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This week’s must-reads:
- ‘Office’ star Jenna Fischer had triple-positive breast cancer. What is it?
- How to pick the right multivitamin for your body’s needs
- Do you dream in color or black and white? Here’s what the science says.
- An exoskeleton let a paralyzed man walk. Then its maker refused repairs.
- Parkinson’s is often misdiagnosed. New tests may change that.
Plant burgers vs. real meat
Are burgers made from plants really better for you than real beef burgers? Our Eating Lab columnist, Anahad O’Connor, has the answers.
Scientists have found that in most cases, plant-based meat substitutes — or “alt-meat” — can improve some measures of your metabolic health, most notably LDL cholesterol, the kind that’s associated with heart disease, he writes. Companies such as Beyond Meat of El Segundo, Calif., and Impossible Foods of Redwood City, Calif., often tout the health benefits of their foods. But whether you see any health improvements will depend on the brand of alt-meat that you choose and what exactly it’s replacing in your diet.
Anahad offers eight tips to help you decide between plant burgers and meat burgers. One benefit is that plant-based burgers have less saturated fat and more fiber. But there’s a downside to some plant-based burgers — they are ultraprocessed.
To learn more, read the full article.
Why switching your toothpaste may help canker sores
I was surprised to learn that a common ingredient often used to make toothpaste foamy has been associated with canker sores in some studies. The ingredient is sodium lauryl sulfate or SLS.
Researchers have found that people who switched to an SLS-free toothpaste experienced a reduction in the occurrence of canker sores. In a separate clinical trial published in 2012, 90 participants were instructed to use two toothpastes for eight weeks at a time. Those who used SLS-free toothpaste reported that their canker sores didn’t last as long or cause as much pain compared with when they used SLS-containing toothpaste.
Experts caution that the studies are small and that more trials are needed to better understand how the ingredient may affect canker sores. But clinicians said switching to an SLS-free toothpaste has helped several patients.
To learn more, read the full article from reporter Teddy Amenabar.
How a doctor limited social media and improved her health
Our columnist is Trisha S. Pasricha, a physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
I keep hearing about the harms of social media. Would limiting social media improve my health? Why is it so hard to quit?
I started my effort to quit social media by doing something that I now recommend to everyone: “pretend” to quit for two weeks. I signed out of my Facebook account and changed my password to something absurd, making it difficult to sign back in.
The first few days were a little discomforting. I used to have a routine of checking certain groups, such as of fellow physician moms or neighborhood dog owners. I also often got news through social media. Instead, I needed to go directly to news sources.
What I didn’t anticipate was what I gained: I made myself breakfast, sent more friendly texts to my sister and was more productive at work. I also felt better. I wasn’t spending my energy reading musings of people I never knew in the first place. I also realized that I wasn’t feeling as supported by the physician-mom group as I thought I was.
Read more about how Trisha ditched her social media habit. And use our Ask a Doctor form to submit a question, and we may answer it in a future column.
Find your joy snack!
Here are a few things that brought us joy this week.
- Doctor running half marathon sees woman collapse, saves her, finishes race
- Twist of fate for two girls named Sarah Hughes: ‘Remember the balloon story’
- Wondering if your pet is happy? They’re already telling you.
- Melting mustaches and fried tarantula: My 25 years as a food critic
- A waiter gave our bubbly to the wrong table. What should we have done? Your dining questions, answered.
Let’s keep the conversation going. Email us at wellbeing@washpost.com.
Want to know more about “joy” snacks? Our Brain Matters columnist Richard Sima explains. You can also read this story as a comic.
