Lifestyle matters: What we can do in 2024 to optimize cognition and life, delaying cognitive problems even dementia

Walk 10,000 steps a day, cut back alco­hol, get bet­ter sleep at night, stay social­ly active — we’re told that changes like these can pre­vent up to 40 per cent of demen­tia cas­es world­wide. Giv­en that demen­tia is still one of the most feared dis­eases, why aren’t we push­ing our doc­tors and gov­ern­ments to support…

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Thanksgiving works: Gratitude journaling seen to lower stress and negative cognitive processes

Dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many peo­ple suf­fered extreme stress. Peo­ple couldn’t work and faced finan­cial anx­i­ety, they felt lone­ly and iso­lat­ed, they wor­ried about catch­ing a dead­ly dis­ease or giv­ing it to some­one they loved, and their men­tal health suf­fered. For researcher Erin Fekete, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis, the unfolding…

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Study: Practicing gratitude helps lower physiological stress levels of the “expresser” AND the “receiver”

Express­ing grat­i­tude nur­tures our rela­tion­ships, help­ing us to feel clos­er to our friends and roman­tic part­ners. Some research sug­gests that grate­ful peo­ple seem to cope bet­ter with stress and enjoy supe­ri­or phys­i­cal health, per­haps because of those stronger social rela­tion­ships. What about expe­ri­enc­ing grat­i­tude with peo­ple we don’t know so well—like those we work with?…

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How ’sleeping on it’ can help the prefrontal cortex regulate emotional responses, making us feel better in the morning

Instead of lying awake wor­ry­ing, we’re often told to “sleep on it” when mak­ing deci­sions both big and small. And there’s actu­al­ly a sci­en­tif­ic basis for this advice. Sleep can influ­ence our response to emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions, and helps us to man­age our men­tal health. To under­stand why sleep and emo­tions are so con­nect­ed, it’s important…

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On uncertainty, stress, emotion regulation, and carpe diem

Ever since it began, the pan­dem­ic has been a crash course in uncer­tain­ty. Safe behav­iors, school open­ings, vac­ci­na­tion time­lines, the job mar­ket, new variants—these have all seemed to change on a week­ly basis, threat­en­ing our sense of secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. Uncer­tain­ty is stress­ful and per­haps even harm­ful to our health, research sug­gests, and it can…

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