Health Tips Line

Mattresses Here’s a tempting secondhand purchase. The best mattresses are expensive new, and it’s not uncommon to see “barely used” options for sale online or at resale shops. The problem: Mattresses are extremely difficult to clean thoroughly. Maldonado, who is also a chemist and biologist, says old mattresses can harbor everything from allergens to bacteria to pests (I mean, just think of the possibilities!). Dust mites—microscopic creatures linked to allergies, asthma and skin conditions like dermatitis—thrive in mattresses because they provide an ideal habitat: warm temperatures, humidity and a steady supply of their favorite food, human skin cells. Mattresses can also harbor bed bugs, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says can cause severe itching, sleep loss and secondary infections from scratching. And once you have bed bugs, you are in for a massive amount of time and expense getting rid of them. If you absolutely must buy a used mattress, inspect it c...

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...