Drink Up, You'll Need It.

This time, you can blame Vanilla at Half-Fast.

His first cartoon is here; the follow-up is here.

I seem to be powerless to control myself! Part II is better than the first effort, which is not saying much. Though it's a drab gray setting because I needed something with a computer screen. Oh, and I accidentally picked National Start Walking Day to diss walking. Good timing there, Crabby! Go read MizFit; she has an excellent post on why you should start walking today).



(The first episode is here, and is even more lame. (And this new one also appears here if for some reason the player doesn't work).


To Make Up for that Silliness, Now Some Serious Beverage-Related Health News

All good this time!

Alcohol: Though recent studies spoilsport studies like this one have suggested links between alcohol and certain forms of cancer, there is overall good news too. According to a study reported in the New York Times, "for people over 55, an alcoholic drink a day reduces death risk by 28%. But, "having one drink or less a week is no help at all." The geriatric study "included more than 12,000 people, followed them for four years and controlled for factors including sex, race, smoking, obesity, cancer, heart disease, recent heart attack, angina, physical function and socioeconomic status."

And Hot chocolate boosts brain power! Or it least it temporarily makes you more alert. Apparently researchers "asked 30 people to perform an array of math tests before and after having either a chocolate drink or non-chocolate drink... The people who drank the chocolate did better on one test that required repeatedly subtracting 3 from a number between 800 and 999."

Which comes up a lot! I can't TELL you how many times lately I've been asked to subtract the number 3 from a number between 800 and 999.

With only 30 people, and with only one of the "array" of tests apparently showing significant results, I'm not exactly blown away by this study. But hey, hot chocolate is tasty and has lots of antioxidants, so I think it's an awesome beverage.

(Weird aside: do you ever click on "related posts?" I have no idea how this hot chocolate post came up as a "related post" when I was reading about a freaky giant sea worm. Do sea worms drink hot chocolate?)

Coffee again proves it's awesomeness! You can read over at Blisstree (which seems to be the new incarnation of Healthbolt) about how coffee eases exercise-induced muscle pain. Or, you can remind yourself that coffee is a performance enhancer.

But the most cheerful update of all: coffee prevents cognitive decline, and helps ward off scary brain and nerve diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Just don't waste your beverage-enhanced cognitive capabilites by futzing away an entire evening playing with cartoons!

Any thoughts on beverages or on wasting time on the internet playing with movies?