Health Tips Line

Be honest: If you were the queen, would you ever pick up a vacuum, mop or sponge again? We certainly would not! A reprieve from cleaning seems like the greatest perk of the gig. (Well, that and the crown jewels .) But Queen Elizabeth II was built differently. According to biographies of the late monarch and staff who worked with her, she loved rolling up her sleeves and doing a very ordinary chore that you probably hate. So what household job is fit for a queen? Read on to find out. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more royals, cleaning, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long. Which cleaning task did the queen do herself? The late queen loved nothing more than taking off her jewels, popping on a pair of rubber gloves and washing the dishes after a meal. Think the image of the queen up to her elbows in dishwater sounds absurd? You’re not the only one. The late monarch threw a few prime ministers for a loop with her dishwashing. Former British Pr...

Many Americans aren’t getting a lot of sleep. I know because I used to be one of them. And in a 2024 study published in Sleep Health , researchers found that just 15% of nearly 65,000 participants got the doctor-recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Why is poor sleep such a common plight? There’s an endless list of reasons, but for me, it was always the tiny disruptions that did me in: My partner getting up for the bathroom, that cold whoosh of air leaking into the warm cocoon as he lifts up the comforter. The light of his reading lamp keeping me awake while I’m desperately trying to get some shut-eye. Not to mention the tossing and turning—his or mine—that left us both awake and just slightly enraged. That all changed when I started using something called the Scandinavian sleep method. It’s a deceptively simple yet completely transformative approach to co-sleeping that has helped my insomnia and made sleeping next to my partner more restful and enjoyable. Here’s wha...

Growing up, my siblings and I declared all-out war on one another every April Fools’ Day . And I do mean war . We put Saran wrap over the toilet bowl. We placed softened Tootsie Rolls on the toilet seat. We put Kool-Aid in the showerhead and, for good measure, in the toilet tank, so the water turned red every time someone flushed. (I am not recommending any of those, by the way. They are messy and got us in big trouble.) But the prank that really cemented our family legacy was the year we snuck into my brother’s room, moved every single piece of furniture and then put it all back exactly opposite—in a perfect mirror image. His desk was where his dresser was. His bed faced the wrong wall. Everything looked just slightly, cosmically wrong, and he was so confused, he wondered if he wasn’t healed yet from the concussion he’d gotten jumping off the roof onto the trampoline. In the end, he thought it was hilarious. We thought it was hilarious. And that’s the key— pranks for siblings only ...

Set-jetting. Sleepcations. Skip-gen trips. From the wildly adventurous to the downright weird (looking at you, airport aesthetic ), there’s truly no shortage of travel trends taking over our newsfeeds. Yet there’s one travel habit emerging among Gen Z faster than all the rest, with no plans of slowing down soon. This trip style empowers people with a sense of freedom while giving them space to focus on personal growth . It’s also the perfect way to meet like-minded people and return home feeling relaxed and full of purpose. Sounds pretty great, right? Read on to learn more about this growing trend, why travel experts love it and how to start planning your own version of this life-changing experience today. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more travel, tech, cleaning, humor and fun facts all week long. What is the big travel trend for Gen Z? Over the past few years, younger generations have fully embraced solo travel. Research from United Airlines...

Daryl follows a particular routine when it’s time to get to work. He gets into his gear, loosens up for a few seconds and takes a seat. Then a co-worker grabs a shoe and shoves it into Daryl’s face. Oh, by the way, Daryl is a dog . He’s a bloodhound, specifically. So sticking his snout deep into a sneaker is standard practice when the humans he works with at the Farmington (Missouri) Correctional Center’s K-9 unit need him to track someone down. On a blazing hot day last July, at the edge of a ravine about 60 miles south of St. Louis, 6-year-old Daryl was given one of the most important jobs of his life. He had to find a 13-year-old boy named Dakota “Cody” Trenkle Jr. The boy had been missing for more than three days, and his mom and stepdad, Stephanie and Jared Neely, were frantic with worry. Authorities believed Cody might be somewhere in that deep, wooded ravine, but time was running out for him if he didn’t have food or water. So Stephanie provided one of her son’s most pungent s...