I stay up later than I should binge watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix, and I’m sure I’m not alone with that habit. I’ll start watching and then before I know it I’m already on my 4th or 5th episode. I’ve started to wonder what this does to my brain! I decided to research it and look at the science behind my bad habit.

According to the Huffington Post, a survey that Netflix conducted from December concluded that “61 percent of about 1,500 online respondents say that they binge-watch TV regularly (which was defined as watching between two and six episodes of the same TV show in one sitting)”. Sitting and watching that many tv shows can slow your circulation and also slow down your metabolism, both bad for your health.

After reading an article from Refinery29, I learned that humans have actually “evolved” to watch this much television. This source says that “Television’s continuously changing visual and audio stimulation triggers our ‘orienting response'”. This orienting response is defined as the extra time and attention that we give to anything new in our lives.

After reading more from this website I learned that during the first half hour of watching Netflix,  your brain activity goes from left to right. This means that it goes from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere from the state of REASON to the state of EMOTION. This causes the brain to release endorphins!

The next time I’m binge watching Friends or Friday Night Lights I will think about how I learned that binge watching TV actually isn’t all that bad for you

So often in high school and already in my college experience, I have found that I, along with many of my peers, cannot focus for the entire scheduled length of a class. I find myself looking at my phone, doodling, or day dreaming not because the material in class doesn’t interest me, but because I actually cannot focus for the entire 50 minutes-1 hour 15 minutes classes that I have.

Every time I do homework I listen to music in order to help me focus. In fact, I’m listening to music right now as I complete this blog post. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Without music, life would be a mistake”. I agree with this statement, and I was excited to be able to look into the scientific aspect of what happens when music is listened to while doing schoolwork.

Different areas of the brain are affected by music. Music is processed in many different areas of the brain when we listen to music. In this diagram from http://www.fastcompany.com/3022942/work-smart/the-surprising-science-behind-what-music-does-to-our-brains, the different areas of the brain as music affects it are stimulated differently. Our brains respond differently depending on whether or not a piece of music is happy or sad. There are two different emotions that the brain interprets during music, perceived and felt emotions. According to this website,

“This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing.

Unlike in real life situations, we don’t feel any real threat or danger when listening to music, so we can perceive the related emotions without truly feeling them—almost like vicarious emotions”.

Different types of music stimulate the brain in different ways. For example, music that contains lyrics can work to stimulate the language/ processing centers within the brain. According to the University of Phoenix, listening to music with lyrics can be distracting while doing homework because trying to process musical lyrics while also trying to process the words in which you’re studying can interfere with the effectiveness of your studying. Some have said that instrumental music is better for concentrating and for doing homework to! There is something called the “mozart effect”. This is when listening to music actually improves intelligence. However, this theory has since been proved to be incorrect. According to Robin Harwood, Instrumental and classical music won’t make you smarter, but this music can have a relaxing, soothing effect and is less distracting than music with lyrics”.

The next time I listen to music, I will try listening with instrumental music or music with softer lyrics. I think it will really help me to focus on what I am reading, writing, or studying while also offering some sort of entertainment!

https://mindbodyspiritualawareness.com/tag/music-aids-studying/

According to Wei-Shin Lai, MD, “College Students simply don’t get enough sleep”.  Wei-Shin Lai has been at the Penn State Student Health Center since 2007. She says, ” If I had to choose the biggest problem concerning sleep in college students, it’s just that they choose to not sleep”. You can read more about what she says here.

One of the worst habits that attributes to sleep loss in students is all nighters. It takes 3 days to recover from an all nighter. On the first day after staying up all night, you may find that you feel fine! This is because of the adrenaline in your body. The second day is harder because your body is really starting to drag and everything that you do gets done poorly. By the third day your body is beginning to recover, and by the fourth day you should be good to go!

According to Lai, “A significant portion of 15-25 year olds are known to sleep scientists as “owls”. This means that they have sleep cycles of 26 hours instead of 24. For example, someone who wakes up at 8 wouldn’t get sleepy until 2 am instead of 12. A tactic to beat this tricky situation is to train your internal clock to wake up with the sun. Lights should be avoided late at night, but in the morning those with sleeping issues in college should expose themselves to the light as much as possible.

So, now for the question that has been on everyones mind, how many hours of sleep should you actually be getting? The answer varies. According to Lai, the answer is 7 to 9. However, this number could change depending on the person and the circumstance. Lai says, “Women who are done with growing and maturation, having started their growth spurt at age 10-12, will be fine with an average of 7.5-8 hours of sleep. If a woman is still possibly growing, 8-9 hours is recommended. Men who are still in their growth spurt which started at age 16-17 should have 9 hours of sleep. You may suspect continued late growth if your parents matured later than their peers”. According to other doctors at Stanford University, “The average sleep requirement for college students is well over eight hours, and the majority of students would fall within the range of this value plus or minus one hour”.

The amount of sleep at the end of the day depends on a number of factors, like schoolwork, time management, sleeping conditions (noisy roommates), homesickness, excitability to beat Rutgers next Saturday, or even some legitimate sleep disorders such as Insomnia (not the cookies).

A student fast asleep on her school work.

I’m sure I am not among the minority when I say that I hate running. I dread getting on the treadmill when I go to the gym and I hate when my lacrosse coach says “get on the line”. In fact, I’ll do about anything to avoid ever having to run. I’ll go on the elliptical machine at the gym or walk 5 miles instead of running 2. However, the hard, sad truth is that running is the best exercise for total body weight loss.

One of the reasons why running is the best way to ensure your weight loss is that running works even when you’re at rest. Runnersworld.com says, “High-intensity exercise like running stimulates more ‘after-burn’ than low-intensity exercise”. I learned after reading more on their website, that this means that “your resting energy expenditure stays elevated after you run”. Simply put, this is how quickly you burn energy even when you’re at rest. So, in conclusion, this means that post-running, you are still burning more energy and kcals (or food calories) than if you had walked/went on the elliptical/other forms of burning calories.

Another reason why running is the best way to ensure weight loss is that it works faster.  This website says that a man who is 200 pounds burns 113 calories if he were to walk 1 mile at 4 miles per hour. However, that man would also burn 151 calories if he were to run 1 mile with a 6 mile per hour pace. The argument would be made that he could walk longer just to burn the same amount of calories, however ultimately he would not be burning the same amount of calories because of the energy expenditure fact.

Another reason why you will lose weight faster if you run versus walk is because of oxygen and gravity. A man named Ray Moss, Ph.D of Furman University says that “In running, we actually jump from one foot to the other. Each jump raises our center of gravity when we take off, and lowers it when we land, since we bend the knee to absorb the shock. This continual rise and fall of our weight requires a tremendous amount of Newtonian force” This Newtonian force can be represented by the fact that running requires more oxygen intake when running. According to Dr. Swain, who is “the director of the Wellness Institute and Research Center at Old Dominion University”, he says that “When you perform a continuous exercise, you burn five calories for every liter of oxygen you consume,” he said. “And running in general consumes a lot more oxygen than walking”.

Next time you go to the gym, try running longer than you normally would! If you’re anything like me, you would’ve eaten pokey sticks the night before and would be looking for a quick and effective way to burn calories and go home!!

I’m Julianna Leone from Hopkinton, Massachusetts!! Where I live would be pretty insignificant if it weren’t for the fact that the Boston Marathon starts in my town! I’m taking this course because I heard that it was great for people like me who really struggle with science. I’m not planning on being a science major because Physics and Chemistry were the downfall of my high school GPA. I told myself that I would never ever take another science course again, so ironically here I am taking this course because my advisor told me that I would actually really like it. Come to find that during the first class I was very interested and I’m actually excited to get into the topics listed in the syllabus!

boston marathon link