How Your Muscles Affect Your Mental Health

You’re probably underestimating your muscles. In fact, almost everyone does. While everyone knows, for instance, that muscles are important for functions—activities such as walking, climbing, and lifting—few appreciate just how important muscles are for feeling.

If you haven’t noticed this mood-muscle connection yourself, take heart; it is only a recent discovery. Surprisingly, the entire scientific community remained in the dark until approximately 2003 (1) when a team of Copenhagen-based researchers reported a remarkable discovery: Muscles at work secrete tiny chemical messengers called myokines that exert powerful effects on organ function, including brain function ( 2).

Through the actions of myokines, muscle tissue communicates directly with the brain about its activity, triggering a cascade of biological responses that improve memory, learning, and mood (see Figure 1 below). This newly discovered mechanism implies that a person engaging in physical activities that build and maintain healthy muscle tissue can expect to

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Monkeypox in China: Don’t touch foreigners, says senior health official after first case emerges

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo on Saturday that the country’s Covid-19 restrictions and tight border controls had thus far prevented the spread of monkeypox — until a case “slipped through the net.”

That case was detected in the southwest municipality of Chongqing. An “international arrival” was under mandatory Covid-19 quarantine when the infection was discovered, according to local authorities — however, they did not say whether the person was a foreign or Chinese national.

Cases of monkeypox, which causes flu-like symptoms and blister-like lesions, began emerging around the world in May. The United States has reported 23,500 cases so far this year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It is necessary and important to strengthen the monitoring and prevention of monkeypox,” Wu wrote in his post, emphasizing the risk of disease spreading …

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Food as medicine: could prescribing fruit and vegetables become part of healthcare? | Health

Emma’s type 2 diabetes diagnosis turned her life upside down. “It is like having a baby that never grows up,” she says. “It is nagging at you as soon as you wake up.” Every single morsel of food has to be carefully chosen in case it sends her blood sugar levels spiking, which could cause her to pass out or worse.

The ideal diet for someone with Emma’s condition would include lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrains, nuts and seeds, lean meat and fish, and reduced-fat dairy. that diet has been shown to slow down or even reverse the progression of type 2 diabetes and help prevent it happening in the first place. But that has been a diet she has struggled to access.

What if such a diet could be prescribed in the same way as medication, as a prescriptive intervention, subsidized by government, readily available and

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New West Texas clinic opens in rural health care desert

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