Your heart, your brain and your plate

Sunday · 7:44 AM ET · Better Habits. Healthier Habitat.

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Every 7 days, we begin here with 4x4 box breathing.

Soften your jaw. Let your tongue relax from the roof of your mouth. Drop your shoulders. Take one round, or stay for a few until you feel grounded.

Inhale 4 sec · Hold 4 sec
Exhale 4 sec · Hold 4 sec

Welcome back to The Nest!
With cooler weather and cold and flu season approaching, it's time to give our immune systems some extra attention. One easy place to start? Your grocery cart. Load up on colorful, seasonal produce packed with nutrients that support your body's natural defenses!

A line to carry
“Your well-being is built through the small choices you make every day. Give yourself the same care, patience, and consistency you devote to everything else you want to grow.”
Submitted by Simon Behar

In today’s digest, we’ll be discussing:

Not all body fat is the same. Brown fat burns energy to make heat instead of storing it, and a new study in Nature suggests people who have more of it may be healthier in ways that go beyond weight. Researchers at Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering used artificial intelligence to analyze PET/CT scans and medical records from 101,243 patients and found that heart disease and psychiatric diagnoses were less common in those with detectable brown fat.

The mental health link is new. People with more brown fat had lower rates of anxiety and depression, a connection the team says had not been identified before. Higher brown fat activity was also tied to better blood sugar, cholesterol, inflammation and heart imaging results.

The researchers also spotted a surprise: brown fat was more active in people taking a common class of blood pressure drugs called ARBs, and in mice one of them, losartan, boosted brown fat activity and energy use. The scans came from cancer patients and the study looked back at existing records, so it shows a link rather than proof. Food can't give you brown fat, since it's tissue your body builds, but small human studies suggest that besides cold, a cup of coffee and the compounds that give chili peppers their heat may help switch it on.

Takeaway: Cold is the best-known switch for brown fat. Get outside on cool fall mornings, keep moving, and enjoy your coffee or a little chili heat with meals. Never start or change a medication based on a single study without talking to your doctor.

The order you eat your food in may matter almost as much as what's on the plate. In a new study in the journal Diabetes, Kyoto University researchers gave mice olive oil 15 minutes before a dose of sugar and found that it blunted the early rise in blood sugar, with significantly lower levels at the 15- and 30-minute marks. Giving the oil after the sugar didn't have the same effect.

Olive oil first slowed how quickly the stomach emptied and triggered an early release of hormones including GLP-1, the same hormone mimicked by drugs like Ozempic, along with glucagon and GIP. The effect held up in mice with type 2 diabetes, and the vagus nerve, which links the gut and brain, played a role too.

The oil mostly flattened the first surge rather than lowering blood sugar over the full two hours, and other fats like flaxseed oil and lard had similar effects on some measures. The results come from mice, so human studies are needed, but they fit with earlier research showing that eating vegetables, protein or fat before carbs can ease post-meal spikes.

Takeaway: Start dinner with a side salad dressed in olive oil, or your vegetables and protein, before the bread, rice or pasta. It's an easy sequencing habit that costs nothing to try.

Colic, those long stretches of inconsolable crying, is one of the hardest parts of early parenthood, and few studies have asked whether anything before birth might help. A new Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study in JAMA Network Open found that babies whose mothers ate a more Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy were less likely to have both colic and eczema.

In the study, 26% of infants had colic and 5% had both colic and eczema. Each additional point on the mothers' Mediterranean diet score was linked to a 15% lower risk of having both conditions, and each weekly serving of seafood was linked to a 25% lower risk.

The researchers focused on that combination because babies with both may face the highest risk of allergies as they grow. The study is observational, so it shows a link rather than proof, but it is the first to look at how a mother's diet during pregnancy relates to colic.

Takeaway: A Mediterranean-style way of eating leans on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, olive oil and seafood. If you're expecting and curious about eating more this way, your OB or a registered dietitian can help you decide what fits.

What actually determines whether a chicken lays brown or white eggs?

A. The content of the hen's diet

B. The mineral composition of the eggshell

C. The hen's inherited genetics

D. The age at which the hen begins laying

Answer below ↓

Stroke is usually thought of as an older person's emergency, but it's becoming more common in younger adults. A nearly 30-year study of adults ages 20 to 54 in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region found that first strokes rose about 83% from 1993 to 2020, mostly ischemic strokes, which happen when a blocked blood vessel cuts off oxygen to part of the brain.

Those blockages usually trace back to a few conditions that damage blood vessels or create clots, often without any symptoms. High blood pressure, the leading cause of stroke, strains and weakens artery walls, diabetes speeds up the narrowing of blood vessels, and atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, lets clots form in the heart and travel to the brain. All three became more common among the young stroke patients in the study, along with substance use, which jumped from 4.6% to 40.2% of cases, much of it marijuana.

The study can't prove which factors drove the rise, since it covered one region and had no comparison group, and younger adults can also have less common causes, like a small tear in a neck artery or a heart defect present from birth. But the main risks are ones that simple checkups can catch and treatment can manage long before they lead to a stroke.

Takeaway: You can't feel high blood pressure or high blood sugar, so ask for your numbers at your next checkup, even if you feel fine. And learn the warning signs: sudden face drooping, arm weakness or slurred speech.

💆 Tom Brady's recovery routine, delivered by robot. Aescape's new Brady Protocol is a 30-minute robotic deep-tissue massage built around the recovery habits behind his 23-season career, mapping your body to work the posterior chain from your calves to your traps.

🛏️ You can now track your sleep without wearing anything. Newer contactless devices use bedside radar or under-mattress sensors to follow sleep patterns without a watch or ring.

🏆 New York is hosting a fitness competition for longevity. The November 7 Super Age Games will test participants on strength, balance, endurance, memory, and social abilities.

🐶 Your pet's collar is becoming a health-monitoring device. The newly available PetPace collar at Chewy tracks physiological changes in dogs and cats to help owners spot potential health concerns earlier.

🦷 Unlimited teeth cleanings, no insurance needed. Wally's preventive dental membership costs $249 a year for unlimited cleanings and diagnostics, and new funding will grow it from 15 to 100 locations by the end of 2027, starting with DC, Atlanta, Austin and Miami.

🌸 Your cycle app and your Fitbit are about to talk. Google Health is partnering with Flo so that, starting next year, Flo's 80 million+ monthly users can sync cycle data with Fitbit sleep, heart rate and skin temperature for insights on perimenopause, PCOS and endometriosis.

Dr. Courtney Worley is a board-certified clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist who helps people navigate the challenges of sleep, trauma, and mental health. With expertise in treating insomnia, nightmares, PTSD, and OCD, she combines scientific research with practical, evidence-based approaches to improving well-being. She's also the co-author of The Nightmare and Sleep Disorder Toolkit and is passionate about making effective mental health treatments more accessible.

Why follow: Dr. Worley offers a refreshing, science-backed perspective on sleep and mental health, helping people better understand the connection between their minds and bodies. Her expertise challenges common misconceptions while offering practical insights for improving sleep and emotional well-being.

Follow here:

Instagram @drworleyconsult ↗
Website drcourtneyworley.com ↗
Upward Behavioral Health ↗
Book - Nightmares and Nightmare Disorder ↗

C. The hen's inherited genetics

A chicken's breed largely determines its eggshell color. Brown eggs aren't inherently healthier than white eggs, and shell color doesn't determine their nutritional value.

Try this week:
Next time you buy eggs, look past the shell color. Brown doesn't automatically mean better!

Fruit
🍎 Apples · 🍐 Pears · 🍇 Grapes · Cranberries · Pomegranates · 🥝Kiwi

Vegetables
🎃 Pumpkins · Butternut Squash · Acorn Squash · 🍠 Sweet Potatoes · 🥦 Broccoli · Cauliflower · Brussels Sprouts · 🥕 Carrots · Beets · Kale · Cabbage · Parsnips · Leeks

_{Seasonal availability may vary by region and growing conditions.}

If this brought a little calm or clarity to your Sunday morning, send it to someone who would appreciate it too.

If this week’s quote resonated with you, reply with one of your favorites.

We’ll choose one reader submission for next week’s line to carry.