LSNED

After reading all about the depressed freezing point of the sugar solution in ice cream, you just had to get a closer look, right? There you were, happily shoveling ice cream into your face when all of a sudden… brainfreeze! Arrrgh! Also called ice cream headaches, these sudden pains can be triggered by any excessively cold food or drink.

The cause of this shooting pain is a chilled palate. That’s the roof of your mouth. When you eat your ice cream or slushy drink too fast your palate doesn’t have time to warm up between bites. It eventually drops to the critical temperature that causes the reaction.

The blood vessels in your head contract and dilate causing the rather serious pain at the “back of your nose” or behind the eyes. No matter how much you jump around, the feeling will pass in 30 seconds or so when things warm up again.

Apparently that’s the same feeling as a migraine headache. Thinking back to my last painful brainfreeze moment, it gives me new empathy for migraines sufferers who have to deal with that for hours on end.

Personally, I’m going to put this new knowledge to good use. Being aware and cautious of my sensitive palate means I’ll never have to experience this terrible sensation ever again. It’s a good thing.

• Source: “What Causes Brain Freeze?” article from the Edmonton Journal

Many of my lessons here at LSNED are inspired by random curiosity. Yesterday the thought came to me, as I was standing outside in my wool jacket, scarf, mittens, and toque… why does my nose run when it’s cold? Being that November is an ideal month for general nose awareness, I thought it appropriate to pass on what I learned about snot.

Snot, or more technically accurate (but not as fun) “mucus”, is produced inside your nose and sinuses as a first line defence against germs and dust in the air. It works like fly-paper, basically, as particles will stick in the goop before it gets inhaled into your lungs where it could cause more serious trouble. You produce about a quart of mucus every day. Or a litre, for you metrically-inclined. That’s a full bottle of snot every day. Gross.

As for why it might be dripping out your nose, it could be one of many reasons. Of course, when we’re sick with a flu or cold our mucus production goes into overdrive making more than the usual daily quota. It can overfill your sinuses, causing you to get stuffed up, and we all know it runs out your nose like a gooey waterfall. It’s working extra hard to prevent those airborne germs from coming in and getting you doubly sick.

If you have allergies to pet hair, or pollen, or anything else it can cause a runny nose. Allergies are caused when your body interprets something, like dog hair, as a germ and it reacts the same as if you were sick. Again, turning on the snot faucet.

When you cry (and we already learned the health benefits of crying) you get a runny nose, but it has nothing to do with sickness or germs. In that case, the tears produced in your eyes also drain into your sinuses, mixing with the mucus, and making things all runny.

Lastly, the answer to my pondering, when it’s cold outside your body turns on your nose heater so as to warm up the incoming air before it hits your lungs. As the flow increases to the blood vessels in the nose, that triggers more mucus production and the overflow starts on it’s epic journey south causing the traditional Canadian greeting: “(sniff) Hi, (sniff – sniff) it sure is (sniff) cold out there! (sniff)”

• Source: http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/nose_run.html

As I sit here, all sniffly, clinging to a tall glass of orange juice, I am somewhat surprised to discover that there is no evidence to support vitamin C as an effective protector against colds. Whether you take it as a regular supplement, or just pack it in after the cold hits, it doesn’t help prevent colds, and it doesn’t help you recover from colds. Bummer.

This is the conclusion of multiple scientific studies, comparing vitamin C against placebos in varying doses and schedules. With the rather odd exception of marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers training in the arctic, most people received no increased protection from the ravages of the sniffles.

So vitamin C won’t help your achy-stuffy-watery-goobery self get through a cold, but don’t knock it. It still has many other health benefits such as preventing further complications from colds, keeping your skin looking young, and reduce the risk of strokes, cancer, and heart troubles. Oh, and scurvy.

Bonus fact: On the other hand, grandma’s chicken soup has been proven to have scientific merit for fighting colds. The combination of the heat, the broth, and the vegetables do make for a beneficial treatment.

• Source: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold
• Source: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-benefits-of-vitamin-c

At one point, we were all pretty hairy. Completely hairy. While most of us have lost the bulk of our body hair, the internal wiring is still present, as evidenced by goosebumps. (or goosepimples as I’ve heard some folks say)

Goosebumps are an automatic reaction of the nervous system that flexes the piloerector muscle found at every hair follicle. Piloerector literally means making the hair stand on end. This reaction is caused by one of two things… either you are cold, or you are scared.

Looking at cats, or anything else more furry than us, they can puff up their fur when it’s cold to trap and hold more air around thier body, thus insulating and staying warmer. Our goosebumps are trying to do the same thing.

As for being scared, the fur puffing reaction is seen in many animals as an attempt to make themselves appear larger and more threatening than they are. Again, without fur, it ain’t so scary… unless you fear chicken skin.

Today the only benefit of chest hair is that it keeps your chilly gold medallion from directly contacting your skin.

• Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/09/08/2679925.htm

Tomorrow morning I vanish off the face of the earth, technologically speaking, for eight days. I’m leaving and I’ll be totally un-wired. I was planning on writing eight extra LSNED facts this weekend, and scheduling them to trickle out while I was gone. Eight. That’s a lot. Each one takes over an hour to uncover, research, write, and illustrate. I worried about it. I hated the thought of a lapse in my once-a-day continuity (this post marks 70 days without a hiccup). Surely I’d be letting down my readers. As the weekend arrived, the task grew from a worry to a stress.

Just now, at the moment I began writing this, I freed myself from that un-fun, stressful task simply… with a shrug. Here’s some suggestions that may help you de-stress your life.

#1 – Realize it probably doesn’t matter. The majority of what seems critically important today has a very short life span. It will dull by tomorrow, and by months end be a faded memory. My “legacy” of once-a-day-every-day posts, I realized, really only mattered to me. The rest of the world will be un-affected, if they even notice.

#2 – Play matters. Play often. I feel it’s very important for adults to do things that don’t matter at all, except that you enjoy doing them. The key is to release any feelings of guilt. As Dr. Stuart Brown explains in this video, play is vital, beneficial, and makes you smarter. Writing this blog is play, except when I feel “forced” to write eight posts in one day!

#3 – Shop less. Much stress is caused by the earn/spend life cycle. It’s very easy to buy things we don’t need, then spend more unnecessary time working to pay for those useless items. I know some people go shopping as a form of entertainment. Yikes! I personally have a wait-and-see tactic. If I feel the urge to buy something, I don’t give in then and there. I wait to see if I still want it next week, or next month. (this rule does not apply to chocolate bars)

#4 - Move slower. The most stressful part of rushing, for me, is that your mind is focused on where you intend to end up rather than where you are. The zen concept is “being in the moment”, and the folk version is “stopping to smell the flowers”. Take things slow and be mindful of what you’re doing. The insight that comes from that also helps you to discover certain tasks that may not really matter, as above. (I made the decision to not write those 8 posts while laying in a hammock)

#5 – Don’t worry, be happy. If a fish can learn to sing, dag nabbit you better listen! Don’t worry. Worry will never change anything. Either do something about it, or accept that the thing in question is beyond your control. There is never a good reason to worry. Be happy. Author Dan Millman says to practice unreasonable happiness, which is simply being happy without any particular reason. You and only you are 100% responsible for your mood.

I do appreciate all you folks who visit, read, and hopefully enjoy my blog.  I’ll be back again with fact-filled daily posts after my adventure. In the meantime, I encourage you to try applying some of these thoughts to your life. If you do run short on facts, be sure to check out any of the other 69 posts I’ve made around here.

• Source: cobbled from various collected wisdom and things that I at least try to practice in my daily life.

Much like the story on hammocks, I’ve put a lot of personal research time into this topic. I just hope you appreciate the result of my intensive studies into napping. Here we have a quick lesson on how you can boost your productivity, energy, and creativity with a mid-day nap.

Step 1: Don’t feel guilty. Napping has a bad stigma about it, that napping is for lazy people. The truth is many of the highest achieving individuals throughout history understood and appreciated the power of a good nap. Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and even the anything-but-lazy Lance Armstrong. NASA conducted a study on naps and concluded a 34% increase of performance, and 54% boost to alertness.

Step 2: Pick the right time. Generally, the best time is whenever you feel draggy, or over-loaded. However, you may want to avoid late-afternoon, as napping during this low part of our daily cycle may leave you feeling groggy for an extended time. You will wake up from any nap feeling a little out of it, but that will pass within ten minutes and you’ll end up with more energy than before.

Step 3: Find the right spot. You need to be undisturbed for the next little while, and it’s also best if you can turn off the lights. Darkness stimulates a sleep-inducing hormone.

Step 4: Choose the right length for your nap. Up to a point, the longer you nap, the more restorative benefits you can rack up. Here’s a guide to optimal napping times…

• 10  to 20 seconds – there is no benefit from nodding off, other than signaling that you should take a real nap!
• 2 to 5 minutes – a quick way to shake off the feeling of sleepiness.
• 5 to 20 minutes – increased alertness and ability to learn and perform motor skills.
• 20 minutes – lets your brain rest enough to improve memory and ability to learn new information.
• 50 to 90 minutes – you get in some deep sleep as well, allowing your whole body to rest and restore

So the ideal target is 15 to 20 minutes. Set an alarm and go for it. Albert Einstein would nap in his chair while holding a pencil. He would wake up when he naturally dropped the pencil, to ensure he didn’t fall into a deep sleep, then he went back to what he was working on with more alertness and energy… and boy did that guy know energy!

• Source: http://some-interesting-facts.blogspot.com/2008/04/10-benefits-of-power-napping-and-how-to.html

It has long been believed that the appendix, a small cul-de-sac thingy that hangs off your intestine, served no purpose. The theory was that it was merely a dried up evolutionary leftover of something that used to serve a purpose. Well not anymore! The appendix is finally getting the credit it has deserved (for the last 80 million years or so) as a contributor to the well-being of your body.

New research at Duke University Medical Center is suggesting that the appendix might play an important role in your immune system. That little soft-tissue cubby-hole might in fact be a clubhouse where all the cool white blood cells can hang out and trade tips on fighting disease. Also it can store good bacteria so it’s ready and waiting when called upon to support the troops.

Perhaps the reason that the appendix remained a mystery for so long is that we are too darn healthy. Due to modern sanitation, the immune system has less work to do. Much like teenagers, boredom equals trouble. Some medical problems, from allergies to diabetes (things that barely existed more than 100 years ago), may in fact be caused by an under-utilized immune system. So get out there and eat some dirt.*

*I’m not a real doctor, so you probably shouldn’t accept any medical advice on this blog.

• Source: http://www.livescience.com/health/090824-appendix-evolution.html (suggested by David Greene)