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.
Regular physical exercise shown to help prevent dementia
Dementia affects one in six people over the age of 80. Five key evidence-based prevention strategies are moderate physical exercise, brain exercise, not smoking, a healthy diet and looking after your heart. Those are derived from the converging findings of several long-term studies. And it seems Read More...
DNA-altering protein programs pancreatic cancer cells into healthy cells
Positive news about cancer cures are not exactly a dime a dozen. This one definitely got our attention: researchers in America have been able to program pancreatic cancer cells back into normal cells by introducing a protein that bonds with particular DNA sequences. E47 can essentially control Read More...
Community labor creates an oasis in the Ethiopian desert
Moving mountains is not just a biblical image when political will is present and the community rallies around a common goal. Some 20 years after a severe drought and political turmoil caused a devastating famine that claimed more than a million victims in Ethiopia, a village has successfully Read More...
Science confirms alpha wave oscillations in the brain foster creativity
A creativity boost is as simple as a 10-Hertz current run through electrodes attached to the scalp, according to a new research study on the impact of alpha wave oscillations in the brain. Meditation yields the same result, as people who have incorporated the practice regularly can attest to. The Read More...
Food Forward prevents waste and puts food on the table of thousands
As we discussed last week, 40% of food in America gets wasted. To put things in perspective, a third of the food produced globally gets spoiled or squandered before it even reaches consumers, according to the FAO’s conservative estimates. It is a shocking fact that eliminating food waste Read More...
Medical students provide free service to uninsured in New York City
Nearly 1 million New York City residents are still uninsured. Most of them get health care in emergency rooms, city hospitals or community health centers, if they get care at all. They can also go to two student-run free clinics that take in a few dozen patients per week. Dr. Neil Calman, head of Read More...
Teaching older brains new tricks to improve vision
Contrast sensitivity is a major area of eyesight deterioration in old age. It’s a leading cause of accidents among seniors, be it stumbling on the stairs or swerving at the wheel. With just five 90-minute sessions of behavioral training designed to affect brain structure, scientists were able to Read More...
New federal dietary guidelines take aim at meat for environmental reasons
Livestock contributes 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. It also causes land degradation, and is a remarkably ineffective way of producing calories in a world plagued by increasingly severe droughts: it takes about 2,5000 gallons of Read More...
Ancient, forgotten bean to save world bean crop from global warming
Once again, Nature's formidable science lab has yielded the solution to a problem that had been haunting scientists: how to preserve bean crops, which provide food security for more than 400 million people in the developing world, from an expected 50% reduction by 2050 given the sensitivity of the Read More...
Seeds of Time soon to bring Svalbard Global Seed Vault to a screen near you
Hardly a feature-length documentary film has been as necessary and timely as Seeds of Time. The film tracks the history and mission of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — sometimes called the Doomsday Vault — and its founder Cary Fowler. His endeavor to collect the seeds of some 2 million Read More...