Health Tips Line

I was a very tightly wound child. I basically needed a stuffie, a set routine and a full daily debrief before bed just to function. And the library was one of the only places that could get my nervous system to stand all the way down. A huge part of what was so relaxing to me then, and still soothes me now, is the smell of the library—especially the smell of old books. You know the one: that spicy, dusky, stale perfume that rises up the second you crack open a paperback older than you. There’s even a word for this specific breed of book love: bibliosmia. It was coined in 2014 by Oliver Tearle, an English professor who mashed together the Greek words for book and smell to describe the particular joy of sniffing old pages. If you’ve ever caught yourself burying your nose in a used paperback at a garage sale, congratulations—you’re a bibliosmiac, and you’re in excellent company. In fact, so many of us love this smell that one perfumery sells both an ...

Have you had a nice big salad lately? If the daily onslaught of news about Cyclospora outbreaks and recalls caused by fresh lettuce has you reaching for the canned corn instead, I get it. I worked for more than a decade at a food safety laboratory, and the list of foods I considered never eating again got pretty long. But I never gave up on fresh fruits and veggies, because often the line between getting sick and feeling great is as simple as cleaning them the right way. That’s where things tend to go off the rails. When we’re in our own kitchens, we tend to get a little complacent. We clean regularly, we wipe up spills promptly—what’s the big deal if a grape rolls into the sink ? Usually, everything’s fine, but germs don’t care about the five-second rule, or how clean your kitchen looks. Even if you’re diligent, you might be doing things completely wrong by following outdated safety advice or faddish trends making the rounds on social media. A...

There’s a common phrase about summertime weather where I live in the Mid-Atlantic: “It’s not the heat that gets you. It’s the humidity.” Whatever it is, when the temperature climbs into the high 80s and beyond, it’s pretty miserable. Being outdoors for mere minutes can leave you dripping with sweat, and wearing even the thinnest of clothing can feel like you’ve donned a wool sweater. And sleeping soundly? Forget about it. Even the most calm, cheerful and mild-mannered among us might notice their mood worsens on extremely hot days . And they’re right: The heat can make us feel cranky, irritable or downright angry—and there’s a scientific reason for it. I talked to Brynna Connor, MD, a family medicine physician and health-care ambassador at Northwest Pharmacy, and Rachel Marquez, MD, a family medicine doctor and regional medical director of external affairs at Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic, to find out why the heat affects our ...

One of my editors has a grudge she’s been nursing for years, and I’ve decided it is my journalistic duty to air it. It was Christmas morning. She was in her pajamas, surrounded by her family and wrapping paper, doing exactly what a person should be doing on Christmas morning, which is nothing. Then her phone buzzed. Naturally, she assumed it was a relative with holiday wishes. It was her CEO. On Teams. With a question. Oh, it wasn’t an emergency, like “the building is on fire and you alone know where we keep the extinguisher.” It was just a regular question—the kind that could have waited until January, or frankly, until the heat death of the universe. And her first thought was not: What a flexible, modern leader! Her first thought was: Am I in trouble? On Christmas?! She is still not over it. And when she told me this story, I nodded sympathetically, made an appropriately outraged noise and then had a small internal crisis. Because reader, I am the...

I am cheap and have an unusually high tolerance for being squished against strangers, so I rarely spring for a seat assignment when I fly. But when I do get to choose, it’s window, every time, no debate. I like to lean my head against the wall, pull my hood over my face and pretend I’m a burrito being gently rocked to sleep (in a cradle that smells like gasoline and feet). It’s very comforting. My husband, on the other hand, prefers the aisle, because he has a serious medical condition called “ants in his pants” and cannot go an hour without getting up to “stretch his legs.” (Translation: wander the galley making small talk with strangers.) We’ve been married a long time and have never once resolved this. Turns out, we may not need to! According to flight attendants, we were basically doomed to pick these seats from the start. And, apparently, we’re not even the weird ones—it’s shockingly common for couples to sit slight...