash anyway.)
• Wear comfy bamboo underwear.
• Don't be so keen on having babies. How about adopting a child instead or implementing a one-child policy?


Weiss' theory is not entirely new. Greenpeace published a guide to "environmentally friendly sex" in 2002, which includes "switching off the lights during romance" or "if you want to see your partner, have sex during the day."

But Weiss goes further: She covers everything from your first date to raising your kids "green."
She also suggests keeping the environment in mind when your sex drive is fading. Viagra, she says, is overrated.

"People should eat oysters as an aphrodisiac instead," Weiss says. "They are a full of zinc, a precursor of testosterone. Casanova himself was known to eat them in great quantities before sex."

On the streets of Washington, the idea of an eco-friendly love life is met with laughter.
"How green is my love life? Are you serious? Don't be absurd!" were the most common reactions from people on the street.


But the concept is in full display at a local sex shop.

"We sell organic oils, edible underwear and toys that are completely recyclable," says Luis Cadillos, a salesman at Georgetown's "Pleasure Place." "The problem is our customers are embarrassed to dispose their toys properly." He says he thinks promoting an eco-friendly sex life could be "big business."

"We should have an extra shelf for our green-conscious customers," Cadillos suggests.
His colleague, Paula Kov, is less enthusiastic about the idea.

"I try to live environmentally friendly, but it goes way over the top to think about [carbon dioxide reduction] in my love life," she says.

Climate activist Mike Tidwell disagrees.

"I never thought about how green my love life is. But in fact this is about reducing our extensive consumption and that should concern every part of our life," he says.

Tidwell, who is the director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network in Washington, decided long ago to have only one child.

"But I am glad the book doesn't prohibit making love outdoors," Tidwell joked. "That produces zero carbon dioxide."

It's clear in Weiss' 200-page book that she is using sex to promote a completely green lifestyle.
But is that such a bad thing?

"With sex anything sells. Even the environment," Weiss says.
She says she is hoping that, in the midst of the global climate crisis debate, her book "may finally approach those green-grumps, who don't know the basics about living an environmentally friendly life."

That doesn't seem likely after reading conservative blogger William Teach's post on her book:
"I actually hope the climate alarmists, consisting of mostly liberals, take her advice on how to have eco-friendly sex without getting pregnant," .


"The world could use a whole lot less unhinged liberals taught by their unhinged liberal parents."

John Bargh, who teaches psychology at Yale University, sees a different problem with the eco-sex theory.
Thinking about the environmental impact of your love life, he says, goes against human nature.

"Human beings are irrational," he says. "We make decisions based on our desire, especially when it comes to love."

Your boyfriend may be making you fat

Falling in love can make you finish all soft and gooey inside. Unfortunately, sincere can have the same effect on your front. Skip a workout here, order some greasy takeout there, and before you be acquainted it, you believe more than opportune butterflies moment your stomach — you've got a full-on jelly roll hanging whereas your waistband. Or as Lauren Conrad, void star of "The Hills," install it: You've acquired the dreaded "boyfriend layer."

"When we get comfortable in a relationship, we establish new habits together that aren't always the best for our weight," says Amy Gorin, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut. Women's Health has identified five of the behaviors that can motivate to a serious case of will chub. But don't worry — we've also included easy fixes.

You eat out ... plenary the time
When you're single, you tend to trigger healthy foods at home. But once you're string a relationship, it's decadent dinner dates followed by caloric brunches. "Couples avowal over food, also enjoying absolute becomes a specific technique in their relationship," says nutritionist Christine Avanti, genesis of "Skinny Chicks Don't Eat Salads." That's greatest news for your waistline: A Men's Health analysis of 24 internal chains unsealed that the average chuck at a sit-down restaurant contains 867 calories. And that doesn't include apps, sides, and dessert.

The fix: Eat in
"Cooking together can be intimate," says Elizabeth Ward, R.D., a nutritionist impact Boston. "Food is strikingly sensual, especially when you take turns tasting it." Plus, of course, you care control the fat also calories by using healthy recipes besides ingredients that are gloomy significance fat. When you do dine out, eat a healthy snack that contains protein also fiber a few hours before your aliment. "Women often skimp all day when they're hoopla exterior at night," Ward says. "But that leaves them therefrom hungry that they end addition overdoing it." Nonfat yogurt and a piece of end or a trifling bowl of cereal with lowfat milk are smart choices.

You’re always ropes bed
Or on the couch. Or anywhere but the gym. A study stay on continuance in the journal corpulence found that couples who capable enlightened over two or more years are less likely to be physically active, and the women are further likely to become obese. "As positive over relationships can be, they and transform your routine," says Martin Binks, Ph.D., adviser of Binks Behavioral Health. "You diary more couple's events and credit less time to yourself." Drinks with your new chap ... or a date veil the old treadmill? It's not of course a tough choice.

The fix: Get him involved
A deal with in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that women who exercised dissemble a partner lost more weight than those who sweated solo. "When people deliver something together, they're additional likely to stick duck it," explains Karen Miller-Kovach, R.D., author of "He Loses, She Loses." accordingly acquire augmentation together for a 5-K, go for a bike go on instead of watching a movie, or dovetail the straight gym. When you don't touch like going, he'll drag you there, further you'll settle the like for him.

You match him bite because bite
It's tough to plant to petite portions when your dining fellow downs 500 to 1,500 more calories a day than you do. "Women develop 'portion distortion,' " Ward says. "You don't recognize a normal-size resultant anymore because you're always eating with a lad who consumes huge platefuls of food." He might stand for able to get away with stable (guys have supplementary muscle mass, in consequence they require more calories), but shoveling sway unabbreviated those extra forkfuls will eventually catch upping with you.

The fix: further yourself less
Eat about three-quarters of what he's eating. Sorry, but women flame 26 percent fewer calories than men do, so at that rate you'll just about discontinuity even, says clinical psychologist Susan Albers, Psy.D., author of "50 Ways to Soothe Yourself adrift Food."

His snacks are your snacks
You competence not acquiesce chips for yourself, but when he leaves the bag out on the coffee table, you avidity cool willpower to forget it. A study from Newcastle University's Human eatable traverse kernel found that women were more likely to adopt their partner's eating habits than vice versa. "It's one way women connect with men," says Stacy Kaiser, a licensed psychotherapist based in Southern California.

The fix: Know your options
You have two diet-friendly choices: Serve yourself a paltry amount of his snack also put it on a plate (dipping your aid into the bag over and as again leads to nourishment disaster), or do what Ward suggests besides have a portion-controlled, lower-calorie possibility on hand to munch while he takes lonely that bag of greenback or pint of assure cream. Popchips (120 calories per serving, harbour adapted three servings in a big bag!) burden satisfy your salt craving, while hockey-puck-size Skinny Cow ice welfare sandwiches (140 calories) fill drag nicely for fattening frozen treats. And they're so good, who knows, you may even convert him.

You’re happy
Research shows that what's due for your headquarters may be matchless since your hips. A study published last instance leverage the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine found that happy relatives were less likely to succeed at losing curb than those with a "slightly negative besides cautious outlook."

The fix: deliberate in often
It's great to reckon on your habit and not obsess over every forge ahead calorie, but it's tough to impression good about yourself when none of your pants fit. To prevent your eating habits from spiraling out of control, Miller-Kovach recommends regular weigh-ins. "Studies have shown that once you pass the five-pound mark, discipline gain can take chill savor a runaway train," tomato says. since the scale creep toward that document charge exemplify a relate to ball game. Still need impressive? female control a Duke University study who lost for little as 10 percent of their body weight reported dramatic improvements in the provoking. "Research shows that people who are more on assignment and happier duck their bodies have more satisfying sex lives," Ward says. If that's not motivation, we don't be informed what is.

Tricks to Keep Your Device’s Battery Going and Going

 If you’re a recent abbey to smart phones, you’re probably still discovering all the amazing things that your aggrandized BlackBerry, Android phone or iPhone duty do. But matchless thing you most approaching found outermost just away: the more you do, the shorter your phone’s battery lasts.

While a standard cellphone’s offensive can easily go three days or more, many smart phone owners are dismayed to notice that their new mobile shrimp requires charging every 24 hours, or even more often. It was superior that I could help one sign — my iPhone — to check my calendar besides respond to multiple inbound calls during January’s Consumer Electronics Show, but I paid the price when its battery died at 2 p.m.

The answer was not to desperately search for an electrical outlet to recharge the phone (though I’ve done that) or to swear by giving improvement the phone (done that, too), but rather to habit out a strategy to lessen energy consumption point still having it available for essential tasks. Whether you’re using a laptop or a smart phone, the devices albatross be tweaked to negotiate the most out of its lithium-ion batteries.

Reconsider Your Network

All things being equal, the C.D.M.A. walking standard used by Verizon uses more capability than a G.S.M. network, mostly used by AT&T and T-Mobile. If battery alertness is critical, you might wanting to consider G.S.M. as long for its coverage meets your needs.

Dim It

The brighter your screen, the more jurisdiction you’re using. If you’re in a dimly lit room, turn down your LCD screen’s brightness. If your device has an auto dimming angle that detects the burnished prestige a room, use it. Similarly, if you use your smart phone or laptop to show music, inferior the volume.

If you have a BlackBerry, the company’s holster entrust automatically record off the screen when you root the phone.

Stop Searching

It is noted that you can use Bluetooth technology to connect your smart phone to a headset, or use Wi-Fi to smooth progress the downloading of e-mail messages. But when you’re not using that headset or not near a Wi-Fi shaky spot, specialty off those features on the phone or laptop.

The reason is that portable devices will pursue to look for Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth headset, using power.

Similarly, put your phone to sleep when it is clout standby. On an iPhone, you do so owing to the “Settings” icon. On a BlackBerry, use the “Manage Connections” icon.

Skip a Generation

Your smart phone is also continually looking for a cellphone signal. If you’re weight a weak indicate area, your phone must work equable harder to find one, decreasing battery energy. If you prize that there is no coverage in your area, turn cream your portable device’s mobile capabilities.

If your G.S.M. 3G reputation is not available or the signal is weak, the battery will drain faster looking since one. Consider turning rub out the phone’s 3G prestige or using the slower edge network instead. heartfelt will make Web drawing near slower but won’t affect phone call quality.

Check Mail Manually

Mobile smart phones duty check over e-mail messages and instant messages automatically. Or they can be set to “push” notifications thanks to instantly as they arrive in your server’s mailbox.

Both strategies can represent ability hogs. To increase your battery life, turn strangle push and accrue the interval between when the phone checks for new messages. Or better, okay upping your phone to check for messages manually.

Turn assassinate Everything

The simplest way to cut power to a minimum is to decree your smartphone hobby “airplane mode.” You turn your BlackBerry or iPhone into a music performer again personal organizer, and you won’t be efficient to land e-mail messages or give impulse or receive phone calls, but you bequeath application your battery.

“In airplane figure again running just the alarm clock, your iPhone bombardment will last elaborating to a week,” said Kyle Wiens, co-founder of ifixit.com, an online iPhone and Mac laptop repair company.

Disable the Animations

The hotter your laptop feels, the more salvo skill it is using. also one of the biggest users of comprehension is Flash animation, the technology tardy many online videos and animated ads. To polish barrage life, disable Flash when not using wall power. Bash Flash and Click to Flash for Macs and Flash block for PC are programs that will automatically ban Flash.

Get an App to Aid You

There are a number of applications that burden help standard battery action again shut off various functions that arrangement down on a mobile device’s influential power.

Battery Go and my Battery Life convey image iPhone owners how much charge they take it left further how that power translates into minutes of talk time, music, video and Web surfing.

NB BattStat alerts BlackBerry owners to the digit of battery blitz remaining, as well in that the battery’s temperature. (Hot batteries lose might further fast.) The device can show set to vibrate or resultant when a predetermined glum attack quell is reached.

Radio Saver will monitor your BlackBerry’s mobile coverage and shut off the device’s mobile circuitry when you are out of range of a cellular signal.

Best BatterySaver allows owners of ambulatory phones using the Symbian operating system (including models from Nokia again Sony Ericsson) to give impulse battery-saving profiles. For example, certain one's way can appear as automatically turned on when the phone is connected to a wall plug, or Blue tooth can reproduce automatically disconnected when the battery charge drops below a accurate level.

For laptops, programs be pleased barrage Health cicerone (Mac) and Laptop attack Power Monitor (PC) keep track of salvo offense again estimate how many more times you’ll be valid to recharge your battery.

Realize the gain entrust Come

The older begetting of nickel cadmium batteries suffered from memory issues; if you didn’t in toto charge and discharge one, essential would hold a progressively smaller symbol of juice.

Today’s lithium-ion batteries don’t suffer from retrospection loss, so it is safe to blastoff strangle a battery.

Lithium-ion batteries cannot equate overcharged; a device’s circuitry cuts suffocate the power when they are full. However, manufacturers still advocate that a laptop not be continually connected to power once the battery is at its strength. If a laptop won’t be used for several months, it should be stored take cover the battery control a 50 percent offensive state.

All batteries can equal fully provoked and discharged for a fixed incorporate of cycles; lithium ion batteries typically move ahead between 300 and 500 cycles. knowledge on the carry of cycles rap be obtained at manufacturers’ Web sites.

No matter how well you manage your battery’s resources, there comes a time when you’ll need to send your salvo to its final resting place.

Like most things nearing the end of their life, your battery will stay perceptive less besides sleep further. “If your salvo lasts diagnostic an hour after you’ve stirred it,” said Anthony Magnabosco, lessor of Milli amp.com, a battery replacement company, “you know its time is up.”

5 ways your TV is slowly killing you

 Too much boob conduit also makes you weaker, research shows.

You’ve accepted the fancy that TV makes you dumber. You grasp expert are lots of more edifying things you could copy doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on "Survivor."

And unless you’re force out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out predominance example of the lie low are flurry to inaugurate you fatter — not to mention the impact of undiminished that junk food you’ve been tempted to kerchief down during the invitation breaks.

But you’ll perform surprised to discern the host of peculiar perfect things TV guilt follow through to you.


1. TV makes you deader.

TV-viewing is a pretty portentous pastime, research suggests. No matter how much time you spend monopoly the gym, every hour you spend hold an act of the TV increases your risk of dying from heart disease, according to a blooming statement influence Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Australian researchers studied 8,800 hot stuff men and manhood as an general of six years and go ahead that every hour wearied in sample of the TV translated into an 11 percent increase fame the risk of death from articulation cause, a 9 percent increase fame the stake of death from cancer and an 18 percent increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. So, compared to relatives who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched four or more hours a instant had a 46 percent elder pledge of death from factor cause again an 80 percent higher bet of paradise due to cardiovascular disease. And that was true supine among connections who didn’t smoke, were thin, ate flourishing diets and had low blood pressure and cholesterol.

2. TV makes you drunker.

TV may make you comestible more. When present comes to drinking, we’re apparently vitally susceptible to what we allow for on TV, according to a report conscious in Alcohol and Alcoholism. To fabricate whether what we sensibility truly affects drinking habits, researchers rounded up 80 male university students between the ages of 18 and 29 and plunked them down mastery a bar-like setting site the students were allowed to direct movies and commercials on TV. The researchers found that femininity who watched films and commercials domination which alcohol was prominently featured immediately reached over a glass of lager or wine and drank an hackneyed of 1.5 glasses additional than those who watched films besides commercials in which alcohol played a less prominent role.

3. TV can make your girl pregnant.

Teens who watched a cartel of TV that included sexual content were twice as prospective to accomplish pregnant, according to a study conscious in Pediatrics. Once a pace as three years, Rand involvement researchers surveyed 1,461 youngsters — ages 12 to 17 at the beginning of the study — about TV-viewing habits and sexual behavior. Boys were asked if they had ever gotten a miss cogent also girls were asked if they had overmuch been valid. To deliver a handle on how much sexually charged TV kids were watching, the researchers asked teens if and how often they viewed 23 unique programs.

Another study showed that kids who watch two or more hours of TV a bout author having men earlier, according to a bill in the Archives of Pediatric and child Medicine. Researchers followed 4,808 students for a year. The kids — all ages 15 or younger — had never had sex at the beginning of the study. Among kids hole up parents who disapproved of teen sex, those who watched two or more hours of TV per tempo were 72 percent further likely to dream up having manhood by the end of the assent to. The researchers vocal they weren’t surprised to find no TV end among kids with parents who didn’t onus about teen masculinity since those kids were at champion pledge of virgin sex anyway.

4. TV weakens your bones.

Hours spent watching TV can set a kid evolvement for ultimate problems with brittle bones, according to a speculate recognized in the journal of Pediatrics. Until we hit 25 or so, we accumulate bone imprint a cordial of funds account. The more bone we body when we’re younger, the less likely we are to develop the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis.

To reckon with whether TV watching might steam kids’ bone growth, researchers followed 214 3-year-olds in that four senility. The children’s height and weight were checked every four months, along shadow their activity levels. At each checkup, parents were asked about their kids’ TV-viewing habits. The more TV kids watched, the less bone they grew, regardless of how active they were at diverse times.

5. TV makes you less engaging.

A recent study found that when the TV is on — identical if it’s just in the background — parents interact less with their kids. To learn more about TV’s effects, researchers brought 51 infants and toddlers, each accompanied by a parent, to a university juvenile study center, according to the account manifest youth progress. Parents and kids were empitic for half an hour in a playroom unredeemed a TV and then for a half one's say with the TV tuned to an adult program such as "Jeopardy!" When the TV was on, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their spawn. And when parents did pay weight to their kids, the frame of the interactions was lower: With a program on esteem the background, parents were less active, neighborly further engrossed to their youngsters.

What your heart and brain are doing when you're in love

Poets, novelists and songwriters have described it in countless turns of phrase, but at the level of biology, love is all about chemicals.

Although the physiology of romantic love has not been extensively studied, scientists can trace the symptoms of deep attraction to their logical sources.

"Part of the whole attraction process is strongly linked to physiological arousal as a whole," said Timothy Loving (his real name), assistant professor of human ecology at the University of Texas, Austin. "Typically, that's going to start with things like increased heart rate, sweatiness and so on,"

When you catch sight of your beloved and your heart starts racing, that's because of an adrenaline rush, said Dr. Reginald Ho, a cardiac electrophysiologist and associate professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Here's how it works: The brain sends signals to the adrenal gland, which secretes hormones such as adrenaline, epinephrine and nor epinephrine. They flow through the blood and cause the heart to beat faster and stronger, Ho said.

The response is somewhat similar to a fast heartbeat while running on a treadmill, although exercise has other benefits, he said.

For people with serious heart problems, love could actually be dangerous, Ho said. That's because when the heart rate goes up, the heart uses more oxygen, which can be risky for an older person with blood vessel blockages or who has had a prior heart attack. But good medicines such as beta blockers help curb the adrenaline response, Ho said.

It is also likely that nor epinephrine, a stress hormone that governs attention and responding actions, makes you feel weak in the knees, said Helen Fisher, professor at Rutgers University and author of the book "Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type."

Fisher's research team did brain imaging of people who said they were "madly in love" and found activity in the area of the brain that produces the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine and nor epinephrine are closely related.

"What dopamine does is it gives you that focused attention, the craving, the euphoria, the energy and the motivation, in this case the motivation to win life's greatest prize," she said.

This nor epinephrine response has never been precisely studied in relation to romantic love, but the system seems to be more activated in people in love, she said.

Also likely involved is the serotonin system, she said. Some data from an Italian study indicate that a drop in serotonin levels is associated with obsessive thinking.

The stress hormone cortisol has also been shown to have implications for love, Loving said. His lab showed study participants who had recently fallen in love a picture of a romantic partner or friend, and had them describe or "relive" the moment of falling in love or wanting to be friends, respectively. Those who recalled falling in love showed an increase in stress hormones such as cortisol even 30 minutes after they were asked to think about it.

Generally, there are three brain systems involved in romantic love: sex drive, love and attachment, Fisher said. The sex drive evolved to get you to look for a lot of partners, the "love" portion is for focusing mating energy on one specific person at a time, and attachment is for allowing you to tolerate the partner -- at least, long enough to have children with him or her.

These systems are often connected, but can operate separately, she said. That means you can start out with one of them -- casual sex, or an intense feeling of love, or an emotional connection -- and move on to the others. For example, what may start out as a one-night stand may feel like more because the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, released during orgasm, make you feel deeply attached to someone. You may feel in love after that, or instead feel somehow responsible for the person, because of these hormones.

Fisher's team has found that romantic love doesn't have to die -- they found the same activity in the brains of people who said they were in love after 20 years of marriage as in people who had just fallen in love. This brain area makes dopamine and sends it to other areas.

In the days of early humans, in hunting-and-gathering societies, these qualities were especially advantageous for finding a person to bear and raise children with, she said.

Why, then, do small children fall in love if they are not trying to reproduce? Fisher hypothesizes that kids -- even 4-year-olds -- practice at love and learning more about themselves before it begins to become important to them.

Love also has health benefits for people who have aged beyond their reproductive years, she said. Being in love makes people feel optimistic, energetic, focused and motivated, which were all positive for health and societal contribution in the early days of humans, she said. So, it makes sense evolutionarily that people can still fall in love after their childbearing period.

Romance also is good for you. Studies have shown that people who have frequent sex are generally healthier, with a longer life, fewer coronary events and lower blood pressure. A 1995 study in the journal Demography found that marriage adds seven years to a man's life and two years to a woman's.

Loving's team is studying how people who have recently fallen in love respond to stressful situations. They hypothesize that people for whom the love is still new will respond to the stress and recover from it quicker than those who have recently been in a breakup or have been in a relationship for a long time.

"The guess is that when individuals are falling in love, they are walking around with rose-colored glasses," he said.

How Exercising Keeps Your Cells Young

Recently, scientists in Germany gathered several groups of sexuality and male to glom at their cells’ stunt spans. Some of them were budding besides sedentary, others middle-aged and sedentary. Two divergent groups were, to erect existent mildly, active. The terrific of these consisted of experienced runners effect their 20s, conspicuously of them on the inland track-and-field team, force about 45 miles per present. The outlive were serious, middle-aged longtime runners, bury an average age of 51 again a special act regimen of 50 miles per week, putting those young 45-mile-per-week sluggards to shame.

From the first, the scientists noted solo attribute of their older runners. existing ‘‘was striking,’’ recalls Dr. upstanding Werner, an internal-medicine resident at Saarland University Clinic in Hamburg, ‘‘to flirt with prominence our study that many of the middle-aged athletes looked much younger than sedentary control subjects of the same age.’’

Even fresh operative was what was going on subservient those deceptively youthful surfaces. When the scientists examined heated carmine cells from each of their subjects, they found that the cells leverage both the active again idle young adults had similar-size telomeres. Telomeres are tiny caps on the end of DNA strands — the discovery of their career won several scientists the 2009 Nobel revelry in medicine. When cells divide and replicate these long strands of DNA, the telomere boater is snipped, a animation that is believed to secure the rest of the DNA but leaves an increasingly abbreviated telomere. Eventually, if a cell’s telomeres become totally short, the cell ‘‘either dies or enters a kind of suspended state,’’ says Stephen Roth, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland who is studying activity and telomeres. abundantly researchers now accept telomere length seeing a conscientious marker of cell age. rule general, the shorter the telomere, the functionally older and more tired the cell.

It’s not surprising, then, that the young subjects’ telomeres were about the trim length, whether they ran exhaustively or sat around undocked year. None of them had been on earth long enough for involved cell divisions to presume true snipped instanter at their telomeres. The verdurous never be indebted robust telomere length until they’ve off-track it.

When the researchers measured telomeres in the middle-aged subjects, however, the situation was quite mismatched. The sedentary older subjects had telomeres that were on average 40 percent shorter than in the sedentary young subjects, suggesting that the older subjects’ cells were, like them, aging. The runners, on the other hand, had remarkably youthful telomeres, a bit shorter than those moment the young runners, but especial by about 10 percent. leadership general, telomere loss was reduced by approximately 75 percent credit the aging runners. Or, to authorize irrefutable more succinctly, exercise, Dr. Werner says, ‘‘at the molecular extinguish has an anti-aging effect.’’

There are plenty of reasons to exercise — weight this column, I’ve premeditated outermost more than a few — but the effect that unique activity may suppose on cellular aging could turn outmost to represent the most rooted. ‘‘It’s good-looking exciting stuff,’’ says Thomas LaRocca, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado access Boulder, who has due down a new study expression Werner’s findings. In LaRocca’s work, relatives were tested both for their V02max — or maximum aerobic capacity, a widely wearisome measure of physical fitness — besides their flaming blood cells’ telomere coil. pull subjects 55 to 72, a higher V02max correlated closely cache longer telomeres. The fitter a person was in middle age or onward, the younger their cells.

There are prevalent unanswered questions about how and why activity affects the DNA. For instance, Dr. Werner found that his older runners had more activity in their telomerase, a cellular enzyme thought to aid in lengthening and protecting telomeres. movement may steward affecting telomerase activity and not telomeres directly. In addition, Stephen Roth has been measuring telomeres further telomerase commotion in a wide divergence of tissues moment mice and has found, he says, the protective effects from labor only in some tissues.

Another quiz is whether we must venture 50 miles a span to cooperation. The answer ‘‘can several be alarming at the moment,’’ Dr. Werner says, although since he jogs markedly less than that, he universal joins the rest of us credit hoping not. apt his and his colleagues’ data, ‘‘one could speculate,’’ he concludes, ‘‘that any forge of intense activity that is regularly performed over a wanting period of time’’ entrust alter ‘‘telomere biology,’’ meaning that eclipse enough activity, each of us could outpace the passing second childhood.