WELLNESS
metronews.ca Tuesday, July 17, 2012
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Up/Down coffee According to a study published in Cancer Research Journal, increasing your intake of caffeinated coffee could lower your risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma. “The more coffee you consume, the lower the risk,” Jiali Han, Ph.D. associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, told the journal.
Doughnuts might not fit into any evolutionary theories but it does factor into your decisions once a month. istock photos
Food or sex? Desire explained Women’s health. How the time of the month impacts everything from eating to life choices Celia Milne
life@metronews.ca
It’s not your imagination. Women really do eat more between periods. The time of the month does have an impact on women’s eating, shopping and beautification behavior,
according to a new study at Concordia University in Montreal. Like it or not, it’s an evolutionary fact. “Menstrual-related hormones shape women’s daily choices,” says Prof. Gad Saad, who holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption. “Your menstrual cycle affects many of your most fundamental survival and mating pursuits.” Researchers tracked the daily desires, preferences and purchases of 59 women
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“Your smart phone could warn, ‘today’s day 24 of your cycle – avoid grocery shopping’!” Prof. Gad Saad Concordia University Research Chair
over 35 continuous days. The women kept detailed diaries of the food they ate, what they bought, and how much time they spent making themselves beautiful. There was a marked in-
crease in women’s appearance-related behaviours, such as putting on makeup and wearing sexy clothes, during the fertile stage of the menstrual cycle, approximately days 8 to 15 in a 28-day cycle. There was a rise in eating and buying high-calorie food during the infertile (luteal) phase of the menstrual cycle, approximately days 16-28. Prof. Saad and colleagues offered a Darwinian explanation: In order for the species to survive, women had to spend more time on sex-related activities while they were fertile.
Non-mating-related activities such as food foraging took precedence during the non-fertile phase. What do we learn from this? One lesson is that “the likelihood of being able to stick to a diet will likely wax and wane depending on a woman’s menstrual status,” says Prof. Saad. He envisions an app that Darwin couldn’t have predicted. “Your smart phone could warn, ‘today’s day 24 of your cycle — avoid grocery shopping’!”
When former Disney star Hilary Duff exposed her post-baby body on a recent trip to Mexico, the 24-year-old actress received disturbing backlash. One follower even posted on her twitter page that she was ‘waddling into Pilates’. Responding to the posts slamming her weight she told Parade Magazine, “I read comments on my Twitter page about how I’m ‘waddling into Pilates’ and I go, ‘Wow, that’s a really mean thing to say. I just had a baby!’”
hilary duff
Thoughts on...
Discernment If we get caught up in trying to adjust ourselves to other people’s negative energy, we lose touch with our core. The more we do this, the more we aren’t able to discern what belongs to us and what belongs to other people. With practice, we become masters of our energetic integrity. Natasha Dern is the host of the Buddha Lounge
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Bill Casey (survivor) and granddaughter Willow, Amherst, NS
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