A treadmill can be a wonderful thing to have when the weather turns nasty, you don't have much time, or you want to take a more scientific approach to cardio/endurance training. If the last one you …
Using a Heart Rate Monitor for Exercise
All right, your heart rate monitor has arrived, you've become a card-carrying member of the Fitbit crowd, and you've bragged about it to all your friends, colleagues and random people you've met on …
Is Juicing Really All that Good for You?
Every year or so, a new health food fad makes the rounds of the talk show circuit and leads to a couple of bestselling books. Keto, paleo, raw food, intermittent fasting, Atkins, South Beach, …
Empty Calories vs Whole-Food Diets
Cooking shows have become hugely popular in the last couple of years. Sadly, like televised sports, people are more likely to watch them for entertainment rather than inspiration. At the same …
Percussion Massage Benefits, Risks, and Usage
It's no secret that a good massage, whether done by hand or by using devices designed for the purpose, leaves you feeling invigorated; it relieves pain and can speed recovery from injuries, chronic …
Why (and How) to Use a Sprinkler Controller
Certainly, there are plenty of useless gadgets out there, but millions of people who've installed automated irrigation systems are pretty happy with their purchase. Why? Convenience: Spending …
The Basics of Weather Stations, and How they Work
Much of what influences your local weather can't be seen or felt - at least, not with any degree of precision. Yet, even if we're not always aware of it, atmospheric conditions affect the kinds of …
Home Sprinkler System Design
Your garden should be one of the best features of your home. Even the most beautiful modern house will seem sterile and gloomy if it's surrounded by nothing but weeds and dust. Water makes all …
Hurricane Survival Guide
Few things can be quite as frightening as being stuck in the middle of a hurricane. In fact, research suggests that of those affected develop PTSD. When you also consider other natural disasters - …
Guide to Xeriscape Landscaping
Fresh, unpolluted water is a limited resource. Droughts and shortages are already commonplace, and the situation is only likely to worsen in coming years. With about half of domestic water …
The How and Why of Hair Loss
A normal, healthy person sheds about eighty to a hundred and fifty hairs per day. This is nothing unusual: some of your follicles are just resting and will start to produce new hairs once they've …
What Barometric Pressure Tells us About Weather
Although the word "meteorology" has been around since 1600, the study of weather prediction only dates from the middle of the 19th century. That's long before became a problem, but it's still …
The Best Cardio Exercises to Do At Home
Can't afford to go to a gym or buy expensive fitness equipment? Want to stay fit but don't have the time? Just do your cardio exercises at home! They are fun, simple to do, and cost next to …
Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Teeth
Have you ever met someone who seemed really attractive ... until the moment they opened their mouths? Sometimes this is a question of them saying the wrong thing, but (too often) it's because they've …
The Good (and Bad) Health Effects of Coffee
Asking whether coffee is good or bad for you, without any context, is a little like asking whether eating beef harms your health. Biting into a steak probably won't kill you, but taking a knife to a …
Air Pollution Facts, Causes and Effects
Breathing freely is important; in fact, it's something most of us make a point of doing. It's even made its way into our vocabulary: a creative idea is a breath of fresh air. If it's really useful …
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Explained
There are, unfortunately, plenty of things in everyday life that can kill you. A traffic accident, slipping in the shower or choking on a chicken nugget can all happen when you least expect it. Most …
Tips and Tricks to Help you Get to Sleep
Sleeping is one of the easiest things to do, so why can it be so difficult to fall asleep and then stay asleep? Personally, I have fought with insomnia in different periods of my life. The problem …
Are Treadmills a Substitute for Outdoor Running?
Anyone who remembers their high school physics (F = m.a, E = F.s, and so forth) will probably guess that running on a treadmill should be a lot easier than covering actual miles you can count on a …
The Right Number of Steps to Take Each Day
Sports scientists and personal trainers actually disagree on a great many important things. Even so, most of them will tell you that if you want to burn fat fast, you should aim at either: …
How Relative Humidity Affects Work
With the possible exception of a certain green cartoon character, nobody would call a swamp their favorite place in the world. For that matter, few people really love their workplaces all that much. …
Ideal Resting Heart Rate for Your Health
The first thing this article should make clear is this: there really is no "ideal" resting heart rate that applies to everyone, even people who seem physically similar. General recommendations are a …
How Accurate is a Wrist Heart Rate Monitor
If you care enough about your health and/or fitness to be thinking of buying a heart rate monitor, you may also care enough to want to know which you can trust to give a correct reading. There are, …
A Beginners Guide to Camping
Before anything else, I want to begin by saying that the best way to survive in the wild as a newbie is to bring a lot of the comforts of the indoors with you. This isn't about backpacking through …
What Does a HEPA Filter Do, How Does It Work?
If you or someone you know has asthma, allergies, or a weakened immune system, you've probably heard or read about HEPA filters. You might have gotten the idea that it was a good thing in some way, …
The Long and the Short of Standing Desk Ergonomics
By now, it is pretty well accepted that sitting for long, uninterrupted periods each day is bad for your health – even if you're physically active otherwise. Under pressure from their employees, and …
Indoor Plants that Purify the Air
Most people are worried about what effect pollution is having on their bodies, but only in a very vague, general way. With so much contradictory information surrounding the topic, many aren't quite …
How Long do Germs Live on Surfaces?
Germs – they're everywhere. A single milliliter of "fresh" water might contain as many as a million bacteria, while even NASA's clean rooms have (rather embarrassingly) been found to contain . One …
The Health Risks of Prolonged Sitting
Everybody knows that physically active people have significantly better cardiovascular health. Every doctor in the world will advise you to get fit, feel better, and reduce your chances of joining the …