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Sunscreen Doesn’t Stop Vitamin D Production
You’ve probably heard that your body needs at least a little straight-up sunshine to produce good-for-you vitamin D. But ask your dermatologist, and she’ll tell you that it’s never a good idea to expose unprotected skin to the sun. So how do you get your vitamin D without increasing your risk of sunburn and skin cancer?
Good news: Your body can produce vitamin D even while you’re wearing sunscreen, according to new research from King’s College London’s Institute of Dermatology.
For the study, researchers measured the vitamin D levels of 79 men and women before and after a one-week beach trip to a Spanish island. Half of the participants made sure to properly apply a sunscreen with SPF 15, while the other half hit the beach with bare skin. As you would expect, sunscreen helped protect the sunbathers from burns. And as for vitamin D? Both groups’ vitamin D levels soared—a good thing, since this essential nutrient keeps your bones strong, boosts your immunity, fends off depression, and lowers your cancer risk, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.
While the bare-skinned group had slightly higher levels of vitamin D at the end of the study, researchers say that the difference between the groups wasn’t significant enough to warrant skipping sunscreen. That’s big news, considering previous research found that sunscreen can significantly inhibit vitamin D synthesis and that the National Institutes of Health currently recommends up to 30 minutes of unprotected sun exposure at least twice a week.
The thing is, the studies that came before this one weren’t perfect: They didn’t track the kinds and amounts of sunscreen used, relied on artificial light rather than sunlight, and/or failed to measure UV exposure, says the new study’s author, Antony Young, professor of experimental photobiology at King’s College London’s Institute of Dermatology.
Researchers still don’t know whether a higher SPF could interrupt vitamin D production or exactly how much sun you need for sufficient vitamin D synthesis, says Young. One thing’s for sure, though: Regular use of sunscreen can lower your risk of skin cancer—and based on Young’s findings, slathering on sunscreen looks like it won’t block the sun you need to ward off vitamin D deficiency.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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Why You Need Vitamin D
Vitamin D: Do You Get Enough?
Delicious Ways to Eat More Essential Nutrients
Why You Really Need to Stop Ranting
Next time you’re seething, take a deep breath… and step away from the keyboard. Online venting is all the rage right now (see: forums designed specifically for complaining, like JustRage.com and NotAlwaysRight.com). Too bad that both reading rant sites and posting on them can bring on negative mood shifts, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
To get a better understanding of people’s mindsets when they visit rant sites (on which people can anonymously vent about any topic they’d like) researchers conducted two studies. For the first one, they surveyed 32 users about their anger, their visitation habits, why they read other people’s rants, and how ranting made them feel. “We found that people tend to rant because it makes them feel relaxed right after they do it,” says Ryan C. Martin, PhD, the lead author of the study and chair of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Psychology department.
For the second study, 91 undergraduate students read other people’s rants and explained how they felt afterward. They then wrote their own rants and reported back again. No surprise, the participants felt sadder after reading the rants. After writing them, they also felt less happy—as well as angrier.
Here’s the thing about ranting: Despite the initial sense of relief you get afterward, separate research shows that venting causes more anger and aggression in the long-term. In fact, anything done with the intent of blowing off steam—whether it’s writing a passive-aggressive email or mentally venting during a run—is counterproductive. Why? It prolongs the amount of time you spend focusing on negative feelings, says Martin.
Here’s what you can do instead of going on a complaining bender: Brainstorm possible moves that would actually address what has you so upset, suggests Raymond Chip Tafrate, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of Anger Management for Everyone: Seven Proven Ways to Control Anger and Live a Happier Life. For example, if you come home to find your roommate has left a pile of dishes in the sink—again—you could call up your sister to gripe. Or you could knock on your roommate’s door and ask if she’d mind washing the pots and pans so you can use them to make dinner. “Anger can be a useful thing,” says Tafrate. “It can energize you to take action.”
photo: Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock
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Stop Dwelling On It—It May Make You Sick!
So you completely botched a job interview or stumbled your way through a toast at your friend’s wedding. This may sound harsh, but you should really just get over it—your health may depend on it. Dwelling on a stressful event may increase inflammation levels in the body, according to new research out of Ohio University. The study is the first to directly measure the physiological link between inflammation and rumination on negative incidents.
For the study, researchers had 34 women ages 18 to 28 give an impromptu speech about their strengths and weaknesses to a panel. During the event, the panel remained stony-faced. Afterward, participants were instructed to either replay the speech in their mind for several minutes—or to imagine something else, like walking up and down the aisles of a grocery store. By collecting blood samples from the participants throughout the study, researchers discovered that the concentration of C-reactive proteins in the blood (a sign of inflammation) was higher for both groups following the stressful speech. But, while C-reactive protein levels continued to rise for the group that stayed focused on how poorly the speech went, they returned to normal for the group that thought about something else afterward.
“What we think this suggests is that ruminating or dwelling on these stressful events after they’re over may make the inflammatory response last longer—but distraction may reduce or lessen that,” says Peggy Zoccola, PhD, one of the co-authors of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio University.
Chronic inflammation has been linked to a number of diseases and disorders, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia, and depression.
Women are more likely to report daily or weekly worrying, anxiety, or nervousness, according to a recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even if you normally let things roll off your back, certain situations tend to bring out the worrier in all of us. “Things that are particularly upsetting or traumatic can lead an individual to engage in this kind of repetitive or ruminative thought,” says Zoccola. “You’re trying to think, ‘What happened? Why did it happen to me? What are the consequences?’”
When your mind is stuck on repeat and you can’t get a negative event out of your head, follow these tips:
Let yourself think about it
While this may seem counterintuitive, research shows that making a conscious effort to not think about something almost guarantees you’ll fixate on it. “Simply telling someone to suppress their thoughts and just not think about it may make them think about it even more,” says Zoccola. Instead, acknowledge your thoughts about the negative event, resist the urge to respond to them emotionally—just accept that you have them—and then imagine taking those thoughts and setting them aside. Some researchers think this mindfulness technique could help you move toward closure—and move on, says Zoccola.
Make sure your mind is elsewhere
In the study, researchers used about 20 different prompts such as “Think about what a rose looks like,” “Picture a ship sailing on the ocean,” and “Imagine yourself walking down the aisles at the grocery store” to keep participants from thinking about the stressful speech they’d given. This exemplifies how distractions—even fairly mundane ones—may help keep your mind off of negative incidents. The key, says Zoccola, is to find something that will keep you fully absorbed, whether it’s a hands-on hobby you enjoy (like painting) or something that will keep your brain engaged (like a game of Sudoku).
Grab a pen
Since people often get hung up on stressful events because they’re trying to make sense of them, taking to pen and paper (or a keyboard) can help. “Expressive writing and getting your emotions out there can help you construct a story, especially for something very disruptive,” says Zoccola, who points to research that shows writing or journaling after a stressful incident can lead to a more positive outcome and greater wellbeing. “It may help facilitate that closure process,” she says.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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Should You Stop Eating Fish?
You might want to think twice about feasting on seafood. A whopping 84 percent of fish samples taken from around the world contain unsafe levels of mercury, according to a new report from the Biodiversity Research Institute and the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. It isn’t safe to eat fish with such high levels of mercury more than once a month, according to the findings.
And that’s not all. Researchers also took hair samples from 152 people from around the world. What they found: More than 82 percent contained mercury levels greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended level. Translation: People are exposed to more mercury than is good for them.
So what’s the big deal? Consuming mercury can affect your nervous system and your brain, and this can be especially dangerous for children and women who are pregnant, according to Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CDN, CPT, owner of Manhattan-based practice Your New York Dietician. “Mercury acts like a neurotoxin which, even in low doses, can impair a baby’s development and cognitive function. In some cases it can lead to mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and loss of sight and hearing,” she says. “In non-pregnant adults, mercury affects fertility, blood pressure, memory, and eyesight.”
Pretty scary stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to cut fish out of your diet altogether. “Because fish is an important nutrient source, it’s more about being smart with what you are eating vs. avoiding eating fish,” says David Evers, PhD, chief scientist of the Biodiversity Research Institute who specializes in research on ecotoxicology. He suggests consulting your doctor and checking out the EPA’s recommendations to lower your risk.
Here, excepted from the EPA’s website, three guidelines for reducing your exposure to mercury found in fish:
1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.
2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.
- Five of the most commonly eaten fish that are low in mercury are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.
- Another commonly eaten fish, albacore (“white”) tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna. So, when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.
3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don’t consume any other fish during that week.
Click here for more info. on fish safety from the EPA.
Click here to see the Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish from the Natural Defense Council.
Pregnant or planning to become pregnant? Click here for the NRDC’s Mercury in Fish Wallet Card.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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Should You Stop Eating Fish?
You might want to think twice about feasting on seafood. A whopping 84 percent of fish samples taken from around the world contain unsafe levels of mercury, according to a new report from the Biodiversity Research Institute and the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. It isn’t safe to eat fish with such high levels of mercury more than once a month, according to the findings.
And that’s not all. Researchers also took hair samples from 152 people from around the world. What they found: More than 82 percent contained mercury levels greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended level. Translation: People are exposed to more mercury than is good for them.
So what’s the big deal? Consuming mercury can affect your nervous system and your brain, and this can be especially dangerous for children and women who are pregnant, according to Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CDN, CPT, owner of Manhattan-based practice Your New York Dietician. “Mercury acts like a neurotoxin which, even in low doses, can impair a baby’s development and cognitive function. In some cases it can lead to mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and loss of sight and hearing,” she says. “In non-pregnant adults, mercury affects fertility, blood pressure, memory, and eyesight.”
Pretty scary stuff, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to cut fish out of your diet altogether. “Because fish is an important nutrient source, it’s more about being smart with what you are eating vs. avoiding eating fish,” says David Evers, PhD, chief scientist of the Biodiversity Research Institute who specializes in research on ecotoxicology. He suggests consulting your doctor and checking out the EPA’s recommendations to lower your risk.
Here, excepted from the EPA’s website, three guidelines for reducing your exposure to mercury found in fish:
1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.
2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.
- Five of the most commonly eaten fish that are low in mercury are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.
- Another commonly eaten fish, albacore (“white”) tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna. So, when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.
3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don’t consume any other fish during that week.
Click here for more info. on fish safety from the EPA.
Click here to see the Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish from the Natural Defense Council.
Pregnant or planning to become pregnant? Click here for the NRDC’s Mercury in Fish Wallet Card.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
More from WH:
How to Cook Seafood
Seafood Safety Tips
Frankenfish and the World of Genetically Modified Food
Discover surprising walking tips, tricks, and techniques to melt fat fast and get a tighter, firmer butt with Walk Your Butt Off! Buy it now!
Stop Stressing Yourself Out
As if being stressed weren’t bad enough, thinking you’re stressed might also cause serious problems. Turns out, perceived stress, or how much you think you’re stressed, is associated with a higher risk of coronary heart disease, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Cardiology.
Researchers analyzed six studies to see how perceived stress affects your ticker. Each of the studies asked participants to self-report intense or frequent feelings of stress and then followed each participant for about 14 years to see if they were diagnosed with, hospitalized, or died from coronary heart disease. What they found: Participants who reported high levels of stress had a 27 percent higher risk of developing coronary heart disease.
“When people say that they’re stressed, it’s a good indicator of how often they’re experiencing the increased reactivity of their autonomic nervous system—the sort of flight-or-fight response that we think of as associated with stress,” says Donald Edmondson, PhD, assistant professor of Behavioral Medicine at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at the Columbia University Medical Center, and one of the study authors.
In other words, when our minds sense a need for action—which is what happens when we’re faced with a stressful situation—our bodies “gear up” in preparation for some kind of response, he says. When this happens, adrenaline increases blood pressure to boost energy, which can strain your heart. Though this natural reaction dates back to our earliest ancestors, modern-day stressors don’t require an immediate need for physical action.
“Today when we feel stressed it’s not because we have to run away from a lion,” he says. “It’s because our boss is giving us more work than we think we can manage, or one of our family members is in need of care and we’re trying to juggle too many things at once. These are not things that require our bodies to do a lot, but our bodies still gear up to be active. That cardiovascular response is damaging.”
So damaging that it can, over time, increase the wear-and-tear on the cardiovascular system, which can lead to heart hazards, like the development of plaques, plaque rupture, and cardiac events, he explains.
Click here for 8 daily strategies that’ll help de-stress your life—and protect your heart.
Additional reporting from the editors of Women’s Health.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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Stop Biting Your Nails (For Real This Time)
Maybe you’ve been a nail biter for years. Or you have a friend or relative who tends to snack on their digits. Sure, it’s not something you (or they) are proud of, but you’ve probably never viewed it as a full-fledged disorder. The American Psychiatric Association—which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—is about to change your nail-biting outlook.
The DSM will soon label nail biting—currently listed as “not otherwise classified,” a.k.a. not a big deal—as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
OCD is most-commonly characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions). It’s important to note that only certain types of nail biters—the extreme cases—fit into this category. “As with hair pulling and skin picking, nail biting isn’t a disorder unless it is impairing, distressing, and meets a certain clinical level of severity,” says Carol Mathews, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. “That is not the vast majority of nail bitters,” she says. “It is a very small minority of people.”
What counts as clinical severity? “They have bitten so much that they are getting infections,” Mathews says. “There is physical damage that is impairing their ability to use their hands.”
Okay, let’s say your case doesn’t quite warrant an OCD label: That doesn’t mean you get a free, all-you-can-bite pass. It’s still gross. Plus, it’s unhealthy.
Lawrence E. Gibson, M.D., a dermatologist with the Mayo Clinic, says nail biting doesn’t come without risk. It can, “contribute to skin infection, aggravate existing conditions of the nail bed, and increase the risk of colds and other infections by encouraging the spread of germs from the nails and fingers to the lips and mouth.”
Convinced yet?
Four simple ways to ditch the disorder for good:
1. Become aware of mindless munching
You know how sometimes the entire bag of Cheetos® “disappears” while you’re watching TV? The same thing happens when you chew your nails. The key to conquering the brainless bite: You need to track the situation. Ask your friends and family to stand watch, and take note of every time you wind up with your fingers in your mouth. If you’re biting out of boredom, give yourself a task: Do your laundry (you have to do it anyway, right?), squeeze a stress ball, braid your hair, etc. For even more tips on how to banish bad habits like nail-biting, click here.
2. Keep your nails neatly trimmed or manicured
When your nails are beautifully painted or already trimmed, you’re less likely to feel the urge to bite. “For the occasional nail biter, a mild imperfection in the nail may be the culprit,” Mathews says. This is a great excuse to spring for a mani! Don’t have the cash? Check out these seven tips for a gorgeous DIY manicure.
3. Make your digits taste disgusting
Bring out some extra reinforcement with a product like Sally Supernail Professional’s Bite No More™, which is formulated to prevent casual biting of the nails by producing a mild, unpleasant taste to remind you not to bite.
4. Find healthy ways to manage stress and anxiety
Paying the bills, meeting work deadlines, keeping a stable relationship—your life is most likely packed with stress, and, since you’ve outgrown your childhood pacifier, you may tend to rip away your cuticles as a way to cope. Need new ways to relax? Here, we share 31 ways to de-stress your life.
photo: Stockbyte/Thinkstock
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