Nutrition Corner

15 Healthiest Fruits to Eat, According to a Dietitian: What is the healthiest fruit? Blueberries top the list of healthiest fruits for weight loss, heart and gut health.

The 8 Healthiest Nuts You Can Eat, According to Science: We looked at current research and spoke with a registered dietitian to learn more about the healthiest nuts you can eat.

Recipe for The Day

The Best Vegetable & Noodle Soup: This brothy vegetable noodle soup is perfect for a crisp fall evening. It’s hearty, satisfying and an easy way to get your daily dose of veggies. We call for dark-green lacinato kale, but curly kale will work just as well. We love how the tiny pieces of orzo sop up the broth, but any small whole-wheat noodle gets the green light in this versatile soup.

Lifestyle & Fitness Focus

4 Best Brain Exercises To Stay Mentally Sharp as You Age

• Stimulate your sense of smell: The fact is that olfactory stimulation is an amazing brain exercise. Your sense of smell is directly integrated into the emotional centers and the memory centers of your brain. So, by stimulating your sense of smell—with novel odors or a mixture thereof—you are not only evoking emotion, but are also stoking the neurologic pathways that build memories and reducing neuroinflammation, the underpinning of neurodegenerative diseases.

• Use your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth: An excellent way to challenge your contralateral brain (the right side for most individuals) is to brush your teeth using your non-dominant hand! This will promote the synthesis of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) that facilitates synapse formation (neuron-to-neuron connectivity) not only locally, but throughout the brain.

• Balance on one foot for 30 seconds: Put your balance to the test by standing on one foot for just 30 seconds. Do this exercise on each leg for 30 seconds a day. This exercises the vestibular (balance) centers of the brain.

• Perform strength training: Strength training is beneficial to your health for many reasons, but did you know it can also make your brain stronger? Lifting weights 'lights up' large motor pathways in the brain and spinal cord.

3 Natural Ways to Lower Your Cortisol Levels

• Get the right amount of sleep: Prioritizing sleep may help reduce cortisol levels. Chronic sleep issues such as obstructive sleep apnea, insomnia, or shift work are associated with higher cortisol. Insomnia refers to difficulty sleeping. It can result from many things, including stress and obstructive sleep apnea. This can increase circulating cortisol, which affects your daily hormone patterns, energy levels, and other facets of your health.

• Get regular exercise: Exercise can increase or decrease cortisol depending on the intensity. Intense exercise increases cortisol shortly afterward but decreases it a few hours later. This short-term increase helps coordinate the growth of the body to meet the challenge. Additionally, the size of the cortisol response lessens with routine training.

• Learn to recognize stressful thinking: Adding a mindfulness-based practice to your daily routine may help you manage stress and reduce cortisol levels. Mindfulness-based stress reduction is a strategy that involves becoming more self-aware of stress-provoking thoughts, accepting them without judgment or resistance, and allowing yourself to process them. Training yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension helps you recognize stress when it begins.

Is Black Coffee Good For You? 3 Benefits of Black Coffee

• It Gives You a Healthier Liver: Unlike drinking alcohol every day, drinking black coffee actually improves your liver. It’s been shown that people who drink four or more cups of coffee a day have as much as an 80% lower rate of cirrhosis of the liver.

• It Makes You Smarter: Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant. When you drink coffee, the caffeine travels into your digestive system, then into your bloodstream, and eventually to your brain. When it hits your brain, it blocks one of your inhibitory neurotransmitters, Adenosine. This leads to an increase in other neurotransmitters (norepinephrine and dopamine), causing the neurons in your brain to fire more rapidly.

• It Boosts Your Metabolism by 11%: Want to lose a little weight? Not as active as you’d like to be? Drink coffee. As one of the few substances to ever be directly associated with burning fat, caffeine is found in nearly every fat burning or weight loss supplement. This doesn’t mean you should drink coffee instead of working out. You should probably still do both. But it can lead to a healthier, happier you.

4 Compound Exercises to Strip Away Love Handles

• Deadlifts: The deadlift is a foundational compound exercise that engages the entire body, including the core, lower back, and glutes. By lifting a heavy load from the ground, deadlifts promote full-body strength and calorie burn, contributing to the reduction of love handles.

• Squat and Press: Combining squats and overhead presses creates a dynamic compound movement that engages the lower body, core, and shoulders. This exercise not only boosts metabolism but also strengthens the core, aiding in love handle elimination.

• Renegade Rows: Renegade rows target the core, back, and arms, making them an excellent compound exercise for love handle reduction. The alternating rowing motion engages the obliques, helping to sculpt and define the waistline.

• Mountain Climbers: Mountain climbers are a high-intensity compound exercise that elevates the heart rate while engaging the core. This dynamic movement targets the entire abdominal region, aiding in love handle reduction.

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