It is a curious fact that antidepressants are a common treatment for irritable bowel syndrome. But why give Prozac to someone with abdominal pain? Antidepressants work because the gut and brain are inextricably linked. What happens in the gut does not stay in the gut — it travels to the brain. More than half of all patients with IBS are affected by a mood disorder.
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Exercise, as you know, has many positive benefits. Aside from raising your buff rating, it improves all aspects of health, from pulmonary and musculoskeletal fitness, from immunity to metabolism. It is celebrated for its heart health benefits, and because cardiovascular fitness is considered a predictor of long-term health exercise can extend your life expectancy.
However, there’s another area of exercise research that is proving to be just as positive, and that’s brain health. It’s becoming clear that the right kind of exercise can help prevent the onset of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
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It takes a natural disaster to realize that food does not actually come from shops, that borders are figments of our imaginations, and that everything that we construct to shield ourselves from the natural world is an illusion that can be swept away in seconds by a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, a wildfire. A virus.
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