Reality Upgrade

If you have ever felt like you get all your best ideas while going for a run or a swim, it turns out you may be right. According to Newsweek magazine, small bursts of exercise can boost your creativity for hours afterward.

In fact, Newsweek says “Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward.”

Of course, this only works if you are in good shape. Otherwise the exhaustion from unaccustomed exercise outweighs the benefits.

For more on this, and a bunch of other ideas for boosting creativity, check out the full article here.

We all like to think that our every decision is based on careful, rational analysis of all sides of a subject. That we weigh opposing facts and opinions, and carefully decide on the best option we can. Our decisions are our own, and they are good decisions.

Not bloody likely.

In fact, your decisions are probably based mostly on years of paying attention to things that reinforce your pre-existing opinions, and ignoring things that challenge what you believe.

This is a phenomenon known as Confirmation Bias, which is what happens when your brain uses its amazing filtering powers to filter out everything that you subconsciously think is unimportant. As soon as you think about something, like a movie for instance, your subconscious filter decides that it must be important, so it stops filtering out that movie.

And then you start seeing the movie EVERYWHERE.

Anyway, it is a fascinating feature of our brains, but it can be very problematic. It tends to falsely reinforce our beliefs, which can be dangerous. Beliefs are fine, just be aware of why you believe what you do, and make sure you understand the affect that confirmation bias can have.

To read a little more about confirmation bias, take a look at this fantastic article about it, from youarenotsosmart.com.

Enjoy!

If you are anything like me, you have never, ever, ever had a vase full of flowers in your house.

On the other hand, not many people are like me…

In any case, if you do on occasion keep cut flowers in a vase, this is a great article from Lifehacker about how to keep the flowers fresh longer.

If you don’t feel like reading it, the gist is this: if you crush a few aspirin tablets up with the back of a spoon and dump the powder in the water with the flowers, the aspirin will keep bacteria from growing in the water, which will keep the flowers fresh longer.

Have fun!

Self control. We exhibit self control all the time, in all sorts of ways.

When I sit down to watch a movie, I really enjoy eating a bowl of ice cream while I watch, even though I know how bad it is for me. Sometimes I know I should go to bed and get some sleep, but I stay up watching TV instead. And sometimes, I just want some french fries.

What is interesting is when I am able to resist the temptation, and when I give in. When I have a long exhausting day at the office, chances are I am going to be busting out the ice cream scoop when I get home. On the other hand, if I have a nice easy day at work, I might cut up an apple instead, or skip the movie completely and go running.

As it turns out, the reason I fail to resist temptations sometimes is because I have used up my self control, or will power.

There have been many studies done on this subject, but in this particular study test subjects are given two plates, one with radishes and one with chocolate chip cookies. One group of subjects is told to eat only the radishes, and solve a complicated (and unsolvable) puzzle. Another group was told to eat the cookies, and solve the puzzle.

On average, it took the cookie-eaters 19 minutes to give up, and it took the radish eaters 8 minutes.

This is because the radish-eaters were using up their willpower on resisting the cookies, and therefor had less to spend on trying to solve the puzzle.

By remembering that willpower/self control is a limited commodity, it is possible to make decisions about where to spend it. If you have a big test tomorrow, maybe tonight you should let the house cleaning go. If you don’t want to drink too much at a party, maybe you should not go window shopping before hand. And whatever you do, don’t go car shopping if you have used up any of your willpower at all.

On the other hand, willpower can be trained, just like muscles.

The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

- NY Times

So start with small changes, something as small as brushing your teeth with your opposite hand, and slowly build up to bigger challenges, and your willpower will increase over all.

I have talked about this before, here, and mentioned another article about it from the NY Times.

Once again behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, asks why we do what we do. In this lecture for TED, Dan Ariely describes a series of very interesting social experiments that try to find out how and why we cheat, and explores the implications of the results. He focuses on Enron, and the cheating that happened there, but he also applies the results across the rest of the stock market, and on our personal lives.

If the video does not work, you can also find it here, at TED.com.

For thousands of years, humans have lived the majority of their lives outdoors, only going inside to sleep if at all. Even then, windows were in scarce supply, so we lived in direct contact with the outside air almost all the time.

The first real air conditioner was invented in 1902, and ever since humans have been spending more and more time indoors. Especially if you work in an office, your only time outside at all might be walking from car to building and back.

It seems intuitive to some of us that spending all that time inside and away from nature is bad for your health, but this article from Discovery News adds even more evidence to the pile.

The article talks about the natural bacteria in the soil and air, which when we breathe them in (or eat them) have several major health benefits. Not only do they increase serotonin levels and decrease anxiety, they can also make us learn faster.

So your mother was right after all. Go outside, it’s good for you!

To continue our weekly series of TED videos, check out this great lecture by Juan Enriquez about the future of human evolution.

With the technology of genetics and robotics advancing by amazing leaps and bounds, Juan Enriquez talks about the possibility of humans taking control of our own evolution, and what that could mean for the future of the world.

If the video does not work for some reason, check it out here.

When you think of a parasite, most people get a horrible disgusted feeling. There is just something about a creature living inside you without you knowing that sets our teeth on edge.

If you aren’t already, picture the scene in the movie Alien where the little alien bursts out of one of the astronauts’ stomach during dinner. Ugh.

But in this fantastic podcast by Radiolab, a case is made that parasites are a lot cooler upon further inspection. So are they awful, or awesome?

Check out this great podcast and decide for yourself.

There are a multitude of hangover “cures”, embedded in old wives’ tales and frat house legends, but which ones really work?

Today, Reality Upgrade turns to science to find out which ones actually do the job.

The list is depressingly short.

The simplest and most effective hangover cure is to simply not drink in the first place, but lets face it. That’s no fun.

Other than that, there are essentially only 3 real things that help with a hangover:

• Food
• Water
• Time

See, I told you it was depressingly short.

Food

Eating well before starting to drink is a surprisingly effective hangover prevention tool, but not for the reason that is given in the general hangover lore. Rather than a literal alcohol sponge, a full meal is a figurative one.

When you eat a full meal, your stomach will focus on slowing the progress of food and liquids through the stomach so that the digestive process can happen. This has the useful side effect of slowing the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, because your intestines are busy absorbing other things as well.

Stretching out the absorption of alcohol over a longer period of time lets your body deal with the alcohol in smaller amounts over a longer period of time,  which in turn reduces the pain of your hangover. (See the bit on Time, below)

Water

Water is the magical elixir of life that keeps everything in your body running smoothly. Dehydration can cause headache, dry mouth, dizziness when standing, and and lethargy. Sound familiar anyone?

Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it encourages your kidneys to create more urine by suppressing your body’s levels of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, which in turn drains water out of your body more quickly than normal.

The best way to prevent dehydration is to drink plenty of water before, during, and after drinking alcohol. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you drink at least 1 tall glass of water for every shot, glass of wine, or cup of beer you drink. If you forget to drink water while you are out at the bar, at least remember to chug some before you hit the sack. This will keep you body hydrated, and fend off some of the worst effects of the hangover.

Time

As the liver breaks down alcohol, a whole bunch of nasty chemicals are created, all of which contribute to the hangover.

In the liver, ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, and then from acetaldehyde to acetic acid by the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde (ethanal) is between 10 and 30 times more toxic than alcohol itself.

A bunch of other complicated chemical stuff happens as well, but one of the major effects of these chemicals is to prevent the liver from properly regulating the levels of glucose in the blood. Glucose is the major energy source for the brain, so a lack of glucose can cause symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, mood disturbances, and decreased attention and concentration. Again, does  any of that sound familiar?

Because you just dumped a whole bunch of nasty into your bloodstream all at once, getting rid of it all causes your liver to run out of  glutathione and other detoxification agents. Your liver will produce more of these cleaning agents, but it takes…well, time. Until your liver can produce more, your body has to deal with a bunch of poisons floating around in your bloodstream, and the only thing you can do is wait.

Other Somewhat Useful Tips

Headache Medicine

One other thing that helps, but is not really a cure, is ibuprofen. It does not really fix anything, but it is the least damaging of the the three major over the counter headache medicines. Aspirin and acetaminophen work as well, but tend to irritate the lining of the stomach. In normal situations, this is not a big deal, but if your stomach just had to deal with a bunch of alcohol, anything else that irritate it is probably a bad idea.

Incidentally, if you don’t have any ibuprofen available, go with acetaminophen. It is slightly less rough on your stomach than aspirin.

Drink Clear Liquor

There are several things that can exaggerate the symptoms of alcohol, including other types of alcohols and congeners. Both of these can be side products of some types of fermentation, and some are also added to sweet liquors to enhance their flavor.

A 2009 study provided evidence that darker-coloured liquors, such as bourbon, cause worse hangovers than lighter-coloured liquors, such as vodka. The higher amount of congeners found in darker liquors compared to lighter ones was indicated as the cause.

So avoid the darker liquors, and stick with silver tequila for a somewhat smaller head in the morning.

What Not To Do

There are tons of hangover cures that don’t really help at all, and for a fun list and the debunking of most of them check out this fun article by Lifehacker.

Also for a more detailed look at the science behind the hangover, check out this article on hangovers on my favorite website ever, Wikipedia.