As board-certified sleep specialist Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., explains to mbg, the circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle that your body repeats over and over. “It basically ‘runs’ your sleep—starting it and stopping it—by sending out neurochemical signals telling each area, organ, or receptor site what to produce, what to receive, and what to do,” he explains. And according to naturopathic sleep doctor Catherine Darley, N.D., “There are also clock genes in each cell, which makes the cell do more or less of its function at different times of the day....

Rough sex can be really fun if you’re looking to spice things up with some role play and explore new things. Sometimes when a person has a Type-A personality or has a lot of power in their daily lives (i.e. The Boss), they like to be more submissive and let her partner take control in the bedroom. This is perfectly normal. And yes, rough sex, when you’re doing it for the right reasons in the right way, can deepen your connection to your partner....

After years of being told to toughen up and learning that doctors were dismissive of common symptoms such as dry skin, constipation, fatigue, and muscle and joint pain, I started to believe that I was just weak. The truth was I was suffering from an autoimmune disease which wasn’t diagnosed until 2005 when I was 25 years old. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autoimmune diseases affect approximately 8% of the population, 78% of whom are women....

Forget 10,000 steps, the real marker of well-being is to lessen the amount of inactivity (or sitting still). You may be familiar with the sentence sitting is the new smoking, but we expect people to prioritize regular movement—even while seated!—during their everyday lives. The original practice started off as a 4-mile walk, but you don’t necessarily need to cover that distance to reap the benefits. In fact, even a super-short stroll has been associated with a longer life: According to a study presented at the ESC Congress 2022 Barcelona, just a 10-minute stroll every day (or one hour each week) has been linked to increased longevity in people 85 and older....

Fasting is trendy, especially something more recently being called intermittent fasting. Fasting is a general term for going without food for a set amount of time (from a few hours to a few weeks), with or without liquid additions. Sometimes fasting is used to refer to going without a particular thing, such as sugar, meat, or alcohol, but that’s not the technical definition. For example, if you finish dinner at 6 p....

The short, unsexy answer: It depends. Here’s what you need to know. Protein recommendations are based on roughly how much we need to eat to cover our needs for these various amino acids. Most healthy adults need about 0.8 to 1.0 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight. Since 1 kilogram is equivalent to 2.2 pounds, a 150-pound person (68.2 kilograms) needs about 55 to 68 grams of protein per day....

However, there is a growing body of research showing promising treatment options. As a functional medicine doctor of optometry, these are the natural management tools I’m most hopeful about. Researchers have also found that patients with higher brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels have a decreased risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders2, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. This was attributed to the critical role that BDNF plays in stimulating the growth neurons in the central nervous system (CNS)....