Tag: physiology

Get fit faster: listen to music!

Hill Attack. Tension Up! #4It’s now officially Games Over. Gone is the excuse to bunk off work to catch five minutes of of dressage or synchronised swimming. And as our love affair ends, normal life must resume. The real challenge now begins: to stay true to those keep-fit resolutions.

One of the tricks to stay motivated may be, quite literally, music to your ears. ‘Music has received very little attention among sports scholars’ wrote one author in 1993 in the Sociology of Sport Journal.  Since then, much has changed. Long distance champ Paula Radcliff swears that her playlist during training – insisting it helps to keep her going. Yet Usain Bolt is denied such an indulgence.

Taking a perusal trough the latest research, we’ll explore what is known about the power of music to get you fired up and heading down the gym. Even when The X-Factor is on… Read more

Drinking Alcohol makes you pee more – but how much?

Original 16Too much tipple and you’ll know about it the next day.

The dreaded hangover – headaches, fatigue and nausea are normal Sunday morning sensations for many a Saturday night reveller. Dehydration is frequently said to be the reason for hangover symptoms – and some swear that a pint of tap water before bed thwarts any alcohol-induced ill-effects. But given the amount of fluid drunk during a night on the town, it sounds like quite an odd idea.

So just how dehydrating is alcohol – and can lack of water really explain a hangover? The data is difficult to find: no-one seems very interested in researching hangovers these days. It’s therefore time to blow the digital dust of a seventy year-old research paper to find an answer… Read more