Vitamin D Can Prevent Cancers Now?

Should we be glad to hear this since our country is practically at the equator and receives a healthy amount of sunlight?

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations. [...]

Read more here.

Moving Your Eyes Improves Memory

If you’re looking for a quick memory fix, move your eyes from side-to-side for 30 seconds.

Horizontal eye movements are thought to cause the two hemispheres of the brain to interact more with one another, and communication between brain hemispheres is important for retrieving certain types of memories. [...]

Read more about it here.

Do you need eight hours of sleep?

A survey is suggesting that only a tiny minority of us are getting eight hours' sleep a night. But do we really need that much?

[...]It's become an increasingly common sentiment that too much work and stress and missing out on our eight hours is the modern plague.

But the good news, says Prof Jim Horne, director of Loughborough University's Sleep Research Centre, is that we don't need eight hours at all.

"It's nonsense. It's like saying everybody should have size eight shoes, or be five foot eight inches.

"There is a normal distribution - the average sleep length is seven, seven and a quarter hours."

Lots of people report having more or less than the average, he said. It may all be down to genes, and what people are accustomed to. [...]

In a nutshell, if you sleep for eight hours a night go to work and find yourself lolling and drooling on the keyboard, you aren't getting enough. If you're sleeping five hours and running the country, you probably are getting enough. [...]

Read the full article here.