We spend so much time on our computers, writing papers, taking notes, surfing the internet, spending hours a day looking at our laptops, but instead of thinking about the harm we’re doing for our eyesight and even our posture, what about our hands and wrists?  Leaving our arms in that position for a long period can’t be good, so I’ve decided to look into if so-called keyboard posture is bad for us. 

Hands and wrists and arms that become numb can all be contributed to prolonged use and the same movement of hands in this position.  A build up of fluid in the wrists can cause a cyst growth, or even tendonitis.  In this article, if you experience any wrist pain, make sure to take breaks while typing for long periods of time, moving your wrists around to allow some muscle movement and to not allow your wrists to get cramped up.  It is also recommended to move your keyboard in different positions to maintain that changing of wrist positions.  

Do your wrists ever hurt from sitting at your computer for too long? What other ways can you help the strain of your wrists? Will sitting at this position for long periods of time hurt our health in the future for arthritis and carpel tunnel?

After you alarm goes off in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? I for one roll over, grab my phone, and open up Twitter.  Most of my friends would say I’m pretty obsessed with it.  I checked it right before I went to bed seven hours ago, but I need to see what I missed.  Twitter has become so much of my life, much like probably many of yours, since you created your account, and I’m pretty sure I’d be lost without it.  When I go home, I usually have my phone on my 95% of the time, and of course my parents nag me about putting it away and to stop looking at it and it made me wonder, can one become addicted to Twitter?  

Of course we have these humorous blogs mocking our strange addiction (CNBC, BuzzFeed), but there I feel like being addicted to Twitter can be as bad as being addicted to anything else.  Written here, it explains that logging onto Twitter creates that need to see things over and over again, refreshing something new that can always be updated.  The satisfaction of interacting with someone and even retweets give a person comfort and delight in knowing their impact on the social media world.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the new few years if a Twitter addiction is a forefront contender for mental and psychological disorders.  I started using Twitter to keep up with my favorite sports teams, but now I follow a multitude of different people, media and news outlets, and other things.  It’s not the ‘cool thing’ if you don’t know the news if its’ not happening right then! 

If you ‘suffer’ from a so-called Twitter addiction, let’s help ourselves! What are your ideas on how to curb the refresh pull-down obsession, and do you think Twitter addictions can only get worse before they get better? 

Most people I know love to travel, and one of my favorite parts about going away is the hotel stay.  My family usually doesn’t go all out for the fanciest hotels, but they’re still exciting nonetheless.  I’ve never really had a big problem with cleanliness, but over the past few years, many reports have come out about bed bugs– gross and terrifying bugs that especially infect hotel rooms across the country.  

Bed bugs are found all over the world, and most commonly thrive near places where people sleep and live, including our beds, mattresses, and many crack and crevices around a room, until people sleep at night.  Bed bugs’ bites tend to leave bites, but can go unnoticed, but may cause an allergic reaction.  The pesky bugs have been springing up around hotels across the country because their slimness and tininess allows for them to cling to people who travel around, and can spread to other infected areas.  

^^ bed bug outbreak areas in the US, most common on the East coast, such as NY

In this article, many ways are described on how to help you make sure you don’t get affected by bed bugs when making your travels.  It’s important to stop the spread of them, before you can even get them yourself.  I know for my roommate and I, we sprayed our beds with an anti-bed bug spray before we put our bedding on our beds in our dorm, just to stay extra safe here in our room.  

So how do we know if our hotel stay will be safe for us? Will you still like to travel even with the possibility of bed bugs lurking under your bed?

Whether we remember them or not, we all dream; we can even have up to several dreams each time we lay down to sleep at night.  Although what I have become curious about over the past few months are nightmares.  Ever since I got home from school last May, I would have very vivid nightmares every night, and I wasn’t really sure why.  I never took a psychology class or learned about the REM cycle enough to discover as to why I would have these nightmares.  And it wasn’t random nights these were happening, it was every night.  I’d wake up and say to myself, did that really just happen? Why were they so vivid? And what is that even supposed to mean?  

I thought this blog post would be a great place to attempt to break down what causes these nightmares and if they can be stopped!  According to this article, the origin of what causes nightmares can’t be scientifically proven, but stress and anxiety can lead to them.  In my case, of course college and everything that goes along with it is one of the most stressful things I have ever done in my life, but the nightmares only started when I got back home, where there was little stress, so why would they start up then?  Medications and caffeine can also affect them, but currently I’m not on any meds, but I do drink coffee regularly.  Other options are to see sleep specialists, but in most cases, nightmares are just things that happen and there are limited options to help them.  

Have you ever experiences vivid nightmares on a regular basis?  How have you managed to curve them, and why do you think we have them in the first place?

Ah, State College weather.  This fall was a tease for us because from the weekend we moved back into school until only a few weeks ago, it was a nice warm summer day, everyday.  Now that fall has truly set in, it’s kind of back to reality for us Staters.  Fall is here, winter is coming, and there is no going back to the days of shorts and flip flops until we pack up our dorms and apartments and head home in May.  I’ve noticed since high school, many people are starting to talk more and more about seasonal depression, which is defined as seasonal affective disorder, where one becomes depressed, sad and or moody at a certain time of year, usually in the fall and winter.  

I always thought that it was just the gloomy months of darkness, lots of work and limited things to do that made me feel down in the dumps, but looking into research, I can see how this is actually a real disorder that can affect many people.  Being up here at Penn State, there is never a dull moment, but I know I’ve had my fair share of times throughout the winter where it seemed getting out of bed, doing work or even feeling down.  According to this article, having a few weeks of sadness doesn’t necessarily qualify for one to be affected by SAD, but if it is recurring, then it’s a possibility you may have it. Treatments for SAD include light therapy, where exposure to more light (and vitamin D) helps trigger chemicals in the brain to change mood, some medications and regular psychotherapy.  

Do you think there is any other causes to SAD, more than a change in temperature? Have you ever thought if you might have SAD? If so, let’s hope we can beat the serious winter blues!

I can’t cook to save my life, but I sure do like baking- cookies especially.  I usually use the same recipe whenever I make my chocolate chip but sometimes I have to wonder, why do they look a little different every time I make them? Turns out there are actually several reasons why!

+Using more eggs will also cause them to rise higher than spread out.

Chewy cookies:

+The use of more eggs adds chewiness.

I find it very interesting that it’s not my oven, how long I’m putting the cookies in for, but the chemistry behind the ingredients and how they all mix together is what determines the outcome of the final product!

In this report, the author explores how the temperature of butter affects cookies.  Her outcome was similar to the cookies seen above- just right, a little doughier, and completely flat and doughy.

The next time I make my own cookies, or steal one from West, I’ll have to think about what made them look the way they do, but in the end, all chocolate chip cookies are delicious, so it’s up to you on how you like them!

Everyone has heard the old saying “make sure you drink eight 8-oz glasses of water a day!” before in their life, but how many of us actually use that advice? While no one can live without water, it’s important to remember the vital functions that water can provide us with.