【推荐2】Sometimes, the pace of modern life barely gives you time to stop and rest. It can make getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis seem like a dream.     1     Good sleep improves your brain performance, mood, and health.

People often think that sleep is just downtime when a tired brain gets to rest, but that’s wrong.     2     For example, sleep helps prepare your brain to learn, remember, and create. Besides, certain repair processes occur in the body during sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, those processes are going to be disturbed (干扰).

    3     One is that adults need less sleep as they get older. This isn’t true. Older adults still need the same amount, but their sleep quality can get worse as they age. Another one is that you can catch up on your days off. However, researchers say that the weekend catch-up sleep doesn’t always help.

Some people have conditions that prevent them from getting enough good quality sleep, no matter how hard they try. These problems are called sleep disorders. The most common sleep disorder is insomnia (失眠症). Insomnia happens when you have repeated difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep, although you have the time to sleep and a proper sleep environment.     4     If you’re having trouble sleeping, hearing how important it is may be discouraging. But don’t worry too much.     5     Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help many people with insomnia get better sleep. Medicine can also help some people.

【推荐3】The health triangle is a helpful tool for visualizing your total well-being. The triangle is made up of three sides, each representing an important side of your health: Physical, Mental and Social.     1    

Exercise. Thirty minutes of exercise a day, four to five times a week is the recommended amount for most people. Exercise can help you lose weight and reduce your risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, and even some cancers.     2     The endorphins (内啡肽) released during exercise might help lighten your mood, which is beneficial to your mental health.

Make time for activities that give you joy. You probably have a very busy schedule with the demands of work, home and everything in between. But preserving your mental health means making time for things that bring you joy and also keep you calm.     3     And set aside at least a few hours each week in which you can relax and take this time to yourself.

    4     Social health is improved by networks of friends and family members. They are people who support you, give you guidance, and celebrate joyful moments in life with you. Try to build up networks where people meet regularly in person. Taking a class, attending a monthly book club, or joining a local tennis team means you will have a regular opportunity to make friendships.

Volunteer. Another great way to improve social health is to give back to the community.     5     It has been shown to have enormous benefits to its participants, especially in increasing their psychological well-being and sense of social integration (融合).

【推荐1】Rumination（深思）is a sleep—blocker because it keeps your mind awakened, especially in bed, when it’s dark and quiet.     1     Your brain’s job is to strengthen information and build new synapses（突触）by digging up moments and memories from your day, even the things that upset you.

The best time to deal with worrying is during the day when you have important things to do and don’t have time to get caught up in mental cycles for hours and hours.     2    

Set aside 15 minutes during the mid—to late—afternoon just for yourself. Once the timer starts, give yourself the freedom to worry about one topic at a time. Think of it as a to—do list that you go through one by one, except what you’re checking off are topics you feel the most anxious about.

If you find yourself worrying during the day, tell yourself: “Look, I just need to put off this to the next emotional worry time.”     3     “I have this scheduled for tomorrow.” Do this two to three times a week until your rumination at night slowly starts to fade.

On a piece of paper, create two columns labeled as “Problem” and “Solution”. Come up with a short list of current problems you’re dealing with. Focus in particular on what you’re likely to ruminate about tonight.

    4     Remember, the goal is to make out a plan for how to get started with actionable steps for tomorrow, or within the next few days. You are not solving it completely.

Then fold the paper up and put it next to your bed. Say to yourself, “I have a plan.”     5     It frees your mind from puzzling over them at night.

【推荐1】A group of fifteen volunteers lived in the Lombrives cave for 40 days without clocks, phones, or sunlight as part of a $1.4 million project called Deep Time. The project, led by the Human Adaption(适应) Institute，aims to explore the limits of human ability to adapt to isolation(隔离).

Social media shows the smiling volunteers coming from the cave to a round of applause while wearing special sunglasses to protect their eyes after so long in the dark.

Researchers at the Human Adaption Institute monitored the volunteers closely during their time in the cave. They would regularly check the team's sleeping patterns, social activities, and cognitive(认知的)functions.

During their time in the cave, the volunteers had no communication with the outside world. They slept in tents and made their own electricity with a pedal bike since there was no natural light. They also drew water from a well 146 feet below the earth. Since there was no sunlight, the team had to follow their biological clocks to know when to sleep, eat, or do daily tasks.

All he volunteers were interviewed after the experiment. Christian said he thought he had been underground for 23 days because of losing his sense of time. Another volunteer, Johan, said he was eager to leave the cave. But most of other volunteers felt differently, with two thirds saying they wanted to stay in the cave for longer. “For once in our lives, we had time and could stop to live and do our tasks. It was great.” said Marina. However, Marina did admit that she felt happy to be outdoors and hear natural sounds again.

The researchers behind the project say their next step will be doing more experiments to find out how people can adapt to various extreme living conditions. With our planet's environment being destroyed, we have to find ways to adapt to it. Then we will have a better chance to survive in our future planet or other planets, whether they are similar to ours or not.

【推荐2】When you throw a plastic bottle into a recycling bin, do you ever think of its destination? Will it be reused, or will it end up just bringing more pollution to the environment?

In fact, only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling, one reason for which is that not all plastic can be recycled, sometimes because of the type of plastic, or because it’s polluted by food waste. Most plastic is burned, thrown into a landfill (垃圾填埋场), or spread around the natural environment.

Experts say companies should replace single-use containers with ones that can be used over and over. They could be metal or glass and be refilled at a store, by a company, or at home. Reuse, as well as removal of a lot of packaging we don't need, will also have to be a key part of the solution.

Several global companies have tested reusable packaging. But the effect of these programs was small at the beginning. As of 2019, less than 2% of the plastic packaging from dozens of companies was reusable. But the circular-economy (循环经济) movement has been gaining steam. In the United States, the reusable-packaging market for beauty and personal-care products grew by about 65% from June 2020 to May 2021.

Can reusable packaging help us save the environment? There’s a “payback” period with any reusable item. That’s the number of times it must be reused before it’s actually better for the environment than the single-use ones. Think about reusable sandwich packaging. The energy and resources needed to make and wash it are far more than what goes into making single-use bags. But reusable bottles could pay off.

What customers do is also important. If someone buys a metal shampoo bottle, gets lazy, and throws it into the garbage instead of refilling it, that might be worse for the environment than a single-use bottle. That’s because it took more energy to make the reusable metal bottle.

For a reuse program to work, experts say simple is best. One company experimenting with reusable packaging is Loop. Loop used to sell its products online, and customers sent empty containers back for a refill. The company has switched to stores to make the process easier. Customers return their bottles in person instead of having to mail them back to Loop.

【推荐3】It’s no secret that humans have been using wells to collect water for a long history. Now, it turns out we’re not the only species that knows how to tap water from the earth.

In April 2019, Science posted an article that details how various horses and donkeys had been seen digging wells up to six feet deep to try and reach fresh water when they were miles away from the nearest natural source. Apparently, they use their hooves (蹄) to dig into the ground until they have enough water. They were found doing so at one site in Mojave Desert, California, and four different sites in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona.

Scientists quickly set up cameras to watch the area and noticed that as many as 57 species visited the well to drink. Most of them were different types of birds, including Cooper’s hawks, owls, and red-tailed hawks. They were not alone. American badgers and even black bears were seen drinking from the new wells too. It seems that many of the wells became an oasis (绿洲) for those in the surrounding areas as the likes of river toads, sheep, and mule deer all moved into the area.

It seems the wild donkeys and horses that dig wells have done a lot more than create a place to drink; they have changed the local environment now that everything has access to fresh water. Cottonwoods and willows quickly started to appear in some of the spots as they germinated (发芽) in the fresh soil. Not only has this changed the landscape, but it could be the difference needed to bring some of the endangered and critical desert trees back from the edge. Scientists have called it “ecosystem engineering”, an event that sees animals change their environment. The most well- known example of this has often come in the form of beavers (an animal), who create dams that prevent wildfires, raise the water table, and enhance species diversity. Now, it seems the wild donkeys and horses have found a new way to improve their areas, too.