2 . Snacks are many people’s favorites, especially children and young women. Nowadays, more and more young people like to have snacks during the middle of the night. But a recent study shows that midnight snacks could bring some health problems. Namni Goel, lead scientist of the study, said “Midnight snacks will break your normal life habits. They will make you put on weight easily and make you get heart disease easily. Also they will greatly influence your feelings.”

This isn’t the first time a study has shown that midnight snacks could be bad for your health. The following four main problems were shown according to the common studies. It may surprise you a lot, but you should really make a right decision now. It will make a difference to your future life.

First, midnight snacks can influence your memory. The study found that midnight snacks are even bad for your cognitive functions (认知功能). Second, they can make you have weird dreams. The sugar in midnight snacks will excite your brain at night and make you feel nervous. Then you will probably have dreams which are not usual in your life. Third, midnight snacks make you get heart disease easily. Scientists have found that midnight snacks could make you have high blood pressure. As a result, you will have heart problems. Finally, midnight snacks can make you feel hungrier than usual when you wake up the next morning. So it’s high time that the young thought about their eating habit more. After all, having good health is what everyone wants most.

Parents and doctors have the same worry over especially low birthweight newborns.     1     A trend (趋势) has therefore developed to make special formulas (配方) of extra nutrients and protein-rich foods for these tiny babies. Unfortunately, a British study has found that this practice could have negative (负面的) long-term effects, such as high blood pressure in adulthood.

Between 1993 and 1995, Atul Singhal of the Institute of Child Health and his colleagues researched 299 full-term newborns, each of whom weighed very little for their age. The babies’ moms had decided not to breastfeed (用母乳喂养).

    2     The rest received a formula with more nutrients and 28 percent more protein than the standard formula. The growth of all of these children was compared to that of 175 similarly low birthweight babies whose mothers had chosen to breastfeed their children for their first 9 months.     3     They found 83 babies from the normal-formula group, 70 babies from the extra-formula group, and 95 babies from the breast fed group.

    4     According to the latest data, children who had received the extra formula had significantly higher blood pressures than those in the other two groups.

No matter how big a child is at birth, he or she will probably reach the same adult height no matter how quickly the baby grows. But reaching one’s adult size at a slow-to-moderate speed may have a lot of benefits, as Singhal says.     5    

4 . Blood pressure is the measure of the pressure of the blood within the circulatory system (血液循环系统). If you have high blood pressure, it could lead to heart disease, stroke (中风) or other life threatening problems. All that bad news aside, there is some good news that comes in the form of healthy foods that can prevent, lower and even reverse the heart damage caused by high blood pressure. Here are five of those foods.

1.Oatmeal (燕麦粉)

Oatmeal has long been known for its heart healthy benefits. These heart healthy benefits come about due to oatmeal’s ability to deliver on high-fibres, low-fat, and low-sodium.

2.Bananas

Bananas have several healthy vitamins like vitamins C and B-6. They also deliver on other nutrients. But the thing bananas are most known for, is one of the best things for your heart: potassium.

3.Potatoes

If bananas aren’t your thing, that’s just fine. You have several more options to get that all-important potassium. One that ranks high on the list is potatoes. In one potato, it contains about 897 mg of potassium. That’s 25 percent of the suggested amount.

4.Dark chocolate

There are so many heart healthy benefits of dark chocolate—almost too many to list. In a 100 gram bar with 70-85% cocoa contains fibre, iron, magnesium, copper, manganese, as well as plenty of potassium, phosphorus, zinc and selenium. Research has found that dark chocolate may improve blood flow and lower blood pressure. The study suggests that up to 100 grams per day of dark chocolate may be associated with a lower risk of CVD.

5.Berries (莓)

Berries like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries ...really anything with the word berry in it, are a good source of polyphenols (多酚类), especially anthocyanins (花青素), micro-nutrients (微营养素), and fibre.

6 . In school, we are told to drink water between classes. Our parents ask us to bring our water bottles to school and we’re reminded by experts that water is good for our skin and helps control our weight. But how much should we actually be drinking?

For many years, people have followed the advice of drinking eight glasses of water, eight times a day, known as the“8×8 rule”. According to Jessica Brown, this seems to have partly come from a misunderstanding of old advice that was published almost 80 years ago. In 1945, a study advised drinking one millilitre (毫升) of liquid for each calorie (卡路里) of food. This is about two litres of water a day, or eight glasses per person. But, Jessica says, the reality is that different people have different needs. Weight, age and activity level all play a role in how much water someone should drink.

Then do we need to control how much water we drink? It’s not that important, according to Dr. Stanley Goldfarb from the University of Pennsylvania. He says our bodies are good at telling us when we need water. When we are thirsty, it means our bodies need more water. Our kidneys (肾脏) help us keep the water we have, even before we feel thirsty.

There are, of course, benefits to drinking water. It helps our bodies stay at the right temperature. It helps us keep away bad things in our bodies. It helps us digest (消化) food. It protects our joints (关节).

So, next time you feel thirsty, reach for a glass of water. But don’t worry if you don’t drink exactly eight glasses a day. Your body knows what it needs.