Health Tips Line

When I was in elementary school, I knew two things about Liz: She dotted her i’s with bubbles, and she couldn’t do a handstand. The first I learned from the name plate on her desk, and the second because we spent hours during recess trying to “teach” each other how to walk on our hands. After a week of face-plants and grass stains, I added a third thing to my list: She was my best friend . That’s all it took. No “we should hang out sometime,” no “we should exchange numbers” (not like we had phones then anyhow), and certainly no agonizing for three days over whether double-texting is a social crime . It was simply: handstand, face-plant, friendship, forever.  And you likely have a similar story. But making friends as an adult is a whole different thing. I’ve been a fitness teacher for more than a decade, which has given me a front-row seat to watching adult friendships form. For example, there were two women in my early mor...

“Was color TV around when you were a kid?” Color television was invented in 1953. You and I were born well after that. And yet here is a child, whose entire visual life has been 4K HDR, asking whether you experienced colors as a child. They’re not entirely off base in their reasoning—their grandparents did grow up with black-and-white TV, and you are, to them, also old. What you can do now is call your mom and tell her you finally understand how she felt when you asked her if she knew Abraham Lincoln personally. “Wow, people live that long?” This one requires context: The child is not reacting to an advanced age. They are reacting to your age, whatever it is. Forty-two. Fifty-one. Thirty-six. To a 9-year-old, all of these numbers represent a span of time so vast, it is barely comprehensible. You have been alive for basically their entire lifespan four times over. You are, by their math, a marvel of endurance. And I have to say that getting older ha...

In a democracy, elections are our collective voice —even if, in our specific democracy, the loudest voices seem to be a bunch of email marketers. That’s going to be especially apparent this midterm season, which is well underway ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Warm up that delete finger, because it will be getting a workout. Why? Well, just when you thought your inbox couldn’t get any more stuffed with stuff you don’t want to read, a major email carrier recently launched new fundraising rules for political groups. And you can be certain they will take advantage of them. How much can possibly fit into our already-at-capacity inboxes? Just you wait. Things are about to get way worse—but there is something you can do about it. Read on for the details. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more news, tech, humor, travel and fun facts all week long. Why are we about to get an avalanche of political fundraising emails? Google recent...

It makes total sense that Josh Groban’s new album is called Cinematic , because his origin story sounds like something out of the movies: Anxious kid struggles to focus in school, joins the choir (and turns out to be pretty great at singing), works with a vocal coach, gets in front of Grammy-winning producer David Foster and then, at the age of 17, is sharing a stage with Celine Dion. And then … fame and fortune and happily ever after, right? “Well,” says Groban with a blush, when we sit down on a warm May day in New York City, “not exactly.” He fact-checks with a heap of modesty: The Celine Dion moment was just part of a rehearsal for the 1999 Grammys. Famed tenor Andrea Bocelli—set to duet with the Canadian superstar on the broadcast—wasn’t able to make it to practice, so Foster called Groban to stand in. “And while I think, in hindsight, I held my own through the nerves to sing with Celine,” he says with a chuckl...