Wise & Well Weekly 8/29

[Wise & Well Editors]

Helping make your tomorrow a little better than today​

Welcome back to your weekly dose of wisdom and wellness, where you’ll find informative and actionable stories by our team of journalists, topical experts and practicing professionals. Compiled by Robert Roy Britt.

Debunking ADHD Medication Myths
Decades after treatments for ADHD entered the marketplace, you’d think doctors, psychiatrists and other experts would agree on which meds work and how best to use them. You’d be so, so wrong. Serious misconceptions involve everything from whether stimulants can cure ADHD to what drugs even qualify as stimulants. This neurologist/psychiatrists sorts fact from fiction and explains why so much confusion. By John Kruse MD, PhD

Can We Pop ‘Love Hormone’ Pills For a Deeper Bonding Experience?
It’d be awesome if we could take oxytocin orally, like any other supplement. But the reasons why it won’t work that way offer a quick, basic course in body chemistry. Oh, and as this scientist explains, there are easy ways to pump yourself up with this feel-good love hormone at zero cost. By Sam Westreich, PhD

This ‘Quick Fix’ Helps Older Adults Stay Healthy and Capable
By now, it’s quite possible you’ve heard that walking is good for you. Plenty of research also finds that more vigorous activity—this sort that really gets you huffing and puffing—can be even better for health, or offer similar benefits in less time. All that thinking is behind a new study that finds walking a little faster offers notable benefits for older people. And we’re talking about just a few extra steps per minute. By Annie Foley

In the Grips of ‘Painsomnia’
Nighttime is a nightmare for this writer, who suffers never-ending chronic pain. His plight is not all that unusual, and he and other who deal with it have a name for the condition, even if it’s not a formal medical term. If you suffer “painsomnia,” you just might glean some useful advice from his experience, and at the least you’ll have found someone to commiserate with. (Disclosure: Yours truly is interviewed for this story, based on my experience reporting on sleep science.) By Randall H. Duckett

This Way of Eating Lowers Risk of Dementia and Diabetes Significantly
Some people love to argue about whether the Mediterranean style of eating offers significant physical and mental health benefits over other ways of eating. While there’s always more research to do on the nutrition front, two new studies (along with mountains of other evidence) make a clear case for leaning into the Mediterranean diet if one aims to live longer and be healthier and sharper along the way. By Robert Roy Britt

How AI Can Improve K-12 Teaching and Learning
The most motivational K-12 classes for me were those that encouraged thinking and creativity, rather than memorizing a bunch of facts and dates. This writer, a professor who teaches future educators how to teach, thinks that’s exactly how AI could be used effectively in classrooms — to encourage creativity and critical thinking skills. Whether you love or hate AI, it’s coming, and if we can use it for better rather than worse, well, that’s a lesson we need to learn. By Michael G. Kozak

I hope we’re helping make your tomorrow a little better than today. Feel free to forward this newsletter to friends.

Cheers,
Rob

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Wise & Well Weekly 8/29 was originally published in Wise & Well on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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