Health Tips Line

I always buckle up when traveling by car , shuttle bus or plane, even when the seat belt sign is off. I realize this may sound a little extra, but as a frequent traveler, I’ve experienced my share of turbulence. In some cases, if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, I would have likely hit my head or been otherwise injured. But in my 20-plus years of traveling around the world, I’ve never seen a seat belt on a train—not even on the high-speed bullet train I rode when I lived in Japan. Given that seat belts are required on so many modes of transportation, isn’t it strange that they aren’t even an option on trains? It sure seems like it! To solve this travel mystery, I spoke with transportation safety expert Thomas Barth, a former survival factors investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. Ahead, he explains why trains don’t have seat belts and whether that makes them more dangerous than other modes of transportation. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter ...

There are a lot of eye-catching and weird car features in your vehicle, no matter the make and model. So we’ll forgive you for overlooking a tiny, less-flashy detail: the plastic button on your seat belt. Yes, it’s there for a reason. And if you’re like me (curious about everything!), you’re probably wondering, What is the little button on the seat belt for? To find out the purpose of that mysterious plastic button, I spoke with Thomas Barth, a safety expert, contract engineer and former survival factors investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, who has 20 years of occupant safety experience in the private automotive and aircraft industries. Turns out, that small detail is a big win for convenience. Read on to learn what the little button on the seat belt is for and what to do if it comes off. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more car tips, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long. What is the little button on the seat belt for? Ba...

I’m not a big honker (not that kind of honker, excuse you), but I’ll tap my horn when someone turns illegally or stares at their phone through an entire green light. Or—and this happened to me just this morning—when a kid on an e-bike is cruising down the middle of the street in the dark, helmet-free, like he’s got a steel skull. Admittedly, I don’t know the proper driving etiquette in these situations. Is a single honk OK but a series of 10 toots poor form? Is lying on the horn for a full minute a driving faux pas? And for that matter, can your car run out of “honk” if you’re a little too horn-happy? It sounds like the kind of question a 5-year-old asks on a long road trip , right up there with “Are we there yet?” But plenty of grown adults wonder about this too. I started really pondering it after a car alarm went off at 2 a.m. and honked nonstop for what felt like an eternity. (OK, it was probably 30 seconds, but time moves differently when you’re listening to an uninterrupted ho...

Even after the weather turns cold, you can still remember the sweet taste of a ripe, ruby-red June strawberry. But here’s a surprising food fact : These delectable delights were not always the size, taste or even color they are today. And they almost didn’t exist—the fate of the modern strawberry hinged on a chance discovery by a French spy in South America in the early 1700s. Turns out, the history of the strawberry is as juicy as the fruit itself. Thinking about strawberries and history, I can’t help but picture the strawberry-picking scene in the early 19th-century novel Emma. Jane Austen wrote the book a century after our spy’s tale, but the fruit Emma noshed on is still very different from the kind we eat today. As the two berry experts I spoke with attest, strawberries are ever-changing, and scientists are still perfecting them. Ahead, find out the thrilling tale of the spy’s fateful voyage, the fruit’s perilous journey back and forth across the Atlantic, and the happy acciden...

Halloween is supposed to scare you. It’s all malevolent witches, goblins, ghosts and shadowy beings haunting the void between the world of the living and the world of the dead. So how did adorable black cats get lumped in with all those ghastly ghouls? I mean, cats are notorious for sneaking into places where they are not supposed to be, but the underworld ? “It does seem like cats got a bad rap,” says Meghan Henning, PhD, a professor of Christian origins at the University of Dayton in Ohio. In fact, the story of how the black cat became one of Halloween’s most famous symbols is a dark and twisty tale that dates back to the holiday’s earliest origins and the cat’s penchant for getting in the middle of everything. Read on to discover how the superstition started and what legend says about the black cat ‘s connection to the spookiest day of the year. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more holidays, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long. What do blac...

As much as the internet has changed over the past decade—with everything from better access to AI chatbots—one thing has remained largely the same: the essential web browser. For many (if not most) of us, the web browser is still the primary way we access the internet. But not all web browsers are the same, and they certainly aren’t equal when it comes to online security . Whether you mostly access the internet for work, school, everyday web surfing or all of the above, websites are constantly collecting little bits of information about you and your online habits. Some browsers are much better than others when it comes to protecting your privacy —and there’s one browser that’s arguably the worst offender. Suffice it to say, your choice of browser is more important than it might seem. Just how important? I talked to Bob Gourley, cybersecurity consultant and author of The Cyber Threat , to find out. Read on to learn which browsers do the best job of keeping your online activity private...