Health Tips Line

Last Labor Day, 30-year-old Emily Del­Favero was enjoying a rare day off from her job as an auto mechanic. She was puttering around her house in Syracuse, New York, when she paused to check her Facebook feed. To DelFavero’s delight, there was a new post from one of her favorite Facebook groups , Weird (and Wonderful) Secondhand Finds That Just Need to Be Shared. The latest find, spotted at a shop in Baltimore by Thea Lenna, was a chair beyond compare, and when DelFavero saw it, she just about fell out of hers. It had pastel polka dots along its frame, bright stripes on the seat cushion and, at its back, two giant fish carved out of wood. She recognized it right away. This was the hand-painted handiwork of well-known designer Victoria MacKenzie-Childs. More relevant, it was the image inked onto Del­Favero’s own right calf. On a whim, she had gotten a tattoo of this exact chair nearly two years earlier, based on a dollhouse version of it that caught her eye at the MacKenzie-Childs stud...

For Jenny Lynn Anderson, traveling solo for the first time wasn’t just about seeing the world—it was about rediscovering herself in her mid-50s. “After 30 years of marriage and a few years post-divorce, I found myself standing at a crossroads. I had gone back to work full-time and needed a mental vacation from my busy job in marketing,” explains the 62-year-old travel expert behind the blog Jenny Lynn on a Journey. “I went to New York City for a long weekend , acted like a tourist and did everything from booking a trolley tour of the city to seeing Hamilton on Broadway. It met every expectation that I had dreamed of, and I felt like a bird being released from a cage.” And she isn’t alone. Solo travel has surged in popularity in recent years, with the global solo travel market projected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, according to Solo Traveler World. In fact, according to Airbnb’s 2026 travel predictions, “solo travel is experiencing a renaissance, fueled by online conversations that ...

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...