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.
Trees save lives and billions in health care expenses
We know that trees eat greenhouse gases, and spit out breathable oxygen, but how much air pollution do they ingest, and how do humans benefit? The U.S Forest Service just released the first broad-scale estimate of how big an impact trees have on U.S. citizens and the economy. The study, published Read More...
Doctors teach the body to cure cancer
The main cancer treatments have serious negative side-effects on the healthy parts of the body. Radiation and chemotherapy damage healthy cells, and surgery often leaves cancer in the body, allowing it to return. But increasingly doctors are using the body’s own immune system as an effective Read More...
Cinnamon holds promise for Parkinson’s disease
Cinnamon can stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD) symptoms in mice, and according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, there is good reason to believe that this potent spice could also be beneficial to patients. Parkinson’s disease is marked by the death of Read More...
Protecting your eyes from the negative effects of staring at your screen
Most of us spend a lot of time every day in front of one screen or another. But the blue light emitted by your device’s screen can actually do damage to your eyes. Thankfully there are precautionary measures you can take to limit, if not prevent, any lasting damage to your sight caused by device Read More...
It’s never too late: lessons from heart disease 20 years on
Most clinical trials follow their patients for a matter of months, usually at best a few years. But what happens when we revisit these patients decades later? How do we adapt to our illnesses, and how much control do we really have over them? A new study by researchers at Northwestern Medical Read More...
Frozen blueberries have more antioxidant power
Blueberries are a super food. New research shows that their antioxidant power becomes even stronger when the berries are frozen. The blue color of blueberries is given by the antioxidant Anthocyanins, which is present in their skin. South Dakota State Graduate student Marin Plumb discovered that Read More...
More efficient use of cropland could feed 3 billion more people
This is a major part of the favorite doom scenario’s of future pessimists: There’s not enough food to feed a growing world population. However a new study published in Science by researchers at the University of Minnesota found that more efficient agricultural practices could feed 3 billion Read More...
Practicing meditation will make you wiser
Meditation is becoming more and more popular in business. And that makes sense. Research conducted by business schools INSEAD and The Wharton School has found that short meditation sessions—of about 15 minutes a day, will allow you to make smarter decisions. Meditation limits “sunk–cost Read More...
Four simple steps to add 10 years to your life
Researchers estimate that a healthy lifestyle can add a whole decade to your life—and they hope this information will be a motivator for people to change their behavior before it’s too late. The World Health Organization has identified four factors that have the biggest impact on promoting Read More...
New implants enable mice to “see sound”
Cochlear hearing implants transmit sounds from an external microphone to neurons in the brain through small electrodes, the implant will give deaf the ability to hear, but the sound is very poor and distorted. Researchers from Germany, Japan, South Korea and Singapore worked together to come up Read More...