Life Style

    A daily nutritional drink can improve the memory of people with very early Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research. More than 300 people with prodromal Alzheimer’s disease people with memory problems that are not severe enough to be diagnosed as dementia had their brains scanned during a two year study. Half were given a daily drink containing Fortasyn Connect, a patented combination of fatty acids, vitamins and other nutrients, and the other half were given a control drink with equal calorie content but without the nutrients. After two years there was no difference in cognitive performance between the groups but when the participants were tested with a more sensitive exam to look at episodic memory, those who took the supplement performed better than the control gr...

    International Women's Day has marked the plight and achievements of women for more than a century -but is now looking ahead another 15 years to the world's gender equality goals. Themed this year around "Planet 50-50 by 2030", the United Nations-backed event will be celebrating women's rights in more than 40 countries. It will look at how to mensure the 2030 Agenda - which positions women's empowerment as at the centre of global sustainability plans - can be concretely achieved over the coming years. Yet the idea itself dates back more than 100 years, and has had various reasons for becoming the established celebration that it is today. 1. When was it first set up? Socialists first put forward the idea of advancing women's suffrage through a day to mark women's enormous co...

    Trust us, this blog was scheduled long before the unpleasantness, but given the amount of confusion that a certain supermarket’s decision to straighten a morning pastry has caused, it is timely (indeed, of great relief to the nation) that How to Eat will now definitively settle what constitutes the perfect croissant. Please do not get too twisted up below the line. Ensure you can prove your point. Flaky, pain-ful arguments will not butter-up your fellow contributors. They will make you look like a cronut. Straight or crescent-shaped? Where else to start but with this utter nontroversy? A PR coup concocted entirely from hot air, Tesco’s announcement that it will now sell only “straight” croissants is almost, but not quite, irrelevant. Straight or diamond-shaped croissants a...

    Living in Paris or Provence has long been a fantasy of mine, although it now seems I should probably throw in the towel (or la serviette, because I'm handy in Google Translate like that). It's not because I don't still dream of sipping impossibly strong espresso while strolling along the Seine, or picking flowers from the brightly colored fields that inspired Matisse. No, it's because apparently if I were to live in France, I stand the chance of losing everything I have because of the potty training photos I once posted of my daughters on Facebook. Parents in France were recently warned by authorities to stop posting photos of their children on social media sites including Facebook and Twitter. Please stop posting pictures of your kids on Facebook, French Gendarmerie are t...

    Given the hype about the evils of sugar, it's all too easy to overlook the risks of consuming too much salt. It's National Salt Awareness Week (29 Feb - 6 Mar) and while sugar is increasingly demonised, salt has been getting off pretty lightly of late. Recently, an influential French study questioned the role of sodium chloride (the chemical name for salt) in high blood pressure. Adding to the mixed messages, a paper in the British Medical Journal implicates sugar rather than salt in coronary heart disease, and research conducted by a team at the University of Regensburg in Germany suggests that a high salt diet might boost the immune system. But don't be fooled. “Due to the overwhelming clinical studies demonstrating that high dietary salt is detrimental to hypertension a...

‘With time, dedication and passion the mulberry leaves become a stunning silk gown' - Chinese Proverb. Silk has been a material of sophistication since the medieval ages. Kings and queens have adorned themselves with the garb considering it as one of their finest possession along with shimmering gold and luxurious stones. the muse of the romantics, silk has a reputation to live up to. Everything, from the culturing to the fineness of the finished fabric, has an interesting story to tell. The connotation of silk has also been borrowed into many metaphors. 'Smooth as silk', for instance, refers to any activity that has been undertaken, or will occur, very smoothly - a testament to the cloth's fineness. Meanwhile, 'Zuo jian zi fu' in Chinese means to spin a cocoon around oneself, to enmesh on...

    Fasten your safety belt… Surprising, sometimes shocking, secrets about commercial flying have been revealed by airline staff on networking website Reddit and in other candid interviews and online forums. There’s a cheaper time to buy flights There’s much debate about this but according to skyscanner, Tuesday afternoons, seven weeks ahead of your flight are the optimal time to get a bargain. There are ways to get upgraded Also according to airline price checker Skyscanner, there are ways to bag an upgrade. Tips include traveling at quiet times, flying alone, checking in as early as possible, dressing smartly, using air carrier loyalty cards, being a frequent flyer, and being very nice – or very wronged. Some airports have cool entertainment It’s possible to get a massage in...

    There comes a point in a lot of people's lives when they notice their body isn't bouncing back with the same youthful elasticity with which it once did. Dark circles under our eyes, aches and pains where there once were none and abdominal fat - our bodies have their ways of telling us lifestyle has outstripped luck. Recently, tummy fat has come to the fore in health news - or rather, how to banish it. Fitness and nutrition expert Louise Parker agrees, saying "I'd say most clients who are overweight are largely concerned about fat in the abdominal area as it’s what they physically see and feel." But as she explains to Mirror Online, there's no short-cut to a flatter, leaner tummy. Tackling it is a far-reaching task - and not tackling it can have serious consequences which go...

    With all the pressures of modern life, it’s no wonder that feeling stressed out is a very common complaint. However, stress hormones are actually a very important part of our body’s functionality – it’s what we do with them that counts. In the short-term, stress is designed to help us survive, but the long-term toll of it can be very detrimental to our health. How does stress work? A life without stress may seem like a dream come true, but it would actually be extremely dangerous. “Stress is a primitive response built in by nature as a survival mechanism,” explains Neil Shah, director of the Stress Management Society and author of The 10-Step Stress Solution. “In the stone age, it meant that if a sabre-tooth tiger attacked you, the body would change the way it functions by...

    A light covering of snow over the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Parliament Square, London, England. The British legal system is a strange beast. Our laws have been formed of a patchwork of rules brought in bit by bit for the past 800 years. Some seem bizarre because they haven't been updated for more than a century, while some are very new charges that catch people unawares. We reveal seven of the strange laws that could catch you out when you're doing anything from household chores to commuting. 1. Defacing currency A report from The Daily Mail this morning revealed that if you write, draw or scribble on any note, under the Currency and Bank Notes Act of 1928, you could be fined £1 a time. It's not exactly a rigorously-enforced rule, but might make people think twice ...