Health
Finding good health news amidst a pandemic can be quite daunting. That’s not the case with The Optimist Daily, where positive news is in high supply. Our Health section covers the latest good news from the health sector, featuring solutions ranging from mental and physical health to immunity, nutrition, and cutting edge medical research.
Chipotle ditches pork over supplier violations
Chipotle holds their meat suppliers to high standards, and if they aren’t met then no business will be done. That’s why at about 30 percent of Chipotle restaurants aren’t currently serving carnitas, slow cooked pork. One of Chipotle’s major pork suppliers was caught not having adequate Read More...
Guinea worm nears eradication
The guinea worm is a nasty, painful parasite that is caused when people drink water contaminated with roundworm larvae. Now after a 30-year campaign to eradicate guinea worm only 126 cases were reported in 2014—down from 3.5 million in 1986. Guinea worm is on its way to being the second Read More...
Naps help babies learn faster
Babies take lots of naps and as it turns out they need them for more than just energy. Researchers have found that naps help babies learn faster. Doctors took the 6 to 12 month old babies and taught them how to play with a puppet. Then they split the babies: Half of them slept within four hours of Read More...
Potatoes grown with salt water could spark food revolution
The idea that vegetables can only grow with fresh water is widely held belief that is proving to be wrong. A group of Dutch researchers have successfully grown potatoes using salt water as their water source. The spuds are sweeter and a little saltier than regular potatoes, but supposedly taste Read More...
Mind matters when it comes to muscle strength
“If you can see it, you can do it,” an old cliché that describes envisioning your goals. A new study conducted at Ohio University has taken that saying to the next level, and found that mental visions of exercise possibly play as critical of a roll in muscle growth as actually exercising. The Read More...
Growbot makes urban agriculture viable
Urban agriculture projects are nice community exercises, but they aren’t commercially viable, and really aren’t that safe—one study found hazardous levels of lead in half of the root vegetables grown in New York City’s community gardens. Growbot is a modular planter box that solves all Read More...
Talking to your children will make them smarter
Many studies have found that the more you talk to your baby, the faster they will develop vocabulary and even have a noticeably higher IQ. Studies have also found that lower income parents talk to their children less than rich parents. Now government backed initiatives are teaching new parents to Read More...
Young east-coasters are making farming cool again
For the past three decades the average age of a US farmer has been rising and now is about 60. For generations farming was looked at as “uncool” but now 20-and-30-somethings are rethinking this old stigmatism, and trading laptops for corn crops. In Maine, young east coasters are taking up land Read More...
Mosquito nets halve malaria deaths
Malaria is a terrible killer disease that can be easily prevented: Steer clear from mosquitoes. But that’s, of course, much easier said than done. Yet that’s exactly what has brought the deaths caused by malaria down with 50% since 2001. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 4.3 Read More...
Copper bedrails would reduce hospital infections
When it comes to the risk of nasty infections—paradoxically—hospitals are the worst places to go. It’s estimated that one in 25 patients will receive an infection from the hospital they are going to for treatment. Now a new startup, Copper Biohealth, has found that copper bedrails reduce the Read More...