When you were little did your parents ever force you to eat bananas? Well, mine sure did.  Before I was allowed to have any sort of junk food I always had to eat a banana first.  When I was little I used to always get angry that she made me eat something healthy before I could eat something that I loved.  Now I’m thankful that they made me eat them because now I know how many benefits there are.

When you eat bananas, they help you produce tryptophan.  This helps fight depression.  Also before working out a good idea is to eat a banana because it helps you to prevent cramps.  A study that show that eating about one half a banana helped keep energy levels up.  The potassium in the banana helped to prevent the cramps, so next time you are thinking of going to the gym make sure that you eat a banana before you go!

One thing that we should start worrying about is cardiovascular diseases.  One way to prevent diseases is by eating more bananas.  If you have a banana every morning, it will keep your electricity going through your body which is required to keep your heart beating.  Eating just a single banana can help you get the amount of potassium that you need on a daily basis.

I hope that you are now convinced to eat a banana because I sure am! I definitely am going to try to eat a lot of bananas because there are so many health benefits!

How many times have you been cuddling with a significant other or even a pet and immediately felt so much better after even a quick cuddling session?  It doesn’t matter whether your the big spoon or the little spoon, cuddling has very positive effects on your body.

One thing that cuddling does is release the hormone oxytocin.  Oxytocin is also known as the “cuddle hormone” because it is released whenever people snuggle up close to each other released from the pituitary gland.  It helps you feel connected to others.  The release of this hormone also strengthens your immune system.   It causes you to be more of a positive thinker so it allows the immune system to strengthen.

This one hormone does a lot for your body when being released.  The release of this hormone can also help you deal with pain.  It immediately causes the person to no longer be able to focus on the pain that they are having.  How many times have you felt anxious in social situations?  Well, then you should try cuddling to relieve some of this anxiety.  When you get a hug going straight into a party then you will immediately feel more comfortable going up to new people and talking to them.  

They did a study involving young girls doing a speech in front of the class.  As expected, their cortisol levels went through the roof.  After they did this speech the girls were sent off in three different groups.  One group got a hug from their mom.  The next group spoke to their mom on the phone.  The last group watched an emotionally neutral video.  Can you guess which one had the lowest cortisol levels after hugging their mom, speaking to their mom, or watching a video?  Hopefully, you guessed that hugging their mom helped lower their levels the best because then you would be right.

Next time you are somewhere and you can tell that someone isn’t having a good day just give them a hug because it will help them greatly.  Next time you are in a bad mood try to cuddle with someone or even just ask someone for a hug! It might change your whole day!

Whenever I am stressed I know one thing that always seems to allow me to forget for even just a small four minutes.  Walking to class, hanging out with friends, or even just hanging out in my room one thing that always makes any situation easier is always music.  I love listening to any kind and I wondered why whenever I was stressed that the music I listened to always seemed to calm me down.

One type of music will always sooth you no matter what state you are in as long as you really listen to it; this is classical.  Yes, I know that classical isn’t necessarily “in” and listening to Beethoven and Mozart isn’t necessarily the cool thing to do but sometimes it is necessary.  This type of music slows down your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure, and decreases the stress hormone.

Through this I figured that different music can be used to help you deal with different things.  After researching more I figured out that this is true! Faster music can be used to make you feel more alert and concentrate better.  Athletes will also know that this type of music will help pump you up before games.  Being an athlete myself, the music we listened to while getting ready for games always got me more focused and ready for game time.  When listening to upbeat music, no matter if you have had an awful day will make you feel at least a little more optimistic than you were before.

I was stunned to figure out what music relieved stress the most: Native American, Celtic, and flutes.  These are extremely effective because for some reason sounding like nature soothes the body and takes away a lot of the stress.  According to this site, to get completely calm though, you have to listen to music for at least 45 minutes to get the desired effect.

A study shows that as well as reducing stress, listening music can also boost the immune system.  It was tested in patients and when they listened to music, it helped them to improve their conditions.  It helped
soothe the patients in the emergency room and reduce some of the stresses in there because if you have never been in one, which I hope that you have never been in one, it can be a very stressful place.

Next time you are feeling stressed out or overwhelmed about something just listen to some of your favorite songs and some of the stress will just melt away.  It is a great way to distract yourself while always helping your brain release the stress hormones.

What is the best way to develop your brain even more?  How can you ensure that you stay younger longer? How can you have on affect on your children causing their brains to develop better as they grow up?  Playing an instrument can help solve that problem.

Through playing an instrument many different things in the brain the brain are triggered.  The motor systems are used when you are playing an instrument.  Another part that is being used at this time is the auditory circuitry which allows the brain to process the sounds.  This helps you hear the music that you are playing and recognize when you play the wrong note.   If that isn’t enough stuff, it also sends sensory information to the brain from your hands playing the instrument.

How many of your parents wanted you to learn how to play an instrument when you were young? Like many of you, I was also forced to play an instrument from the ages of 6-14.  While I was being forced to play I did not understand how much playing an instrument would actually affect me.  I am now extremely happy that my parents made me learn how to play the piano because now I know how beneficial it was.

This picture shows that “practicing a musical instrument can lead to numerous structural changes in the brain after only 15 months of training in early childhood.”

This video shows that playing a musical instrument is “like a full body workout for your brain“.   Playing an instrument allows the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate easier allowing each message to get to the other side of the brain faster.

When you begin to play an instrument the brain begins to hear sounds that they never heard before.  This can help children to do better in school.  They also had improved neural processing.  There are too many benefits of learning an instrument not to have your future children learn how to play them.  Looking back on it I am so happy that my mom had me learn an instrument because now I know how much it improved my academic career.

“Crying is for the weak.” “Stop crying you big baby.” “Stop crying, that’s for women.” When someone talks about the subject of crying this is normally what people say.  They relate crying to being weak, but I wanted to challenge this misconception because crying can make you feel better sometimes.  I want to show that a good cry every once in a while can actually help your body and yourself in many ways.

One of the health benefits is that is releases the toxins from your body. “Tears that are produced by stress help the body get rid of chemicals that raise cortisol, the stress hormone.”  Tears can help you to feel immediately better and less stressed even after just a short crying session.  A study shows that crying releases the toxins just as peeing and sweating releases the toxins.

Another good reason to let yourself to cry is that the tears allow us to see.  The tears lubricate the eyeballs and the eyelids so it is easy to open and close.  It is also makes sure that the mucus membrane does not dehydrate.  Without the tears there will be no  way that you
can continue to see.

Tears kill bacteria just like disinfectant wipes for your eyes!  Any germs we pick up from outside sources are gotten out of our system through the tears.  This does not mean you should just cry instead of washing your hands, but the bacteria that gets in your eyes can only be gotten out through one thing, tears.

As if there isn’t already enough reasons to just cry it out there are even more.  Another one is it elevates your mood because lowering your manganese levels helps your body. Exposure to excess levels of manganese can cause damage to the brain, so it is better for the body to cry to make these levels go down.  Another effect of high manganese levels is anxiety and stress.  When stressed out over homework, an upcoming midterm, or making sure to get all of your blogs done before they are due, crying will help reduce your stress levels (but remember it won’t make the homework or blogs go away!).

Another reason to just cry is to build community.  I know what you’re thinking, why am I going to cry in a public place? But when you end up not being able to hold it in anymore, people always come by to comfort you when you are crying.  The level of intimacy exchanged between the comforter and the cryer is astounding.  After this you will forever have a bond and know that that person will be there for you even when you are at one of your lowest points.

Even though it’s not everyday that something tragic happens, everyday life is still very overwhelming as it is.  There are many things that go on through the course of the day that have an impact on your mood and sometimes the only way to release all of the feelings built up is through crying.  The tears release the tension that would otherwise go straight to your cardiovascular system.

The next time you think about crying remember the benefits and just let it out.  The next time you see someone about to cry don’t make fun of them being weak because they’re helping their body through doing this simple action.

I take my phone everywhere and I also drop it everywhere, I touch it with my fingers, and I touch it to my face.  Then I realize that something with so much bacteria touches my face whenever I try to make a call home to see how my family is doing.  How much bacteria is on my phone that I use everyday.

Many young adults use their phone for almost everything now. They check Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, text friends, and call others.  According to a study, a phone has 18 times more potentially harmful germs than a flush handle in a men’s toilet.  After reading this fact I looked at my phone so much differently.  One of the individual’s phones had so much bacteria on it that it could have caused the owner a serious upset stomach.

A small study in Oregon showed that the bacteria on the cell phone is almost identical to the amount of bacteria on your phone.  But you cannot wash your phone like you wash your hands so the bacteria remains on the phone longer than the bacteria on your hand lasts.  Hospitals are considering testing the smartphone screens to see what harmful bacteria the patients have been exposed to.  They also believe that testing smartphones can help to prevent widespread infections.  One example of this is, at a CDC lab, the people were exposed to a deadly anthrax virus. Everyone was then exposed to the virus, but if they had tested everyone’s cell phones they may have been able to prevent this.

This video shows that the touch screen of the smartphones contain more bacteria than a pubic bathroom.  If you Clorox wipe your phone the bacteria will come more.  Anything with alcohol will be able to take away most of the germs.  As long as you have a screen protector on it, then you can use anything that contains some form of rubbing alcohol, but do not use it too much because it can hurt your phone.  Since you wash your hands often, you should also wash your phone.

When looking at the different fast food chains one question always pops into my head, why do most of them have the colors red and yellow?  Are they sending a message through using those colors?  I decided that I needed to figure out why these colors were being used at so many different fast food chains, for example, McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, and Pizza Hut.

Whenever I looked at the McDonalds golden arches with the red background on my way home from school, I always suddenly needed food.  Then a lot of times I would end up stopping to get something from the Drive-Thru.  I always wondered what it was that always made me want the food, until now.  After researching, I discovered that the colors red and yellow actually make people hungry.

Looking at the colors individually from a psychological standpoint, the color red makes us feel “comforted and loved”.  It gives us the warm feeling inside that we always have when eating something that was made with love.  Paired with the color yellow which is “cheery and exciting”, it causes our metabolism to speed up causing us to get hungrier faster; therefor, industries like Subway and Starbucks should think about changing their colors so their consumers will buy more often from them.

I never thought that red and yellow paired together would ever cause me to be hungrier after looking at them.  After doing this research it is now clear why every time I walk downtown or see a McDonalds I always want to stop in to get some chicken nuggets.