【推荐1】Do you often listen to music at loud volumes（音量）? You should know that this habit is bad for your hearing, according to the World Health Organization（WHO）.

Over 1 billion young people are at risk of hearing loss because of listening to loud noise for long periods of time, said WHO. Listening to music or watching a TV show at loud volumes can harm your hearing.

The United Nations has standards for safe listening. It is not safe to listen to sounds that are louder than 85 decibels （dB,分贝）for eight hours or 100 dB for 15 minutes. The sound of a busy road is about 85 dB and the sound of a rock concert can be about 100 dB.

Loud noise is harmful to the inner ear（内耳）. Most of us are born with about 16,000 hair cells（听毛细胞）in our inner ears. These cells test sounds. However, listening to loud noise for a long time can make these cells work too hard and cause some of them to die. This is what causes hearing loss.

Some people might think that their music isn’t all that loud. But this can depend on where you are. For example, if you are in a noisy place like the subway, you might turn up your music too loud without realizing it. Later, when you listen to it at the same volume in a quiet place, you might feel uncomfortable. WНO said the “safe level” for most sound is below 80 decibels for up to 40 hours a week. A level of 80 decibels is almost the same to the noise of a subway.

【推荐2】Eye Health Care Daily Tips

Healthy habits mean healthy eyes. Here are some daily tips for eye health.

Clean your eyes with pure cold water regularly (定期地). This is one of the best ways to keep eyes healthy and disease (疾病) free. Avoid (避免) looking directly at the sun.

Roll your eyes up and down, then side to side. Then move your eyes in a circular motion (圆周运动). Exercise 5 to 10 times a day to relax your eyes. Keep a good distance (距离) from the computer screen—sit about 22 to 28 inches away from it.

Visit your eye doctor on a regular basis.

There are also some tips for healthy contact lens (隐形眼镜) wear and care to help prevent eye infections (感染). Please visit CDC’s healthy contact lenses website and you can also follow them on social media. (www. edc. gov/contactlenses)

【推荐1】How important is shopping to you? How much time do you spend buying things? And how much time do you spend organizing these things in your home? In the future, how much time will you spend in movie theaters, at amusement parks, at shopping malls, or at convenience stores? When you add it all up, you will probably see you spend a lot of your life consuming things. Consuming products is not necessarily bad. However, if we spend too much time doing it, we should look at it carefully.

Imagine that you have a week off from school. You don’t have to go to class. However, in this week, you cannot spend any money—no shopping, no movies, no eating out. How would you spend your time? What things would bring you happiness? Perhaps you would take a walk with your best friend. Perhaps you would help a child read. Or you might spend time with your family.

When we look back, it is likely that non-consuming experiences like these will be our most important memories. Why? Non-consuming activities are active, not passive. They don’t come in a package. You make the experience yourself. For example, each person who reads to a child will have a different experience. The experience changes with the reader, the child, and the book. Similarly, when you have a conversation with a friend, you are actively creating an experience. The conversation that you have with your friend cannot be experienced or recreated by anyone else. However, if you watch a movie with a friend, you will each have a packaged experience. It requires no action and little interaction between the two of you.

The environment we live in encourages us to have packaged experiences. We feel that we must consume because we believe that buying is doing. However, we can start a personal revolution against consumerism. How? By consuming less. We can ask ourselves what experiences bring us the greatest satisfaction. Then we can organize our lives so that we have more of those kinds of experiences.

【推荐2】Do you love sweet food such as milk tea or chocolate（巧克力）? If you love chocolate, now you have a reason（原因）to eat it! According to a new study（研究）, if you eat a kind of dark chocolate 3 times（次数）a day, you can really be happy.

Scientist did a study. They make 46 healthy people into three groups. Every day for three weeks, Group 1 eat no chocolate; Group 2 eat 3g of 85% dark chocolate and Group 3 eat 30g of 70% dark chocolate,

From the study, people from Group 2 are very happy. But the other two groups are not. Why? Scientists found more Blautia in Group 2’s gut（肠道）. Blautia is a kind of bacteria（细菌）. It helps make people feel good. But scientists say you need to make sure it’s 85% dark chocolate. Milk chocolate can do the same, but it is bad for your health because it has too much fat and sugar.

So next time when you are not happy, have some 85% dark chocolate. It may take away your blues.