A combination of three simple treatments may reduce invasive cancer risk by 61% among adults aged 70+

original publication:Posted on April 25, 2022 by Frontiers Science Communications

A combination of vitamin D, omega 3, and exercise may reduce invasive cancer risk by 61% among adults aged 70+, finds new study in Frontiers in Aging

A new study published in Frontiers in Aging found that a combination of high-dose vitamin D, omega-3s, and a simple home strength exercise program (SHEP) showed a cumulative reduction by 61% in cancer risk in healthy adults aged 70 or older. It is the first study to test the combined benefit of three affordable public health interventions for the prevention of invasive cancers. Following future studies, the results may impact the future of cancer prevention in older adults.

Cancer is considered a major age-related disease in Europe and the US. It is the second leading cause of mortality in older adults and the chances of getting most cancers increases with age.

Apart from preventative recommendations such as not smoking and sun protection, public health efforts that focus on cancer prevention are limited, according to Dr Heike Bischoff-Ferrari of the University Hospital Zurich: “Preventive efforts in middle-aged and older adults today are largely limited to screening and vaccination efforts.”...

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Four Benefits of Being a Great Listener

Being an effective listener is a powerful communication technique that you can use to build a rewarding life. Great listeners can solve complex problems, unite organizations and people, and run successful businesses.

Listening is the first step to adopting proper communication skills and it positively impacts your life, business, and community. Optimizing your listening skills is necessary to achieve more of your goals or dreams in life.

Here are four key benefits to being a great listener, and how this necessary skill improves your overall life.

Improved Relationships

When you hear what others are saying more than you talk, you get to know people better. This in turn improves your relationships by making you more likable, respected, trustworthy, and approachable. When others know you will truly listen and want to know them, they are more likely to continue the genuine relationship.

Refined Decision-Making Skills

Taking the time to listen makes you think about your choices each day. It prevents you from jumping to conclusions or making a quick decision without proper knowledge. The more knowledge you gain or have, the easier it is to make the right choices.

Improved Communication Skills

Again, if you want to improve your communication skills, starting with listening is key. It is the first step to proper communication. Without properly listening to the information being provided to you, you can’t make the right response. If you don’t actively listen, you will likely misunderstand the conversation and break the focus. This could then result in an uncomfortable conversation or situation.

Increased Patience and Positivity

Active listening means ignoring your own thoughts. It means that you hear what the other person or people are saying without forming your own words or just waiting for your turn to speak. This takes time and patience, and most importantly, positivity. This way, you don’t jump to conclusions or an inappropriate conclusion to the speaker's conversation.

Improving your listening skills is not a challenging task to complete, and it can have a big and positive impact on your life. It improves your relationships and understanding of the world, and it unlocks opportunities that bring joy and happiness to your life. The more you listen, the more you can understand and the stronger your relationships and connections to the world become. You can make more informed decisions to live the life you desire and need with strong listening skills.

Reasons to Stop Sweating the Small Stuff

Sweating the small stuff or worrying only consumes valuable time and resources. Likewise, replaying mistakes in your mind, fretting over a misunderstood conversation, or simply regretting small mistakes is a waste of time. All this worry is not worth the time and effort spent thinking them over and hashing them out.

While it may be challenging to clear these thoughts from your mind, it is an important practice to learn in order to prioritize your time better and identify what truly matters most to your life. In other words, sweating the small stuff only clouds your judgment and prevents you from achieving success.

Here are three reasons to stop sweating the small stuff.

To Reduce Chronic Stress and Fatigue

Stressing over things that don’t provide value only drains you, ultimately keeping you from taking action. When cortisol levels rise, so do inflammation and blood pressure. This can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.

To Achieve More and Live Successfully

Managing stress and controlling your thoughts means you get to take control and lead the life you want. A healthy mind and body will foster and inspire you to continue taking the steps to a happier and successful life, whatever that may mean to you. A simple change in focus can make all the difference. Just try to remember what you value the most. Then, if you need to, write it down.

To Be Happier

It’s a fact; improved mental and physical health increases happiness. Only focusing on things which you can control, and ignoring thoughts of others who have no control of your life, brings more empowerment and joy to yours. The only thing you can control is how you respond or take action. When you are free of these negative thoughts, you can better focus on the more important and valuable things in your life.

As you can see, sweating the small stuff is not an effective use of your time. It only invites in more stress and keeps you from achieving your goals or aspirations. Instead, focus on your actions, learn to manage your emotions, and live authentically to free yourself of this bad habit. Most importantly, trust yourself and remember what you want the most. The more you choose to focus on what really matters, the happier and stronger you will be.

• How to Unlock the Power of Choice

You are the only one with unique control over whether you reach your goals and experience your dreams or not. It is about unlocking the power of choice and using it daily to achieve your dreams. You can choose your behavior, response, and direction of your life and actions as long as you truly want to. The more you understand and commit to the idea that you have a choice no matter what obstacles, the more empowered and successful your life will be.

Here are four steps to follow to unlock the power of choice.

Step One: Start with Positivity and Mindfulness

To recognize the choices in front of you, you can’t let negativity cloud your judgment. So often, negativity depicts situations that are not actually there, making you react poorly. Using mindfulness can help clear your mind so you can see what is truly in front of you.

Step Two: Be Ready for and Embrace Change

Next, it’s important to understand that life is about change. You can always count on the fact that what is today will be different tomorrow. It sounds frightening, but change is not something to be afraid of. Instead, embrace change and find the beauty within it. You can grow and seek the experiences you need to live a happier and more successful life with change.

Step Three: Seek Education and Understanding

The next thing to do is to dive into understanding yourself and what you want from the world. How do you define success, and what do you need to get there? Unlocking the power of choice means discovering the information you don’t know yet. Education is the one thing in life that allows you to seek your ultimate fulfillment.

Step Four: Pursue Your Passions

Finally, use the power of choice to do the things that truly make you happy. What is your main reason for living your life? Is it your career, hobby, or family? Whatever it may be, take action to pursue your passions as often as you can to live a truly happy and rewarding life.

Overall, unlocking the power of choice is about committing to mindfulness and deciding to direct your life. It’s setting boundaries and sticking to them. It’s taking charge instead of sitting and waiting.

When you follow these steps, you see just how easy choosing what you want from life becomes. Unlocking the power of choice is within your reach as long as you want it, are willing to participate, and pay attention.

Four Reasons Why Accepting Criticism Is Key to Success

Constructive criticism is feedback that you get from others, intending to build you up and provide you with more information or tools to do better or improve in some way. It is not meant to harm you or be personal or feel like an attack. If it sounds like an attack or is too personal, then it is not constructive criticism.

Proper criticism can open up doors and opportunities you may never have been aware of before, thus leading you to more success and happiness – as long as it is provided respectfully and correctly.

Here are four reasons why accepting constructive criticism leads to more success.

It Improves Your Awareness and Focus

When others provide criticism, it unlocks key bits of information you may have otherwise overlooked. Over time this can help you notice of these vital details on your own, thus improving your skills and understanding to be more successful. The more information you have, the more you can improve.

It Inspires Personal Growth and Improvement

When you know that others will provide valuable feedback, it motivates you to do better before the information is even given. In addition, consistent feedback improves your awareness, which fuels your determination to keep improving and growing to achieve your dreams.

It Increases Your Understanding of Yourself

Within the constructive criticism there are likely to be variables that detail who you are as a person. For example, your boss may have noticed how you deal with completing an important assignment. It may not ultimately affect the result but they want to provide you with tools to help you get the results more efficiently in future. In addition, your actions can easily affect other areas of your life or work assignments, so the feedback gives you richer knowledge of who you are and where you need to improve.

It Inspires You to Take More Action

Without action, there is no success. You need to take consistent steps in order to live the life you want for yourself. No one else can provide this – only the actions you take can. Taking action is the most difficult step and process to overcome. However, receiving constructive criticism can be a great reminder of just how important the right steps are, and can provide you with the inspiration or wake-up call you need to keep going or make better decisions.

Overall, these benefits point to the fact that not all criticism is harmful or should be avoided. In fact, you should seek it from those you admire the most and those you know have your best interest at heart. The more knowledge and perspective you gain from others in a healthy way, the more tools and resources you can use to empower yourself and achieve more in life.

What Does It Mean to Find Inner Peace?

Finding inner peace is about being in a state of contentment, calm, or happiness. Having inner peace means that your journey will not be the same as that of your friends, family, or peers, and it means that you are okay with that idea. You know who you are, what you want, and how to make it happen without breaching your own principles, morals, and values in the process.

Some people find inner peace through meditation and working towards their passion. Others find it through demanding work and dedication to their career. Finding inner peace takes a deep understanding of yourself in all areas of your life.

Here are four ways to achieve inner peace and how it improves your life.

Declutter Your Mind and Environment

Whether it’s your brain or your room, it's really hard to feel peaceful if you have a lot of clutter around. Studies show that clutter, whether it’s in your environment or in your head, causes anxiety and stress. If you want to relieve it, clean it up.

Let Go of Past Mistakes and Learn to Love Yourself

Everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, perfection and perfect people don’t exist, so you may as well accept yourself as the human you are. Self-acceptance goes a long way when you have a grueling day or mountains to climb.

Value Your Time and Live Authentically

Everyone is given the same time each day. So, take care to choose how you spend your time wisely. You don’t know how long you have to live, so you may as well live as your authentic self. It’s only in living authentically that you will find true contentment in life.

Spend More Time Alone and in Nature

Liking yourself is an important part of finding inner peace. Being by yourself outside in nature is very special. You are, after all, a mammal, and due to that, you need to get out in nature so you can become grounded as the natural person you are.

While finding inner peace is different for everyone, we can all take similar approaches to find it. Freeing your mind of stress, expectations, and perfection is the first step. Then you need to let go of your past and learn to love yourself now, imperfections and all, to unlock your truest self.

The more you search for, realize, and discover yourself, the more peaceful and happy you will be. This inner peace will show through every interaction you have with other people, whether personal or business related.

Five Benefits of Expressing Your Emotions

Processing and expressing emotions are two main functions your brain experiences daily as you go through life. This information is used to make daily decisions and actions that can affect the trajectory of your life – meaning understanding and expressing your emotions is an important skill to improve if you want to achieve and do more of the things you wish to in life, both personally and professionally.

If you don’t learn how to read and express your emotions properly, you may never achieve the goals or desires you want to live a fully happy life. Here are five benefits of properly expressing and embracing your emotions and what you can do to manage them:

To Establish Clear Boundaries

Everyone has personal boundaries that must be established in order to form strong connections and relationships. They allow for better communication and for everyone to feel comfortable, respected and cared for.

To Live More Authentically

Bottling up your emotions means you don’t allow yourself to live a truly genuine life. It clouds your judgment, leading to poor decisions both personally and professionally, and further stopping you from being who you are.

Sharing your emotions can be done in a respectful way where both parties feel heard, respected, and valued, without feeling like they have to compromise their boundaries to get there. In other words, keeping emotions to yourself means you sacrifice being genuine.

To Have a More Successful Life

Expressing emotions means you no longer use time worrying or feeling down. It means you have the clarity to tackle your goals with persistence and determination. Expressing your emotions allows you to understand better what you want or need in life, too. All this provides you with more resources to create the goals you need to live a more successful and fulfilling life.

To Reduce Anxiety and Ease Depression

It’s simple; releasing your emotions prevents you from feeling anxious or sad. You simply can’t know how other people will react or what resources they can provide if you don’t share the information – leaving you to feel sad or stressed out when you really don’t need to be.

To Live with Clarity and More Control

When you bottle up emotions, you lose your focus and direction on what truly matters in life. The more you share, the more control and clarity you gain to achieve the things you need and want from life.

As you can see, learning to express your emotions is a vital tool for life. It can affect you, the people around you, and what you do each day. This means that you need to take the time to understand others and what the proper responses are in any given situation. The more you learn and improve, the better your overall chances of living a happier and more successful life.

The Four Health Warnings Your Dreams Are Telling You

Research shows that getting fewer than 7 to 9 hours of sleep makes you more likely to live an unhealthy and shorter life. Sleep also helps improve your memory, learn new information faster and cope with stressful or difficult situations. Overall, sleep is vital to the recovery of your brain and body. But is dreaming just as important?

Research on dreams specifically is still pretty limited to this day. Having said that, the data still points to the importance of dreaming, including potential health problems or warnings – even if you don’t remember them.

Here are the four health warnings your dreams may be trying to tell you:

Stress and Anxiety

By far the most common health warnings that dreams predict are stress and anxiety. Dreams about your teeth falling out or you struggling to find your classrooms you once attending in high school are two all too common dreams people report when dealing with pent-up stress or extra anxiety.

Alzheimer's or Other Memory Loss

Some studies have shown that certain dreams may be an early sign of brain degeneration. For example, highly stressful dreams involving deathly or scary attacks or where you are running from someone are commonly reported among those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Thyroid Disease, Diabetes, or a Fever

Dreams of running to the bathroom or similar activities that cause you to sweat can indicate you are experiencing night sweats – a common symptom of an underactive thyroid or diabetes. If you commonly wake up in the middle of the night as if you just ran a marathon, then it’s important to reach out to your doctor and get a blood test. These similar dreams can also indicate that you have a fever or simple cold.

Heart Disease and Pregnancy

Two more common health conditions that your dreams can indicate are heart disease and pregnancy. While completely different, these two health warnings display similar dream types. Many people report seeing or experiencing the illness or pregnancy visually in their dreams as if it were real life, before they even received the diagnosis.

While your dreams should never be used as a diagnosis, they can be a good indicator to reach out to your doctor to be sure you are healthy, or as a reminder to practice mindfulness during your daily life regarding the habits you develop. Overall, dreaming indicates that you are getting sleep, a vital resource to live a happy and sustainable life.

Four Effective Exercises to Boost Your Courage

Courage is a desirable skill that many successful people are often said to possess. This is because courage is required to push through many of the difficult challenges life faces. No success is achieved without going through or breaking down some type of obstacle or challenge.

Courage is about pushing through your fears or limitations in order to keep taking the steps required to achieve your dreams and aspirations. Just like most skills, this one can be practiced and improved on. The more you practice it, the stronger it becomes, leading you to a more successful and fulfilling life.

Here are four exercises to add to your daily or weekly routine to help boost your courage:

Remember, Fear Is Just a Chemical Reaction

The first exercise is simple. It is the understanding of what prevents you from being courageous in the first place and then changing your current perspective on it. Courage is usually prevented due to some fear. However, it is important to note that fear is just a chemical reaction that your body has simply because of lack of information – information you can easily learn.

Meet New People or Try a New Hobby  

You can gain more of the information you need to experience courage by meeting new people or trying new hobbies. Knowledge and experience provide power and kicks fear to the side -- easily increasing your courage and allowing you to achieve more of the things you need and want in life.

Experiment with Your Wardrobe and Style

This is a fun way to learn who you are and embrace yourself fully. Being authentic and ignoring what others think about you is key to building courage. You can’t have courage if you can’t be yourself or know what you want. This exercise also teaches you that differences make the world enjoyable. Even if you don’t agree with something or someone, life can still be satisfying – providing you with more tools to reduce your fear so you can keep being yourself and trying.

Embrace the Unknown and the Uncomfortable

Nothing in life is constant. Happiness, achieving goals, or anything you want in life requires consistent action. There will always be moments of discomfort, but that doesn’t mean you won’t learn anything valuable from it.

Be sure to add these exercises to your weekly or daily routine to see positive results. Courage is never improved or found overnight, nor is it a constant feeling. Even the most successful and courageous people have moments of weakness, but they know what to do to get back on the right track.