Health Tips Line

Traveling alone can seem like the most freeing experience … or the most terrifying. Luckily, there’s a way to dip your toes into solo travel without losing the security of a group vacation: Take a hybrid solo trip. It’s the ideal getaway for anyone who longs to wander the world alone but breaks out in a cold sweat just thinking about booking that ticket for one. When I started my international tour company, EscapingNY, I noticed that many of my guests liked the idea of solo travel, but they weren’t quite ready for it. They joined my tours because I offered a lot of different activities but still allowed free time to explore. These travelers often got comfortable in the group setting, then gained the confidence to go out on their own during free time, even in faraway places like Cuba and Jordan. I’ve relied on hybrid solo travel myself—it’s a great way to vacation with friends or family who have different travel styles from my own. So how can you make it work for you? Drawing on my ...

When my younger son started preschool, I ran into one of the moms and called out, “Hi, Natalie!” Then the panic hit: No, wait—that’s her kid’s name! What’s her name?! I still don’t know because I bolted out of there, totally embarrassed. We’ve all had that experience of meeting someone … and then completely spacing on their name moments later. Jake? Joe? Jay? I think it started with a “J” … but maybe I’m totally misremembering? You’re probably breaking into a cold sweat just reading that. That’s how stressful it is to try to remember a name . Luckily, there is a way to get rid of this stress altogether. It’s a mind trick that Randy Charach, a mentalist based in Vancouver, Canada, swears by to keep track of new names (which he has to do during every performance). Let’s just say, this is totally going to change your life, and no, I am not exaggerating. Keep reading to learn this handy hack, the fascinating brain science of memory behind it, and how to lock down names when you meet ...

We’ve all been there. After a long trip, you finally arrive at your hotel, exhausted, and collapse into the beautifully made bed, not a sheet corner out of place. Except … well, you can’t really collapse because, as you pull and wrench and sweat, the sheets are tucked so tightly, you can’t make enough room for your body to actually slide beneath them. I personally enjoy the feeling of a tightly made hotel bed. It can have the effect of a weighted blanket for me, the heft and sturdiness of the bedding helping me reach a state of calm after a stressful day of travel. Even if it takes me a minute to get there, that is. But there is an obvious question hidden beneath those layers of ironed sheets: Why are they so tight in the first place? Is it solely for appearance? Are there any other benefits? Like so many other aspects of everyday life we tend to take for granted, there’s a real history here. You just have to fold back the comforter to understand this hotel mystery —and we’re doing...

My husband and I have what I can only describe as an ongoing cold war over phone calls. He calls. I text. He calls me back when I text him. I text him back when he calls. We have been married for more than 20 years (including the era when we had to pay for individual texts!), and this has never been resolved. The conflict crystallized for me yesterday when he called while I was in the middle of making dinner, helping one kid with homework, mentally writing an article and also existing as a person with approximately 107 thoughts happening simultaneously. I saw his name light up my screen—which was already in my hand—and I let it go to voicemail. Then I texted: Hey, what’s up? He called again. I texted again : Why are you calling? Just text me. He texted back: Because I just wanted to hear your voice. It makes me happy. Oh, the feelings I had in that moment! I felt like a complete jerk. He wasn’t trying to inconvenience me. He just wanted to talk to me. His wife. Whom he loves. And my...

You triple-check the envelope, add the stamp and drop it in the mailbox before the deadline. Done and done, right? That’s what most people assume. It makes sense that if you mail something on time, it’s considered sent on time. But here’s the catch: Your mail isn’t postmarked when you put it in the mailbox. It’s postmarked when it’s processed at a postal facility. And that misunderstanding could cost you in a big way. A subtle but important shift in how the United States Postal Service (USPS) handles mail processing means your postmark date may not be what you think it is. And yes, that could cause you to miss critical deadlines for mail that needs to be postmarked by a certain date, all without even realizing it. Here’s what’s going on and, most critically, how to make sure your important mail isn’t marked as late. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more life tips, cleaning, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long. Did the U.S. Postal Service upd...

Earlier this year, a man posted on Facebook that his mother-in-law had just laughed at him for not knowing what the tiny hole at the bottom of nail clippers is for. The post went viral. Thousands of people piled on to confess they’d never given much thought to this everyday object . Some said they assumed it was decorative. Others had theories. A few, including myself, boldly claimed they’d always known. (I said as much to my husband, who gave me the look he reserves for moments when I am technically correct but not as charming about it as I think I am.) The kerfuffle sent me down a rabbit hole that eventually led to Jake Peters, the founder and CEO of EDJY, a company that has done something no one has done in about 145 years: fundamentally reimagined the nail clipper. Peters has traveled the world to buy and analyze nail clipper designs, owns hundreds of them, built a team that includes an engineer who designed suspension systems for cars and otherwise has become the closest thing to...

It’s not like Andrew McCarthy didn’t have any close male friends. The actor just rarely saw them. Or talked to them. Or involved them in his day-to-day life. So when his son Sam called him out one day at the kitchen table about his lack of connections , McCarthy was shaken to his core. “It had been so long without having these active friendships,” he says. “These guys were instrumental to me when I was a young guy. Then they all moved away, and I was the last one standing.” So he got moving … and writing. And in Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America (out March 24), he shows just what friends are for. In the book, McCarthy, who’s authored four other nonfiction works, travels nearly 10,000 miles to talk to men—from cowboys to blues musicians to teenagers—about their male friendships. He also meets up with some of his own long-lost pals. “I didn’t plan to do it all at one time—it just evolved that way,” he says. “I would approach random dudes...