How to Ease Travel Anxiety

I have a client—let’s call him Andre—who works hard all year at a demanding job. He could really use a vacation. But every year, he does the same thing. For one week in the middle of July, he goes to the same waterfront hotel about an hour’s drive from his home. He leaves the rest of his vacation time on the table. After many years of doing this, he’s let months and months of vacation time slip away.

Andre would love to travel more—to get away from the New England winter, to visit friends in his home country in Eastern Europe—but his worries won’t let him.

Andre’s predicament is surprisingly common. For him, the primary worry is “What if I get sick?” He justifies going to the hotel because if he were to get sick, his wife could easily drive him home to their local hospital.

You might worry about getting lost, contracting a foreign disease, or falling victim to a bombing or terrorist attack. You might be wary of being in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar language. Or it might just be a free-floating anxiety that something bad will happen. Frogs, locusts, and boils, anyone?

But no matter what, from leaving your passport in a taxi to leaving your undercooked lunch in a hastily-found restroom, we’ve got you covered like comprehensive trip insurance. Check out these 4 fears and what to do about them.

Fear #1: You’re worried about large-scale tragedy: accidents, terrorists, or other violence.

Plane crashes, public shootings, and trucks plowing into a crowd make worldwide headlines. Why? Not only because they’re tragic, but because of four factors made clear in a 2002 paper that followed the September 11th tragedy.

In the paper, researchers pointed out that in the months after September 11, many people chose to travel by car rather than by air, thus increasing their risk of being in an accident—car accidents are by far more common than air accidents. Then, after the subsequent anthrax attacks, many people took prophylactic antibiotics, thus contributing to the development of treatment-resistant bacteria—again, accelerating future risk. Why did so many of us make irrational decisions that felt safer, but actually weren’t?

The paper points out that we’re much more likely to be irrationally afraid of things that are:

• Uncontrollable versus controllable
• Grisly rather than mundane
• Novel rather than something we’ve lived with for a long time
• A cause of multiple deaths versus one death at a time

Mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and plane crashes fall into all four of the “irrational” categories: uncontrollable, grisly, novel, and a cause of multiple deaths. This is why these fears are so much more widespread than, say, fear of car accidents or fear of heart disease (which just happens to be the actual leading cause of death).

Here’s the bottom line: these tragedies do happen, but the chances that you’ll be in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time are miniscule. Chalk up your fear to the four reasons and make the rational choice instead.

Fear #2: You’re worried about anti-Americanism or other xenophobia.

It’s not just Americans traveling abroad that make locals roll their eyes—plenty of countries come with their own tourist clichés. No matter where you’re from, instead of worrying about being given a foreign stink-eye, be a positive ambassador from your country. Be an example of a respectful, curious tourist and you’ll not only get a friendly reception, but leave locals rethinking their stereotypes.

Fear #3: You have free-floating anxiety of the unknown.

The great unknowns of traveling breed stress. Each new day brings with it new foods, new streets to navigate, new sights, and new mind-boggling public transportation systems.

To counter all the newness, create your own source of familiarity by sticking with some old routines. Do what you love, just in a new place. Drink a cup of your favorite tea every morning. Write in your trusty journal every evening. Ask at your hotel or hostel for a good running route and pound the pavement in your usual shoes. Even if your circadian rhythms and GI tract are out of their routine, trusted habits can establish a sense of constancy and control amidst the irregularity (pun intended) of travel.

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Fear #4: You're worried because you don’t speak the language.

This is the bane of all perfectionists. You think if you aren’t fluent with a great accent to boot, you’ll be laughed all the way home. Not so. All you have to do is look like you’re trying. Commit a few key phrases to memory: “Where is the bathroom?” “Excuse me.” “Please,” “Thank you.” And of course, “How much is this?”

“I would like” combined with pointing and “please” will get you through any menu, bakery case, or farmer’s market. Throw in the numbers one through ten for addresses, phone numbers, and cost, and you’re golden. In most tourist destinations, you’ll be the hundredth bumbling tourist the waiter, store clerk, or taxi driver has encountered that day anyway. As long as you bumble with a smile, you’re way ahead of the game.

For worries about flying or driving, check out these from the archives:

How to Overcome Your Fear of Flying, Part 1

How to Overcome Your Fear of Flying, Part 2

How to Conquer Your Fear of Driving

And finally, a comprehensive tip:

Make a plan, but remember the 80/20 rule.

Anxiety occurs when things are uncertain. And unfortunately, when traveling, many things—from the weather to street closures to your immune system’s robustness are uncertain.

On any trip, something probably will go wrong, whether it’s as minor as a lost in translation order at a restaurant that nets you pasta in squid ink (this happened to me), or as major as getting evacuated from your hotel due to a flood (ditto).

But guess what? You can handle it. If you have a mental merry-go-round of a few big concerns, come up with a plan for each of them. If your luggage got lost, what would you do? If you got lost, what would you do?  For my client Andre, who was worried about getting sick, we talked about what he would do if he got sick in a faraway locale. It seemed simple, but once it dawned on him that most resorts and hotels have a clinic, or that he could simply ask hotel staff to help him get to a local hospital, he felt more at ease.

Now, here’s the catch: by safeguarding against mishaps, you may be able to reduce your anxiety. But anxiety is slippery. Solve one problem, and another “but what if” often pops up.

Enter the 80/20 rule. You can prepare for 80% of mishaps with 20% of the effort. Read travel blogs and reviews to find out where to go, photocopy your passport and credit cards, get trip insurance if it makes you feel better, and don’t get rip-roaring drunk and then wave your money around. Totally reasonable, right?

But then, draw the line. If you find yourself on Google Maps mapping out escape routes from Roman piazzas in case of a terrorist attack, or programming the addresses of Hawaiian hospitals in your phone, you’ve probably gone too far. Ask if you’re preparing for something likely, or if it just feels likely because you’re scared (or because of the four reasons from Fear  #1).

Here’s a good litmus test: would you instruct a friend to do the same thing? In Andre’s case, I asked if he’d advise a friend, “Hey man, make sure you only travel within an hour from home in case you get sick.” Andre actually laughed, and the next time I saw him, he had booked a trip to the Bahamas in February.

To bring it on home (or away from home, as it were), anxiety makes you feel incapable. It tells you the world is dangerous. As a result, it keeps your world small. So instead, do what you want, not what your anxiety wants. The next time you get packing, you’ll be able to send your travel anxiety packing, too. 

Get more savvy by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or get the episode delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the newsletter.  Plus, follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

The Rise and Fall of Bat Masterson

In the third installment of guest host Tom Clavin's Unknown History podcast, he dives deeper into the lives of Dodge City, Kansas' leading pioneers. The most violent town in the west attracted frontiersmen from all over the continent including lawman Bat Masterson, born in Canada. He didn't stay in Dodge City for long, though. What promoted Masterson to leave?

Listen in the top right hand player or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify to learn more about:

• All about Bat Masterson's pioneer life
• Masterson's transition to newspaper journalism
• Masterson's "journalist" death

Pick up a copy of Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Booksamillion, or iBooks—or if you prefer to listen, check out the audiobook on Audible. 

Gestures Are Handy for Speaking and Thinking

Do you talk with your hands? Speaking and gesturing go together so unconsciously we often don’t bother to pay attention to what we are doing with our hands while we speak. We think of gesture as communicating, but if that is true, why do we gesture when we are on the telephone? Even blind people who have never seen another person gesture will gesture. There is something more going on here, even if we are not often aware of it.

So, what drives our need to gesture?

And how does the language we speak relate to the way we gesture?

The most obvious function of gestures is for communicating. For example, you might use your hands to point out which cake you want to buy, or demonstrate how big the polka dots are on your new umbrella. But we also use gestures even when no one is watching, such as when we're on the phone, so communication can't be the only thing they're good for. 

Gesturing Helps with Memory

Sure enough, research has demonstrated that gestures help us think. Sotaro Kita, Martha Alibali and Mingyuan Chu have a recent paper that draws together two decades of research on gesturing. For example, one study found that when you prevent people from gesturing, they find it harder to think of the words they want to say. 

Gesturing doesn’t just help with speaking either, it can help with thinking. Several studies asked people to silently solve puzzles that involved rotating complex shapes—the people who were encouraged to gesture about it got the right answer more often than the people who gestured only the normal amount. Similarly, in a task where people had to remember directions from a map, the group who practiced the route by gesturing their way through it remembered it better than people who only looked at the map or drew a copy.

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People Who Are Gesturing Subconsciously Consider Their Audience

This doesn't mean that we are completely unaware of whether we have an audience when we are gesturing. Although people do gesture on the phone, we use our hands more when speaking to somebody face-to-face. Compared to both of these situations, we're even less likely to gesture when speaking into a tape recorder—when we're not expecting an audience who will listen to the tape afterward.

People also tailor their gestures to their audience. In an experiment by Autumn Hostetter, Martha Alibali and Sheree Schrager, participants had to explain the rules of a game to another person who they would then play the game with. In one case, the instructions were for someone who the explainer would be playing with collaboratively, in another version the instructions were to be given to someone the explainer would play against competitively. The instructions were exactly the same, and in both cases the speaker made a similar number of gestures, but when the instructions were given to a competitor, the size of the gestures was smaller. It doesn’t pay to help the opposition.  

Gestures are part of our linguistic communication because they are closely tied to language in the human brain. Imagine you’re in a café and you say to the waiter:

“Can I please have a piece of that cake.”

As you say “that,” you are pointing with your index finger at the lemon drizzle cake. In order for your finger to be extended and pointing by time you get to that, you need to start moving your hand a couple of words earlier. This means the brain has to coordinate the movement of your hands to align with an upcoming word.

In the same way, the next time you’re watching a politician give a speech, notice that the rhythm of the gestures will line up with the stress of the words. Politicians may hold their hands in a certain way, and it’s likely some public-speaking expert has told them they look more ‘commanding’ or ‘open’ for it, but they’ll all synchronize their gestures and their speech.

Gestures Are Tied to a Language’s Structure

As far as we know, all human languages are accompanied by gesturing. Even users of sign languages will incorporate gestures alongside the grammatical elements of their language. But speakers of different languages also gesture differently—and some of these differences are linked to the structure of the language itself. 

Take Turkish and English, for example. When it comes to talking about the way objects move, these two languages use different verb structures. In English you might say

“The ball is rolling down the hill.”

In this sentence, rolling is a verb and down is a preposition giving additional information about the direction. But Turkish speakers would use a structure that would translate literally into English as something more like

“The ball rolling, descending the hill.”

(yuvarlanarak iniyor)

Unlike in English, these are two separate verbs instead of one verb with a modifier. One verb gives you the type of motion, the other gives you the path.

Asli Özyürek and Sotaro Kita demonstrated that when English puts these two pieces of information into the one verb phrase, English speakers are also likely to conflate them into a single gesture. English speakers will be more likely to show the manner (e.g. rolling or bouncing) and trajectory (e.g. downward or left to right) together in one gesture, with spiraling downward hand motions.

But just as Turkish speakers use separate verbs for manner and trajectory, they will also show these features with two separate gestures, first demonstrating the action of rolling without the downward movement, and then showing the downward path in a straight movement without the rolling.

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Even Blind People Use Gestures

These differences in gesturing patterns appear to be related to the structure of the language, and not learned. We know this because a recent study by Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow built on Özyürek and Kita’s work, but focused on the gestures of blind Turkish and English speakers. These participants were given the same job as their sighted counterparts: describing situations that included motion. The results for both Turkish and English speakers who had been blind from birth was consistent with the earlier study. That is to say, even though the blind English speakers in the study had never seen someone gesture in a way that included both manner and trajectory, they did so in their descriptions of the events. Similarly, the blind Turkish participants separated the motion and trajectory in both their speech and gestures.

All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that is deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers. 

We gesture because it can be helpful, and to make sure the other person knows just which cake we want. Gesture is not only useful in communicating with others, but it helps us to think as well. It also means that our hands can tell us things about the structure of language, in the grammar and in our brain, that we didn’t notice before.

That segment was written by Lauren Gawne, who blogs at superlinguo.com and is the co-host of the Lingthusiasm podcast. Thanks for blowing my mind.

And a little follow up from me: As I was editing this piece I agonized for far too long over the phrase exactly the same when we were describing giving instructions for a game: The instructions were exactly the same. I know some of you would notice and possibly comment that it's one of those phrases that regularly shows up in lists of unnecessarily redundant phrases. But here's the thing: Changing exactly the same to identical sounded wrong to me. The sentence lost its oomph and it also felt like it lost emphasis on the sameness, so I decided to keep it. Editing is about making something good, not about slavishly following rules. As I've said before, redundancy isn't always wrong and can sometimes help add emphasis, like when we add myself to a sentence like I baked the cake myself. So that's all to say, please don't write to me about exactly the same. I did it on purpose.

Sources

Hostetter, Autumn B., Martha W. Alibali & Sheree M. Schrager. 2011. If you don't already know, I'm certainly not going to show you!: Motivation to communicate affects gesture production. In Gale Stam and Mika Ishino (eds.) Integrating Gestures: The interdisciplinary nature of gesture, 61–74. John Benjamins. 

Kita, Sotaro, Alibali, Martha W., & Chu, Mingyuan. (2017). How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis. Psychological Review. Advance online publication.

Özçalışkan, Şeyda, Ché Lucero & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2016. Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker? Psychological Science 27(5), 737–747.

Özyürek, Asli & Sotaro Kita. 1999. Expressing manner and path in English and Turkish: Differences in speech, gesture, and conceptualization. In Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 507-512. Erlbaum.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

What Is Elbow Grease?

What is elbow grease? And is it as gross as it sounds?

Let’s start by agreeing that grease does not come from elbows.

Rather, elbow grease is an idiom that means hard physical labor. It most likely references the effort involved in tasks like scrubbing a sink or sawing wood—your elbow, of course, bending and straightening in turn. 

Naturally, it takes elbow grease to attack any difficult task. 

The term elbow grease was first used in 1672; a 1699 dictionary of slang called it “a derisive word for sweat.” 

An 1889 book of proverbs had a more flattering take on the expression, noting that “elbow grease makes wealth increase.” The author elaborates: “elbow polish, or elbow grease, is a fine article in a household, and beats boar’s grease and goose grease into fits.”

In other words, hard work beats out any number of fancy formulas for getting things clean. 

Back in the day, elbow grease was exploited for practical jokes. An unfortunate young worker would be sent out to purchase the “elbow grease” for polishing furniture. The poor apprentice would walk from shop to shop until he either caught on to the joke … or gave up looking.

These days, elbow grease can refer to any type of hard work, physical or otherwise. You might tell your son to “put some elbow grease” into cleaning his room. You might also tell him to “put some elbow grease” into studying for exams. 

So, that’s your tidbit for today. Elbow grease refers to energetic labor—usually manual, but sometimes mental. 

Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com or @DragonflyEdit.

Sources

Ammer, Christine. Elbow grease. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, 2nd ed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 

Farmer, John S. and W.E. Henley. Elbow Grease. Slang and its Analogues Past and Present, Vol. II, Printed for subscribers only, 1891 (accessed February 27, 2017).

Dent, Susie. Elbow grease. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 19th ed. Chambers Harrap, 2012.

Oxford English Dictionary, online edition. Oxford University Press. Elbow grease (subscription required, accessed February 27, 2017).

Moore, Christopher J. Elbow Grease. The Queen's English: An A to Zed Guide to Distinctively British Words. Reader’s Digest, 2011.

When Do You Capitalize Directions?

Sometimes directional terms such as south are capitalized and sometimes they aren’t.

Directions: Lowercase

When you’re describing a direction, south is lowercase:

The map is behind a secret door on the south wall.

We drove south for 20 miles before we found a gas station.

Directional Region Names: Capitalized

When you’re naming a region, directions are capitalized. For example, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Nashville are all in the South, not the south. One hint, although it’s not 100% definitive, is that if you can put the word the in front of the name, it’s often capitalized: 

He’s from the Pacific Northwest. 

She’s from the Far East. 

You also capitalize other well-known region names like East Coast, West Coast, the South of France, and Southern California. 

But it can get tricky because whereas Southern California may be a well-known region, southern Washington, western Turkey, and southern Africa aren’t (at least not according to my style guides), so in those cases you wouldn’t capitalize the directional words. 

When in doubt, check a style guide, and if you can’t find an answer, keep the word lowercase. In other words, lowercase should be your default.

Directional Terms to Describe People: It Depends

Another tricky area is directional terms to describe people, such as Southerner and Northerner, because style guides offer differing advice. For example, the Chicago Manual of Style wants southerner to be lowercase, and the Associated Press wants Southerner to be capitalized.

Summary

To sum it up, if a directional term is the name of a region, capitalize it. If it’s just a compass point, lowercase it. If you’re unsure, check a dictionary or style guide. And if you can't find an answer, keep it lowercase.

This article was originally published January 4, 2012, and updated June 9, 2017.

Exercises

Fill in a properly capitalized or lowercase directional word:

 

1.  Moss grows on the ___________________ side of a tree.

 

2. Pierre is from ___________________ France.

 

3. The ___________________ won the war.

 

4. We took pictures of polar bears at the ___________________ Pole.

 

5. What are the prospects for peace in the Middle ___________________?

 

6. Maine is ___________________ of New York.

 

Get more tips like this in The Grammar Devotional:

 Print: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s

E-book: Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iBook

 

10 Top Causes of Hair Loss

For both women and men, hair loss can drive us to tears. Although the physical symptoms can range from serious to benign, the cosmetic problem is bound to leave us devastated.

So what can cause hair to suddenly happen? 

Top 10 Causes of Hair Loss

Thyroid Disorder: The thyroid gland, which sits in the middle of the neck, regulates our metabolism and more. So when it shuts down and produces less thyroid hormone, it also shuts down everything else. This causes us and our bodies to slow down. We can become fatigued and depressed, our gut can slow down causing constipation, our skin can dry, and our hair can become brittle and/or fall out.

Traction: Believe it or not, tension on the hair shafts, from tight pony tails or braids can strain our hair follicles and cause hair loss. It seems too easy to be true. But nevertheless, if you tend to wear your hair up, let it loose for a change.

Stress: We cannot blame stress for every little medical problem. However, this is one is real.  Experiencing a traumatic stressful event can cause hair loss 3-6 months down the line. However, if it is truly from stress, it is reversible. Therefore, the hair that is lost will eventually regrow once the stressor is removed.

Medications: Chemotherapy, anticonvulsants, hormones, and lithium are some of the common hair loss culprits. As are some other antihypertensive and cardiac drugs, such as amiodarone (an antiarrhythmic), captopril, or propranolol (anti-hypertensives), and cholesterol lowering drugs.

Chronic Iron Deficiency: Menstruating women compromise the greatest risk for iron deficiency, which is manifested by anemia. A simple blood test can detect this one. Strict vegetarians who seriously lack iron in their diet can also become anemic. And we always worry about those over the age of 50 who lose microscopic but chronic amounts of blood in their stool.

Autoimmune Disorders:  Lupus is a prime example of an autoimmune disorder that can wreak havoc on the scalp. Autoimmune disorders are those in which the body produces specific proteins that attack various body components, such as the joints in Rheumatoid Arthritis, the pancreas in Type I Diabetes, and the thyroid in Graves Disease. People with some autoimmune disorders can also erroneously produce proteins that attack the hair follicles, thereby causing alopecia. These disorders, however, tend to cause distinct patches of hair loss, rather than diffuse all-over loss.

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Tinea Capitis: More common in children, fungal infections can wreak havoc on the scalp, just as they can elsewhere on the skin (just like the jock itch in the groin, diaper rash in babies, athlete’s foot in the feet, etc.).  Like autoimmune disorders, they also tend to cause distinct patches of hair loss.

PCOS:  A topic I’ve visited more than once prior, this is a hormonal imbalance that ultimately causes an increase in testosterone levels in women. And this elevation, besides sending menstrual cycles out of whack, causing acne,and growing hair where it doesn't typicaly belong, it also tends to cause diminished hair grown on the scalp, while increase hair growth elsewhere that hair is less often flourishing in women.

Pregnancy:  Women often report an increase in scalp hair growth during pregnancy. But after birth is a difference story. The hair can shed and then some. However, most women do tend to return back to their pre-pregnancy hair status.

Genetics: By far the most common cause of hair loss, in both women and men, is genetics. It’s termed “alopecia androgenetica.” The pattern of hair loss is often diffuse; there are no distinct patches. Look at your mother, father, or siblings to determine your family’s inherited pattern of hair growth and loss. Unfortunately, how much hair you lose largely depends on your genetics.

There are certainly other less common causes of hair loss, such as syphilis (a sexually transmitted infection), trichotillomania (a psychiatric etiology), etc. that must be considered. But by far the top causes stated are the ones that doctors tend to consider when evaluating a patient with alopecia.

A visit to your primary care physician is really enough to rule many of them out: another benefit to having a strong relationship with your primary care doctor. 

Share your ideas and learn more quick and dirty tips with us on the House Call Doctor’s Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest pages! If you learned anything here today, or simply enjoy all-things-medical, you can also listen and subscribe to the House Call Doctor podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Stitcher.

Please note that all content here is strictly for informational purposes only.  This content does not substitute any medical advice, and does not replace any medical judgment or reasoning by your own personal health provider.  Please always seek a licensed physician in your area regarding all health related questions and issues.

What Insurance College Kids Need and Tips to Save

Lynn M. says, “I’m a weekly listener and have learned so much while logging miles on my runs! I love getting financially and physically fit at the same time! I’m a divorced mom and my three children will all be in college starting in the fall. Ouch! Fortunately, I’ve saved in a 529 plan, have liquid savings earmarked for college, and will split tuition with their dad. But when it comes to cars for the children, how should I handle titles, insurance, and shopping for competitive rates when they go to school out of state?”

Thanks so much for your question, Lynn. You get the mom-of-the-year award for being financially prepared to send three kids to college with vehicles, and still having time to stay in shape!

Most parents spend a lot of time agonizing about how to pay for a child’s education, but completely overlook their insurance needs. In some cases, your existing policies won’t give your family enough protection after a kid goes off to college.

In this post, I’ll review a variety of factors that affect the additional insurance your college-bound kid needs. Plus, you’ll get tips to cut insurance costs and make college more affordable.

Free Resource: Ready to save more, eliminate debt, and reach big financial goals? Join Laura in the Dominate Your Dollars community now!

Auto Insurance Rate Increases for Teen Drivers

If your student is already driving, I don’t have to tell you that your auto insurance rate goes through the roof after you add a teen driver to your policy. Young drivers are extremely expensive to insure because statistics show that they get into accidents more frequently than older drivers.

A study I helped created about how much auto insurance rates go up when you add a 16- to 19-year old driver to a policy revealed that rates rise 78% on average nationwide! Rhode Island residents see the highest spike, with a 153% increase, and Hawaii has the lowest increase at 8%.

Yup, one more reason moving to Hawaii might seem like a really good idea. It’s the only state where insurers are banned from using a driver’s age or years of driving experience as a rating factor. So that small increase is the same as adding an adult driver to an auto insurance policy.

The good news for residents of the other 49 states is that girls cost less to insure than boys, and both get less expensive every year, if they keep a clean driving record with no moving violations or accidents. If you don’t see your rates for a young driver come down, be sure your auto insurer knows when your teen celebrates a birthday.

Insuring Your College Kid

Unlike other types of insurance, there’s no rule that you must take your child off a family auto policy at a certain age. Parents can keep a child on their insurance for as long as they like.

College students are typically covered under their parents’ car insurance, as long as they live at the same address as their parents when not at school. Esurance says, “If a student starts out listed on a policy and will be temporarily attending school at another address, we allow them to remain on the original policy as long as their vehicle is still registered at the original address.”

Unlike other types of insurance, there’s no rule that you must take your child off a family auto policy at a certain age. Parents can keep a child on their insurance for as long as they like.

Assuming you want to maintain coverage for your college student, you need to let your insurer know. If he or she will be driving out of state, your policy may need to be adjusted because auto insurance varies dramatically from state to state.

For instance, if you live in Florida, where the state minimum liability limit is $10,000 and your student attends school in Texas where the limit is $30,000, your policy won’t meet the requirement.

Auto insurance rates even differ down to the ZIP code, so the address of the college or the location where a car is typically parked is important. Rates for city drivers tend to be higher than for those in rural areas.

So, depending on where your college kid lives, having an insured vehicle in a different location could cause your rate to go up or down. But don’t be tempted to avoid telling your insurer. They can deny claims or cancel your policy if they discover that you misrepresented where an insured car is garaged.

You don’t need to notify your insurer when a student makes a short trip home for school breaks or between semesters, just when he or she moves to a new location for most the year.

Another consideration is how your child plans to use a vehicle while at college. If he or she has a job, such as delivering pizza or groceries, make sure it’s covered for commercial auto activities. Some auto policies won’t cover claims for accidents that happen while you’re driving for any business use, other than commuting to work.  

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Auto Insurance Discounts for Teen Drivers

While young drivers are expensive to insure, the good news is that insurers offer different types of discounts. Here are some popular discounts to ask for:

• Distant student discount – could save up to 30% when your student doesn’t have a family car at a school and lives more than 100 miles away from home (even if the school is in the same state).  
• Good student discount – could save up to 35% when your high school or college student has a “B” average or better. Parents do have to submit report cards to qualify, but it’s well worth the hassle and another great reason to make sure your student stays focused on getting good grades.  
• Driver safety course – offered by some insurers if your young driver completes an approved driver education or defensive driving course.  
• Bundling discounts – could save an average of 16% nationwide when you combine your auto insurance with a home or renter’s policy. Checkout state-by-state bundling savings data.  
• Pay-as-you-drive programs – use technology to monitor how you drive and reward you for safe behavior. You may also hear these programs called usage-based insurance, telematics (a hybrid of telecommunications and informatics), and pay-as-you-go insurance. Each insurer’s program is different and may not be offered in every state. They may collect data including how fast you drive, how hard you hit the brakes, where you drive, the times of day you drive, and mileage driven.  Enrolling one or all your vehicles allows you to qualify for discounts when the driver stays within safe ranges set by the insurance company. But if not, your rate doesn’t go up, you just don’t get the benefit of a safe driver discount.

See also: 5 Ways To Save Money on Car Insurance

Should You Title a Vehicle in Your College Kid’s Name?

State laws vary, but parents can be held liable for injuries or other damage a child causes in an auto accident when driving a vehicle registered in a parent’s name.

A question that Lynn brought up is how to title a vehicle that a child takes to college. If a vehicle and the insurance is in a child’s name only, is it less expensive or give parents more legal protection?

The answer is that state laws vary, but parents can be held liable for injuries or other damage a child causes in an auto accident when driving a vehicle registered in a parent’s name. If your son or daughter is over 18 years old, he or she can register a car in his or her own name. That’s one way to limit your liability if your child accidentally hurts someone.

In some states, you can purchase auto insurance for someone else, even if your name is not on the car’s title. So, it may be possible to keep a vehicle that’s titled in your student’s name on your family policy.

In general, it’s more expensive for a young person to have their own insurance compared to staying on a parent’s auto policy. That’s because they don’t have the benefit of a higher credit rating or various discounts that parents might enjoy, such as loyalty, multiple vehicles, and bundling with a home or renter’s policy.

However, it’s always worth shopping since there are so many variables at play. Lynn, if you have lots of assets to protect, then registering a vehicle in a child’s name may be a wise idea. But insurance premiums on the vehicle may or may not be higher, depending on what insurers in your state will allow.

See also: 10 Financial Products to Make Money and Create Security

How to Protect Liability When You Have a College Kid

If you don’t have many assets or can’t afford higher insurance premiums, another option for parents of young drivers to limit liability is to purchase an umbrella liability policy. These policies supplement the liability coverage you may already have on auto, home and renter’s insurance.

Umbrella policies are sold in million-dollar increments and typically cost less than $300 per year for $1 million of coverage, which is an extremely inexpensive safety net.

If you don’t have many assets or can’t afford higher insurance premiums, another option for parents of young drivers to limit liability is to purchase an umbrella liability policy.

Let’s say you get sued for medical bills after your child accidentally injures a pedestrian while driving. If you have $100,000 in liability coverage, but are found guilty for $500,000 in damages, an umbrella policy kicks in providing the additional $400,000 in protection.

Parents should also warn kids about lending their car to friends or roommates because insurance follows the car, not the driver. That means when you lend someone your car, you’re also lending them insurance to cover any damages they cause.

If a friend drives your car and causes a serious accident, your insurance would pay up to your coverage limits, and then the injured party would turn to the driver’s insurance for the rest. But if the driver doesn’t have insurance, you could be fully responsible as the car’s owner.

Having a claim or at-fault accident on your record causes your insurance rate to increase dramatically, even if you had nothing to do with the accident. Due to this huge financial risk, I don’t recommend lending your car to anyone except drivers who are specifically named on your insurance policy.

Likewise, if your child drives someone else’s car that isn’t insured or is underinsured, getting into an accident could mean trouble. Even if your student doesn’t take a vehicle to school, consider getting him or her a non-owner auto policy. That would protect you if your child borrows a friend’s car or gets into an accident as a passenger and the car owner’s policy falls short.

See also: 5 Surprising Insurance Facts and Savings Tips

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Does a College Kid Need Renter’s Insurance?

Now that you know the most important considerations for auto insurance, let’s review what to do about home or renter’s insurance before your child goes off to school.

Some policies provide a percentage of the family’s personal property limit for registered students. For example, if you have $50,000 in personal belongings coverage on a home or renter’s policy, your student may have 10% or $5,000 in off-premises insurance.

However, many categories of home and renter’s insurance—such as computers, electronics, sports equipment, and jewelry—come with coverage caps. And some policies won’t cover a student in certain cases, such as when they reach a certain age or move to off-campus housing.

See also: 4 Major Disasters Homeowners and Renters Insurance Won’t Cover

If your student lives on campus in a dormitory, they’re usually covered by your home or renter’s policy (assuming you have one) for disasters like theft, fire, or storm damage. But if he or she moves out of student housing, they’re no longer covered under your home or renter’s policy, and needs their own coverage.

Having a renter’s policy for your off-campus student is inexpensive and would help pay to repair or replace any expensive items—such as computers, phones, furniture, bikes, musical instruments, and clothes—if they were destroyed, lost, or stolen.

Having a renter’s policy for your off-campus student is inexpensive and would help pay to repair or replace any expensive items—such as computers, phones, furniture, bikes, musical instruments, and clothes—if they were destroyed, lost, or stolen.

Renter’s insurance also gives your college kid liability coverage if a visitor gets hurt or a party guest has a little too much fun and gets hurt. It also provides funds for living expenses if a student’s off-campus apartment or rental home becomes uninhabitable while repairs are made after a natural disaster.

See also: 5 Ways to Save Money on Home Insurance

How to Shop Insurance for Your College Kid

Shopping for insurance takes a little time, but can really pay off. I always recommend getting at least three quotes so you can make an apples-to-apples comparison of different insurers.

Check out sites like insuranceQuotes.com and netQuote.com for auto, home, renters, health, and life insurance policies. These companies match you with a network of nationwide insurers, agents, and brokers who do business where you live and give quotes and advice for free.

Insurers evaluate you differently and offer different discounts, so no two policy quotes will ever be the same. So, the best way parents of a teen driver or college student can save on insurance is to make sure they understand how insurance works, have the skills to stay safe, and shop around every year to compare multiple quotes.

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The Ultimate Guide to a Vegan Kitchen

Jean-Christian Jury is known for his delectable vegan dishes. His vegan restaurant La Mano Verde in Berlin became a destination for discerning diners. In Vegan: The Cookbook, filled with over 450 vegetable-focused recipes, he shares a world of rich and satisfying vegan dishes inspired by his extensive personal travels around the globe. The recipes in the book represent the cuisines of France, Greece, Italy, Vietnam, China, and India, to name just a few. Jean-Christian joins the Clever Cookstr in this week's episode to talk about:

* similarities and differences between veganism in different places and cuisines

* common misconceptions about vegan food

* advice for eaters and cooks who want to add more vegetables into their diets

* go-to meals to please vegans and omnivores alike

* and much more!

To hear the full interview with Jean-Christian, listen in the top right hand player, or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

The following recipe is excerpted with permission from Vegan: the Cookbook, (c) 2017 by Jean-Christian Jury. All rights reserved.

MISO-GLAZED EGGPLANT

Country: Japan

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 4

INGREDIENTS

For the glaze:

• 4 tablespoons yellow miso

• 4 tablespoons mirin

• 4 tablespoons sake

• 2 tablespoons superfine (caster) sugar

For the eggplant:

• 2 large eggplants (aubergines)

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• ½ cup (120 ml/4 fl oz) sake

• ½ cup (120 ml/4 fl oz) vegetable stock (broth)

• 2 scallions (spring onions), finely chopped, to garnish

• 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger, to garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

To make the glaze, use a whisk to mash the ingredients together in a saucepan, ensuring there are no lumps of miso remaining. Bring the sauce to a boil over medium heat, then immediately reduce the heat to heat and simmer, stirring constantly, for 8–9 minutes, until thick. Remove the pan from the stove, cover to keep warm, and set aside. To make the eggplant, halve the eggplants lengthwise, then cut a crosshatch pattern into the surface of the exposed flesh, ensuring the knife cuts about three-quarters of the way through the eggplant but does not cut through to the skin. (These cuts will help the glaze penetrate the eggplant during cooking.) Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Fry the eggplant halves with the cut surfaces facing down for 6–7 minutes, until golden brown. Flip the eggplant halves over,

then add the sake and immediately cover the pan to capture the steam. Cook, covered, for about 10 minutes, until the sake is reduced completely. Flip the eggplant halves back over, then add the stock. Cover with the lid and steam for about 15 minutes, until the tip of a

knife passes through the eggplant easily. If the eggplant is still too hard, add a little water and continue to steam. Remove the lid to allow any excess water to evaporate. Transfer the eggplant to a plate and brush with the glaze. Garnish with the chopped scallions and ginger and serve immediately.

How Salty Foods Affect Hunger and Weight Loss

Most of the warnings we hear about reducing the amount of salt in our diets have to do with reducing the risks related to high blood pressure.  But a new study suggests another reason that some people may want to curtail their sodium intake: Eating salty foods may make you hungrier.

I’ve always suspected on an intuitive level that salty foods might lead you to eat more than you otherwise would--simply because they can be tasty.

For example, I am likely to eat more salted nuts than unsalted nuts.  Even though I enjoy the flavor of unsalted nuts, somehow salted nuts are more compelling. Instead of having a handful and feeling satisfied, as I might with unsalted almonds or cashews, I just want to keep eating salted nuts.

In fact, one of the things that I suggest for people who find it difficult to observe portion control when eating nuts is to switch to the unsalted variety.

But this recent study found something even more interesting, and way more complicated.

A Salty Diet May Increase Appetite

This study was done on a small group of Russian cosmonauts who were living in a simulated space capsule as training for a long mission. Over the course of the study, the researchers changed up the amount of salt in the cosmonauts’ diets, ranging from a low sodium diet of around 2300 mg per day, to a more typical intake of 3,500 mg per day, up to a peak of 4800 mg of sodium a day.  Although the salt varied, the calorie levels remained the same. And yet, as the researchers increased the amount of salt on the food, the subjects reported being hungrier.

A parallel study done by the same researchers in mice found that higher sodium diets caused the mice to eat a lot more food. 

The other weird thing that the researchers noticed—in both the men and the mice—was that as their salt intake increased, their urine output increased—despite the fact that they were drinking less water.

How the Body Gets Rid of Salt 

Increasing urine production is one way the body has of getting extra sodium out of the body.  For the last 50 years at least, we’ve been told that when people eat more salt it makes them thirsty, causing them to increase their fluid intake. That extra fluid increases urine output, which helps flush the excess sodium out of the body.

That’s the story anyway. And that’s the logic behind that bowl of salty pretzels on the bar. It’s there to make you thirsty so you order more drinks. Well, barkeeps, you may want to reevaluate your strategy.

In these studies, eating more salt didn’t make the subjects thirstier; over the long run, it made them less thirsty. And yet despite drinking less water, they were producing more urine. So, where was all that extra fluid coming from if they weren’t drinking it?

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You Won't Believe This

It turns out that we humans have more in common with camels than you may have thought. Like camels, we have the ability to produce water by breaking down our own fat and muscle tissue.

And that appears to be what happens when you eat a lot of salt.  Levels of glucocorticoid hormone in your body go up, and this triggers the breakdown of fat and muscle tissues, which releases water, which helps flush the excess sodium out of your body. All of this fancy metabolic activity burns extra energy and calories, which makes you hungry. Who knew?

Will Eating More Salt Help you Lose Weight?

Now, you may have zeroed in on the fact that eating more salt causes your body to break down fat and burn extra calories. Perhaps you’re wondering why a high-sodium diet wouldn’t be a good way to lose weight?

For one thing, the increase in your appetite could easily lead you to consume a lot more calories than whatever extra calories your body is burning to deal with the salt.  But there are a lot of other reasons that this is a bad weight control strategy.

The glucocorticoid hormones cause your body to break down muscle as well as fat, and that is NOT the kind of weight you want to be losing. High levels of these hormones are also linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis and Type 2 diabetes.

The Bottom Line

This study has thrown everything we thought we knew about how our bodies regulate sodium and fluid into a bit of a blender. But in a way, it raises more questions than it answers. One of the things that I’d like to see researchers look at next is whether increasing your fluid intake (whether you’re thirsty or not) helps prevent the sodium-triggered bump in hormones that causes your body to break down its own tissue.

The study also produced some unexpected findings relating to salt, metabolism, and appetite. But contrary to some of the headlines you may have seen, it doesn’t show that eating more salt will help you lose weight.

To the contrary, eating more salt may increase your appetite. And salty foods are often high in calories as well. Either way, eating too much salt could easily lead you to take in more calories than you need. 

How to Use Custom Domains and Catch-All Emails

Yes, it’s true! At long last, the surveillance state is here! The government is watching you. Marketers are watching you. Google is profiling your email, while Amazon uses your buying profile and overheard Alexa conversations to determine exactly what kind of underwear you most like to wear. We’ll never win. Their resources are too great. So your My Little Pony underwear will soon be auto-shared with your entire Facebook wall. YAY! Your friends will know what to buy you for your birthday.

But other than the biggies, who probably have decent security and only sometimes give your name to the NSA, everyone seems to be asking for your email address. But giving your address away so freely can lead to inbox overload. And what if the vendor gets hacked? Now the hackers have your email address! Welcome, security risks! Wouldn’t it be great to sign up for sites that require an email address, without giving up convenience or security? I knew you’d agree. Alex told me.

You can do this by getting your own domain and using a “catch-all email address.” Catch-all email addresses act exactly as they sound. They are designed to catch all of the e-mails that are sent to a particular domain. Say you go to Namecheap.com and register your own domain. For example, GrandmaCuddles.com. You can then configure a catch-all email address so any email sent to any address at GrandmaCuddles.com forwards to a single Gmail account (the one you really use). Then chris@grandmacuddles.com, les@grandmacuddles.com, ash@grandmacuddles.com, and more would all forward to that Gmail account. Okay, neat. But why bother?

Disable Spammers

For one, catch-all emails help you detect and disable spammers. Thomas, cybernetic wunderkind, is a 16-year-old male (mostly). He may have an IQ of 420, but he has the hormonal system of … well, a 16-year-old male. He’s at a prime age for signing up for, er, “shopping” websites as a means of, er, corporatized self-exploration. Yes, that’s what kids are calling it these days.

But every time Thomas shops at a website, he must give them an email address at checkout. And every time he gives a site his email address, five new sites start sending mail to his inbox. Thomas likes some of these promotions, but definitely not all of them. So he can use a catch-all email address to filter out the spammers.

Instead of using his main address, Thomas gives a unique email based at thomasisthebest.com to each site he shops at. He may have an IQ of 420, but he has the sensibilities of a 16-year-old male. So email receipts from Fad Magazine go to FadMag@thomasisthebest.com. And digital newsletters from his favorite band, The Circuits, go to TheCircuitsFanMail@thomasisthegreatest.com. His custom domain’s catch-all email forwards all these messages to his main inbox — just like normal. But unlike normal, each site now gets its own, easy to recognize “to” address. So if one address gets spammed, Thomas can disable it — by unsubscribing, or by redirecting mail to that address straight to the trash — and leave the others running.

Know when an account is compromised

When Thomas starts getting really strange emails from an unidentifiable address asking him to join the professional tickling community, he’s not quite sure what to do. You really don’t want to tickle a cybernetic teenager. Their reflexes are not to be trifled with. Every time he blocks the sender, the same email shows up from a different address. But with catch-all email, Thomas has the upper hand. He can see which “to” address the emails were sent to. So he knows exactly how those odd people got his email address to begin with.

Thomas sees that the “to” address for all the tickling emails was DecentBuy@thomasisthebest.com. So he knows there’s a good chance his account at DecentBuy.com was compromised. Equipped with this information, he can could cancel his account, warn his friends, or even encourage Decent Buy to take steps against the spammers. If nothing happens, he can stop the spam on his own by filtering out email to the compromised address — instead of having to make a whole new email address for everything.

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Stop behind-the-scenes data sharing

Many websites care a lot about protecting you from government surveillance, so they can watch you instead. Sites agree to share data, and behind the scenes, they match up your accounts on different sites to build a master profile of you. They match using email, name, IP address, and stuff like that. This usually just results in a targeted ad or two on social media. But beneath the surface, it does mean that if you use the same email address for DecentBuy.com and FriendlyHappyStore.com they may share data and each site gets your whole profile. You may not want that. Thomas certainly doesn’t. Using different email addresses at each site makes it harder for companies to profile you, making sure that what happens at DecentBuy.com stays at Decentbuy.com. Let’s just say that using a catch-all helps iron out all the kinks.

Setting up a custom domain and catch-all email

Since Thomas is literally half-machine, he’s owned his own domain with a catch-all email since his manufacture date. But you’re not too far behind the curve, since you can set up your own in less than an hour on the cheap. First, go to a domain registrar, like NameCheap, which is my favorite. Next, choose a domain name. It’s okay if it’s relatively cheap or silly. This isn’t going to be for sharing with business colleagues. It’s for giving to social media, shopping sites, and anything else that sends you newsletters or promotions, like fitness trackers or event planners.

Once your domain is registered, the registrar will let you create a catch-all email address. Set this up to forward to your main email address. You’ll now receive, in your main inbox, all emails that are sent to an address ending in @yourdomain.com. And you’ll be able to tell where each email came from by sorting through “to” addresses in your email client. 

Finally, set up any forwarding rules you want from your inbox. If one of your email addresses is compromised, which means your email has been stolen or sold, you can write a rule to send anything with that “to” address to the trash. You can also establish priority rules that reroute emails with a certain “to” address to a high-priority or specific-priority inbox. So you could direct emails to my@yourdomain.com to your finance inbox, and Thomas could make sure anything from The Circuits goes straight to high priority. Because Thomas is looking for some self-discovery, and The Circuits are looking for a new drummer.

Grab a custom domain, and use a catch-all email address and filters to take some tiny bit of control back from the surveillance economy.

Help stem the tide of email overload! Grab a custom domain, and use a catch-all email address and filters to take some tiny bit of control back from the surveillance economy. 

This is Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people have Extraordinary Lives and extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6 .

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!

Little-Known Ways to Enhance Your Immune System

You frequently wash your hands, take regular doses of vitamin C,  and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. But somehow you find yourself sniffling, coughing, and sneezing more frequently...and it’s not even flu season.  For hard-charging, high-achievers, this issue often strikes in the middle of an important work project, a family vacation, a bout of travel, or a crucial block of workouts or training sessions.

Think of just a few of the ho-hum, standard, old-school pieces of advice you’ve traditionally been given told to kick the cold, some ancient and some modern, including:

·         Take oodles of vitamin C and zinc

·         Get plenty of bed rest, don’t exercise or get exposed to cold you’ll weaken the immune system

·         Use antibiotics or a handy Z-pac to fight off viruses

The problem is that most of these strategies simply don’t work and may end up weakening the immune system even further. In fact, supplements will help, but need to be in a high-enough dose and a form that you can actually absorb when you’re sick, exercise will actually facilitate the detox process while bed rest will keep lymph fluid stagnant, and antibiotics will wipe out the good bacteria in the gut that supports the healthy environment our body needs to heal.

The immune system just isn’t as simple as it sounds, and in this episode, you will discover the inner workings of human immunity, and underground, little-known methods to strengthen the immune system and bounce back from sickness fast.  

In reality, the immune system is made up of six different immune system components that help fight off invading pathogens, and this chapter will dive into each, including the lymph system that helps transport compounds out of the body and to specific organs, the respiratory system that moves mucus and contaminants upwards and outwards from the digestive tract, the skin that provides a thin but effective layer against pathogens, the white blood cells that, if the pathogens get in through the skin, attack them in your blood and in other tissues of the body, the spleen that provides support against bacterial infections, the stomach that harbors good bacteria (which help fight pathogens and absorb nutrients and secretes acid that will kill off the harmful ones) and finally, intestinal cells that secrete antibodies to fight off foreign invaders.

Creating a bulletproof immune system begins with moving lymph fluid throughout the body, keeping the respiratory system ready, limiting pathogens passing through the skin, keeping white blood cells elevated, strengthening the spleen, and repairing and maintaining proper gut health. You can fortify your defenses every day with various strategies, but to maximize this effect, you must also limit the amount of invaders we come in contact with.  If your body is too busy dealing with physical or emotional stress, then the immune system won’t be able to efficiently fight off infections. For example, carcinogens from the environment, food, and hygiene products can compromise the immune system’s defense mechanisms and possibly give birth to new pathogens that will later harm the body, and inflammation caused by ingestion of unhealthy fats, stress, and lack of recovery can also weaken the gut, leading to more toxins spilling into our bloodstream.

From echinacea to elderberry to oregano and beyond, it is completely possible to equip the medicine cabinet with every natural compound that exists to create a bulletproof immune system, without breaking the bank. So now that you understand why things are far more complex than simply popping pills and getting some rest, let’s delve into research proven strategies to help each leg of the immune system table to hold up to the debilitating hacksaw of illness and disease, including:

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·         Improve circulation of the lymph system with physical movement. One of the easiest ways to do this is by shaking the body in an up-and-down motion for a couple of minutes. Whole body shaking is an excellent way to exercise and detoxify every cell in the body.  Similar effects are seen with the use of a rebounder trampoline, vibration plate, and other forms of exercise like swimming and yoga.  These activities can make bone marrow strong, strengthen the spine, and support the kidneys and adrenal glands. When lymph flow improves, more toxins are cleared out of the system and the immune boosting supplements that are consumed will get where they need to go.

·         Use thieves blend, a unique and little-known essential oil blend that has been shown to fight off infections and support not just the immune system, but also the digestive system and respiratory system.  Diffusing this blend during sleep can help to keep the immune system strong during these critical hours of repair and regeneration. Here’s an article I wrote on how to use Thieves to enhance the strength of the immune system.

·         Echinacea has been shown in research to relieve upper respiratory symptoms such as inflammation, whooping cough, and the common cold. Check out the fascinating results of this meta-analysis study from the University of Connecticut that shows one form of echinacea can cut the likelihood of getting a common cold by over half and also reduce the duration of the common cold by almost one-and-a-half days in the trial.

·         A very effective form of zinc that can be used to fight a cold is zinc acetate and the exact zinc protocol that can used to kick the common cold fast - in as little as a single day rather than an entire week, can all be checked out here.. Also check out the details on a meta analysis of zinc supplementation that shows why traditional zinc supplements are ineffective.

·         Provide fast cold and flu relief with elderberry teas, elderberry tinctures, and elderberry supplements. The anthocyanins in elderberry have been shown known to have potent immunostimulant effects. In fact, a 2016 study showed that elderberry supplementation can vastly reduce the duration and symptoms of the cold in air travelers). Another study in the Journal of International Medical Research found that when the elderberry extract is used within the first 48 hours of the onset of flu symptoms, it shortens the duration of symptoms by an average of four days.

·         Colostrum acts as a form of passive immunity while providing a substantial dose of antibodies such as IgA, IgG and IgM, all of which help to fight pathogens in the intestinal tract. The growth factors in colostrum stimulate the gut to patch up holes created by excess inflammation and damage by toxin exposure, research shows that colostrum can restore a leaky gut lining to normal permeability levels, and athletes who pop colostrum prior to exercising in hot weather can completely banish the gastric distress that so notoriously accompanies exercise in the heat.

·         The important components in glycine and bone broth that can enhance digestion and fight inflammation. Bone broth is considered a powerful detoxification agent since it helps the digestive system expel waste, improve the body’s use of antioxidants, and facilitate the sealing of openings in the gut lining.  Incorporating this super soup into the diet provides a substantial boost to the immune system.

·         Use potent “superfoods” such as coconut products, garlic, medicinal mushrooms, and chia seeds to provide antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal compounds that support the immune system. Plant foods rich in fiber will provide pre-biotics for the immune supporting probiotic bacteria in the gut to feed from. Many vegetables, when consumed with the dirt still on them, will then add soil based probiotics that diversify the gut  and support the immune system.  You can also get an additional gut boost by adding in fermented foods such as kimchi, sauerkraut, and natto for a concentrated and diverse source of probiotics.          

·         Create a decoction tea from chopped slippery elm bark, marshmallow root, and licorice root. The combination of these herbs soften and soothe mucous membranes all the way from the throat to the stomach to the small and large intestines, creating an environment that flushes the lymph system and allows good bacteria to multiply while providing adaptogen like effects that protect the bacteria from stress and environmental irritants. Check out this interview on how to address food intolenrances using scientific and clinically-proven approach.

·         Be careful with Vitamin C. Taking the wrong vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid could be a waste of your time, and better forms of vitamin C that actually work, including new studies that confirm the right type of vitamin C supplementation at 1,000 mg per day shortens the duration and mitigates the severity of colds, while also preventing colds from developing, especially in those with low vitamin C levels.  

·         Oregano oil’s phenols can act as steroid-like compounds for the immune system, including thymol (a natural fungicide that works as a shield against toxins) and carvacrol (which has been found to be extremely effective against various bacterial infections). The reader will learn the best sources for potent herbs such as Origanum vulgare and Thymus capitatus. A dd a few drops of oils made from these compounds to pot of boiling water to inhale the steam for sinus relief.

The fact is, the modern day immunity marketplace is flooded with supplements and herbal formulas claiming to cure the common cold overnight or to make the human body bulletproofed to illness, but it is quite difficult to sift through the bold marketing and fake supplements. But you can indeed defy all odds of getting sick and create an unstoppable immune system via the use of movement strategies that can be employed immediately, stacked with research-proven but little-known supplement, food and lifestyle strategies.

Want to start simple? Start here: your lymphatic system responds quite well to the G-forces generated during exercise and more notably, when bouncing on a trampoline.  But another technique for enhancing the movement of lymph fluid is even easier: just plant both legs into the ground and let yourself bounce up and down while wiggling the hands and the fingers.  Do this for five minutes tomorrow morning when you wake up and notice how your entire body feels more energized and awake. This whole-body shaking technique is actually an ancient Qi Gong practice!

For more tips, and to join the conversation about how to figure out which diet is perfect for your unique body type, then head over to http://ift.tt/1xq4tPg. And don't forget to subscribe to the Get-Fit Guy podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. If you have questions, comments or feedback, join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. 

How Old Is the Oldest Human Skeleton?

A few days ago my three-year-old asked me, “How do humans get on our planet?” Preschool grammar aside, I was impressed by her question, and so, being an astronomer, I launched into an excited explanation of nucleosynthesis in the cores of stars and the creation of the heavier elements. As Carl Sagan reminds us, “We are made of star stuff.” This was not the answer she was looking for.

Luckily, before I had to attempt an explanation of the primordial soup fit for a three-year-old, she interrupted me to ask instead, “Can we learn about people from their bones like the dinosaurs?” I told her that not only is that the case, but we continue to learn about our origins as more bones are discovered and as our dating techniques improve. In fact, a study published just last month in the journal Nature challenges what we thought we knew about human origins and migration.

How do we date human bones?

The challenge in identifying the oldest human remains is two-fold: first, the bones need to be dated correctly. Scientists use several methods for determining the ages of human remains and those methods can often be checked against one another for consistency.

Age-dating via electron spin resonance, for example, measures how many electrons have been absorbed by the bone over time. Radioactive elements decay over time on a precisely-timed schedule, and so other methods like potassium-argon dating or Carbon-14 dating, measure the extent to which these elements have decayed to assess how long the bone has been waiting to be unearthed. A technique called paleomagnetism examines the direction of the magnetized particles in nearby rock and links it to known global shifts in our planet’s magnetic field.

Scientists also use context to help place age constraints – were any artifacts or tools found nearby? Where were the bones found? While context can be extremely helpful, particularly in cases where only a few bones are found, it also must be used with caution so as not to preclude new ways of thinking about our origins.   

Another challenge in identifying the oldest human skeleton is determining whether or not new bone discoveries are in fact, human. Neanderthals, for example, who we once thought were our ancestors but now believe were a kind of distant cousin with a shared ancestor, have longer and flatter skulls. It is hypothesized that our facial features shortened as our brain organization and connectivity improved. So while there are key markers that distinguish a member of the homo sapien species from other hominin relatives, incomplete fossils and evolutionary changes that have led to what we recognize now as modern day humans can make the identification of these markers challenging.

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The Oldest Fossil Bones

The skeleton known as Lucy is often credited as being the oldest known human relative at an estimated age of 3.2 million years. She is thought to be of the hominin species Australopithecus, an ancestor to modern humans. Another fossil found in Ethiopia two years ago, only a dozen miles from Lucy’s resting place, is believed to be more directly linked to modern humans, and would thus push our lineage back another half a million years to 2.8 million years ago. 90,000 year old bones believed to be human have been found in Saudi Arabia. Some of the oldest human bones found in the Americas, a complete 13,000-year-old skeleton, was discovered in a 140-foot deep cave buried underwater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

New Discoveries in Human Migration

We have known from fossils for some time that we, homo sapiens, originated in Africa. There have been so many fossil remains discovered in East Africa that the area has been dubbed the cradle of humankind and the Garden of Eden.

A map published in Nature just last year draws out the route for homo sapiens migrating from East Africa 150,000 to 200,000 years ago and being found in the Arabian peninsula as long as 120,000 years ago. The histories of homo sapiens in Europe and Australia are much younger (dating back as far as 45,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago, respectively) but still longer than in the Americas and North Asia (15,000 to 20,000 years in the past). 

A new discovery published last month in the journal Nature suggests, however, that we may have to expand what we know about humanity’s cradle. The labrynth of caves in Jebel Irhoud, not far from Marrakesh in Morocco, has been of interest to anthropologists since miners found bones, including a hominid skull in the 1960s. The skull was thought to be a Neanderthal and only dated at 40,000 years old. After additional bones were found, including a child’s jawbone, with questionable dates, the authors of the new study, led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, began a more thorough excavation of the area in 2004.

Their thorough exploration, together with improved age-dating techniques, revealed that the bones discovered there now, thought to be early humans, date back as long as 300,000 years ago. Finding these old bones so far outside of East Africa suggests that all of Africa may in fact be the figurative Garden of Eden.

Answering the question of “how did we get here?” is a question so fundamental that even three-year-olds ask it.

Scientists believed East Africa to be the cradle of humanity because so many fossilized skeletons were found there. But we also found so many fossilized skeletons there because that is where we were looking. Astronomers run into similar observational biases when trying to track down our origins. For example, the first extrasolar planets found, planets outside of our solar system, were more Jupiter-like than Earth-like, but that was only because our techniques for finding them were better at picking out Jupiters.

Reassessing and reshaping our understanding of the world around us, and even learning that we may have been on the right track but didn’t have it quite right are all my favorite part of studying science. Answering the question of “how did we get here?” is a question so fundamental that even three-year-olds ask it. There is much that we already know about our origins, but we clearly have a lot more to learn.

Until next time, this is Sabrina Stierwalt with Everyday Einstein’s Quick and Dirty Tips for helping you make sense of science. You can become a fan of Everyday Einstein on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, where I’m @QDTeinstein. If you have a question that you’d like to see on a future episode, send me an email at everydayeinstein@quickanddirtytips.com. 

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How to Treat a Bee Sting

Pull Out the Stinger

When you’re stung by a bee, carefully grasp the stinger and pull it out as fast as you can. The less venom that enters your body, the smaller and less painful the resulting welt will be. Ice the area immediately to reduce the swelling. If it still hurts, try cutting an onion in half and applying the fleshy side to the sting. It should help ease the pain.

Curry Powder

To reduce the pain from insect bites, make a paste of curry powder and water. Apply it to the bite and let dry, then wash off. The spices in the curry powder will relieve discomfort and swelling.

Onion

Nobody likes a bee sting, but sometimes they’re inevitable. Bring down the pain and swelling by rubbing some raw onion on the sting. The sulfur in the onion will detoxify the area and give you relief.

VapoRub

Ouch! Suffering from a bee or wasp sting? Soothe the pain with Vicks VapoRub. It contains menthol, which will provide a natural, cooling anesthetic effect.

Lavender Oil

Been stung by an insect? It’s lavender oil to the rescue! Rub a bit directly onto the sting to alleviate the pain. Or, mix a paste of baking soda and water and apply.

Lemon

If you’re stung by a wasp, hornet, or bee, reach for a lemon. Make sure the stinger is gone, and quickly rub the area with some lemon juice. It will neutralize the venom.

Find more helpful tips on our Bug and Pest Natural Remedies board on Pinterest. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook for our Tip of the Day!

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How to Treat Laryngitis

Cut the Coughing

When you’ve got laryngitis, do your best to avoid clearing your throat and coughing, which can inflame your vocal chords even further. Instead, drinking water and even swallowing can help soothe the irritation and satisfy your urge to cough.

Herbal Steam Treatment

Rehydrate and calm your inflamed pipes with a chamomile steam bath. Chamomile offers anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic powers in this warm, moisturizing steam that will soften the mucus clogging up your dry throat. Fill a bowl with boiling water and add a few chamomile tea bags. Cover your head with a towel as you lean over the bowl and take deep breaths for about 10 minutes—the towel traps the humidity so it goes directly into your airways.

Don’t Buy That!

If you’ve got laryngitis, stay away from menthol cough drops, since the minty stuff can dry out your throat and cause even more irritation. Instead, keep your throat moist by drinking lots of warm water—six to eight glasses per day will not only lubricate and soothe the rawness in your larynx, it’ll encourage healing. Ditch dehydrating beverages like coffee and alcohol. Money saved: $2-6.

Break Out the Onion!

One age-old trick calls for a mixture of onion juice and a little honey. With a blender, food processor, grater, or juicer, grate or process an onion and then strain out its juice into a small glass or bowl. Combine one tablespoon of onion juice with one and a half teaspoons of honey, and take this mixture several times a day.

Lemon-Cayenne Cocktail

When your throat’s raspy and sore, head for the kitchen! Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice with one tablespoon of honey and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Lemon juice will break up mucus and stimulate the release of saliva; honey will soothe irritation and inflammation; and cayenne will help relieve the pain. Drink up as needed.

Myth Buster

When you’ve lost your voice, you might be tempted to whisper to be heard—but don’t!

Whispering strains your vocal chords just as yelling does, so it can do more damage and lengthen your recovery time. Even clearing your throat makes things worse: Any unusual stress on your already-irritated pipes will inhibit the healing process. If you need to speak, do so softly in exhaled, sighing breaths.

Salt-Water Gargle

Lukewarm salt water can help fight infection and heal irritation in your throat and vocal chords. Mix a half teaspoon of salt in one cup of warm water, let it dissolve, then gargle with it a few times per day.

Tea

Warm or hot teas can do wonders for a scratchy sore throat caused by laryngitis. Go for peppermint or even sage varieties, which help improve breathing, calm your voice box and respiratory muscles, and soothe dry coughs.

Ginger

Ginger is an all-around medicinal powerhouse: It’s a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reducer that will relax the mucus membranes in the larynx, fight bacteria, loosen chest congestion, and boost production of saliva. Munch on pieces of fresh or candied ginger, or sip ginger tea for throat relief.

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How to Deal with Bees and Wasps

Turn Out the Light

Swatting at bees is unnecessary (and never leads to anything good). Just turn out the light and open a window. The light from outside will attract them even more than your nice, juicy arm.

Free a Bee; Don’t Smack It

If a bee or other stinging insect gets trapped in the car with you, do not swat at it! Instead, pull your car off to the side of the road, open all the windows or doors, and let the critter fly out.

Mint

Include some sprigs of fresh mint in your picnic basket when eating al fresco. Bees and wasps don’t like mint, so add some to your plate to keep it stinger-free.

Straws

No one likes having to worry about a bee hijacking his soda while having a drink outside. So cover the top of the cup or can with foil, then poke a straw through. Now you can sip in peace!

Wasp Trap

To keep wasps far from your outdoor party, distract and trap them with this tip. In a small saucepan, heat one cup of water and one cup of sugar until the sugar is fully dissolved. Then pour a little of the mixture in paper cups, cover with foil, and secure with a rubber band. Punch a few holes in the foil of each cup. Set the cups in different locations around your yard, so that the wasps are drawn to them. They’ll find their way into the cup, but will get trapped inside.

Nest Removal

Unlike bees, wasps can sting again and again. If you spot wasps flying to one spot, look for a nest, which can produce up to 30,000 wasps! Contact your local health authority to remove it without delay.

For more all-natural ways to deal with insects, check out our Bug and Pest Natural Remedies board on Pinterest. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook for our Tip of the Day!

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