Research on precrastination1 confirms the drawbacks of being the proverbial early bird: Back in 2014, psychologist David Rosenbaum, Ph.D., and his colleagues had college students carry one of a pair of buckets to the end of a walkway, asking them to choose whichever bucket seemed easier. Instead of choosing the bucket closer to the end, most of them chose the one closer to the starting point. That meant they carried the bucket for a longer distance, when it would’ve been easier to complete the task by waiting to grab the bucket closer to the end....

Suboptimal gut flora opens the door for unfriendly microbes to step in and disrupt balance. Think of probiotics as little helpers that restore order and help maintain harmony in the gut ecosystem.* You want them to outnumber and antagonize the unwelcome bugs, including unfavorable bacteria, yeast, and parasites.* Probiotic bacteria actually compete against unfriendly flora for bacterial binding sites on the inside lining of your intestines, further protecting you.* One way to populate your gut with probiotics, to promote or restore harmony and get all their many benefits, is with the right foods, which support the growth and proliferation of the good bacteria that crowd out the bad ones....

“Sometimes people who are wonderful partners for you (share your values, histories, interests, etc.) are also folx who are not going in the same direction in life,” therapist Dennis Nguyen, LCSW, (no relation to the author, by the way!) explains to mbg. For example, one or both people may be going through something challenging, experiencing a significant life transition, or simply aren’t currently interested in a relationship. Since you aren’t able to see the relationship through, a “right person, wrong time” situation may leave you with a fear that you’re somehow missing out on this mythical soulmate connection—and make it easy to project fantasies onto them....

And while it’s fine to keep your plant in its plastic home for the time being, you won’t want to leave it there forever. The reason being that unless your plant was propagated and grown locally, it’s likely been sitting in that pot for a while. Especially if comes from a large nursery (Costa Farms, Rocket Farms, and Altman Plants are some big names in the U.S.), there’s a chance that quite a bit of time has passed since it was packaged, shipped, stocked on new shelves, and sold to you....

First off: We all have those days when sleep, plans with friends, or a simple lack of motivation seem to take priority, and that’s OK. Here’s what personal trainers have to say about the benefits and the potential downsides of working out every day. When you work out (aka move) every day, you’re keeping the body efficient for movement. “Kind of like that saying, you don’t use it, you lose it,” NASM-certified personal trainer Jason Williams, NASM-CPT, tells mbg....

That’s because taking melatonin nightly—especially in doses higher than 0.5 to 1 milligram at a time—can potentially cause unpleasant side effects, downregulate your natural production of melatonin, interfere with certain medications, and, not to mention, prove ineffective at improving sleep quality. With that being said, most people should have no problem giving up melatonin in one fell swoop as there’s little evidence that it is habit forming. Others may have better luck gradually taking a lower and lower dose as the days go on—again, as overseen by a doctor....

Lingam is the Sanskrit word for penis and loosely translates to “wand of light.” In tantra philosophy, we approach the lingam from a place of the utmost love and respect, the same way we approach the yoni, or vagina. (The yoni massage might be considered the equivalent of the lingam massage, just performed on people with vaginas.) When you bring your partner pleasure through their “wand of light,” you are filled with that same energy or light in a conscious exchange of energy in giving and receiving pleasure....