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You knock over a glass of wine. You tumble trying to put on leggings. You trip up the stairs. Sound familiar? You probably have a clumsy streak. (Jennifer Lawrence, we’re looking at you.) But the good news is you don’t have to resign yourself to a life full of of bruises and stains.
Clumsiness is related to a few different factors, including your reaction time, processing speed, and level of concentration, explains Charles “Buz” Swanik, PhD, director of biomechanics and movement science at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences. When life gets in the way of those functions—think too little sleep and too much stress, for starters—it can throw you off balance, literally.
Thankfully, there are steps you can take to make yourself less prone to mishaps: “We have enough evidence within psychology, neuroscience, and biomechanics research to know that people can definitely make changes and prevent accidents before they happen,” Swanik says. Below, he suggests seven ways control your inner klutz.
A little bit of stress can be a good thing, Swanik says. “It does help you concentrate, and focus, and increase your situational awareness.” But excessive amounts of stress can slow down your processing, and even affect your peripheral vision. “You don’t know where to look, or what to attend to that may be unsafe,” he says. “You may over-focus on whatever is stressing you out and avoid seeing potential danger.”
The catch-22? Your favorite way to clear your mind may actually set you up for an accident, Swanik says. If you de-stress by going for a run, for example, consider doing a few minutes of meditation or deep breathing first—so by the time you hit the pavement you’re more alert, and don’t risk getting hurt.
“It’s funny, because the tradition is to get athletes all psyched up before a big game, but that’s actually probably the last thing we should be doing,” Swanik says. “We should be trying to keep them calm and anxiety-free. They probably would think much better and be smarter on their feet.”
Swanik’s research has suggested that people with not-so-great memories, and slower reaction times and processing speeds tend to have more coordination problems than folks with more efficient cognitive functioning. Fortunately, there are apps for that: Swanik recommends doing a Google or app search for “brain games.” You’ll find many options designed to improve memory and reaction time, he says. "[These apps] can help people foster some change.“
"Fortunately we have apps that people can download now that are for cognitive training and full of basic brain games that can help people foster some change,” Swanik says. He also suggests doing a basic Google or app search for “brain games” and you’ll find many options to work on enhancing your memory and reaction time
Several studies on collegiate athletes have found that having less core control may increase the risk of lower extremity strains and sprains, says Swanik. And research on older adults suggests core strength can help prevent injuries: “When you put senior citizens on a core strengthening program, they usually have fewer falls,“ he says. "Your core is the center of everything.” Try adding plank variations and moves like superman and bird-dog to your regular exercise routine.
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That’s because accidents happen fast. Like, really fast. “We probably only have a quarter or a tenth of a second where a person makes a mental mistake and has some kind of injury,” he explains.
If you’re feeling especially clumsy, make an effort to be extra-aware of your actions: Standing up from your seat? Check to see if there’s anything you might knock over on your way up. About to climb stairs in high heels? Slow your pace and watch your footing. “Even if it’s just crossing the street, you should be actively thinking, Is this a good time to send a text message?” Swanik says.
Do one thing at a time, simple as that. “Once you start to multitask, you get into a more dynamic and complex environment,” he explains, “and it’s increasingly difficult to be deliberate [over] any one thing that you’re doing.”
RELATED: 7 Exercises to Fix Muscle Imbalances
You know those stories about amazing athletes who join a game of beach volleyball, or start fooling around on a skateboard, and end up blowing out an ankle or knee? Clumsiness is often the result of diving into a brand new activity too quickly, Swanik says. “From a motor control standpoint, if you plan to try something that requires a new set of skills, you really need to be extremely patient,” he says. “Think of it as a novel environment, an unfamiliar situation where you need to really slow down and assess how your skills parallel whatever it is you’re doing.”
Swanik has seen this in research on collegiate athletes who are starting a cross-training regimen. "Some athletes will be unable to negotiate the new task physically and mentally, and they have coordination problems, and boom, injury.”
The takeaway: If you’re a a die-hard runner about to hop on a spin bike for the first time, ease your way into the new workout, and recognize that the movements may not be what your body is used to.
Though never easy, clocking more shut-eye is a no-brainer: “We know that even losing a few hours of sleep is almost like drinking alcohol,“ Swanik says. "The effects are so profound and fast and deleterious that I would really caution people to make sure they’re getting enough sleep to avoid any sort of accident, whether it’s just being groggy while sipping coffee and spilling it, or something much worse.”
Ditch the scale!
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Can’t shake the stress eating? Always fall into a Facebook hole at bedtime? We’ll show you how to clean up your routine once and for all and get into a healthier groove.
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Call them treats, not cheats.
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They have lighting, posing, and Photoshopping on their side.
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Can’t shake the stress eating? Always fall into a Facebook hole at bedtime? We’ll show you how to clean up your routine once and for all and get into a healthier groove.
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Can’t shake the stress eating? Always fall into a Facebook hole at bedtime? We’ll show you how to clean up your routine once and for all and get into a healthier groove.
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Even if you consider yourself to be pretty upbeat, it’s easy to get caught up in feelings of dread as you wait to hear about uncertain news. As the moment of truth draws nearer, people often find themselves increasingly convinced that bad results are ahead.
These emotions may feel stressful and unhealthy, but a new study suggests they’re totally normal. In fact, this instinct to brace for the worst can actually be protective and serve as a buffer against potentially bad news, say researchers from the University of California Riverside.
In previous studies, it’s been recognized that, as individuals wait for their respective results, students become increasingly convinced they’ve failed an exam, patients become increasingly convinced they have a terrible disease, and voters become increasingly convinced that their candidate will lose an election.
RELATED: Optimism Can Help You Live Longer
Kate Sweeny, Ph.D., a psychology professor at UC Riverside, wanted to see if this was true of optimists and pessimists alike. “Intuition might suggest that some people are more likely to brace than others,” Sweeny said in a press release. “In particular, happy-go-lucky optimists would seem immune to the anxiety and second-guessing that typically arise as the decisive moment draws near.”
So she and her co-author performed nine different experiments in their lab and in real-life settings. Some involved college students anticipating rankings of their attractiveness from peers, for example, while others involved law-school graduates awaiting the results of their bar exams. All participants answered questions beforehand to determine their natural disposition.
The researchers’ findings, published in the Journal of Personality, were “counter to intuition,” Sweeny said. “Optimists were not immune to feeling a rise in pessimism at the moment of truth. In fact, not a single study showed a difference between optimists and pessimists in their tendency to brace for the worst.”
RELATED: Happy People Make Their Spouses Happier
There was a difference, unsurprisingly, in overall predictions: Optimists started out with more positive expectations than pessimists. But everyone in the study tended to shift those expectations downward over time.
This may be because not getting one’s hopes up can be a natural defense. “If you expect the worst, you can lessen feelings of shock and disappointment if things don’t go as you hoped,” Sweeny told RealSimple.com, “and you’ll be pleasantly surprised if they do.”
So if you feel down right before a big announcement, Sweeny says you shouldn’t necessarily fight those feelings. Rather, she says, we should all try to be more like the optimists in this study, and save our pessimism for these strategic moments.
“It’s generally good to be optimistic about the future,” she says. “Optimists are happier and healthier in lots of different ways, and it’s true that worrying too much or for too long can lead to anxiety and rumination. But in these final moments before you get big news, optimism can be really treacherous.”
In other words, she says, making sure you’ve done everything you can to ensure your chances of success—and then putting off your worries until those final moments—may be the best balance you can strike. And if you do feel like the world’s about to end while you wait, take heart in knowing that that’s normal, too.
This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.
During an emergency, having blood on hand for transfusions is critical. But blood needs proper refrigeration, making on the spot care a difficult task. But what if paramedics were equipped with bags of powdered blood cells that could be combined with water and immediately distributed?
It may sound like science fiction, but doctors are working to develop artificial blood cells that could save lives down the line.
“Transfusion medicine is challenged by the limitations arising from storage of red blood cells, which are a living tissue, that must be kept cold, have a shelf-life of only 42 days, and must be used within about four hours of removal from refrigeration,” says Dr. Allan Doctor, a professor of pediatrics, biochemistry, and molecular biophysics at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.
Doctor and his colleagues have developed an artificial blood substitute called ErythroMer. The research is in the very early stages, but the researchers have so far shown promising results in a proof of concept study in mice. They were able to show that when mice were inserted with ErythroMer, the artificial blood was able to deliver oxygen to tissues in the same way as normal mice blood. They were also able to use ErythroMer to resuscitate rats that were in shock and had lost about 40% of their blood, Medscape reports.
Doctor presented the work in early December at the American Society of Hematology 58th Annual Meeting.
Much more study is needed before it can be determined if the artificial blood cells could be used in humans, but Doctor says he envisions ErythroMer could transform care for situations like military casualties or for people that need to be resuscitated before reaching a hospital.
“Next steps are to confirm our promising findings in a larger animal model, screen and address any toxicities, scale production, and eventually test for safety and efficacy in humans,” says Doctor.
You’ve seen choking scenes performed to dramatic effect in practically every sitcom. But the reality is no joke. According to a report by the National Safety Council, choking is the fourth most common cause of “unintentional injury death“ in the United States; statistics show it killed nearly 4,900 people in 2013.
The number of deaths would be even higher, however, if it weren’t for the Heimlich maneuver, the standard antichoking technique that involves sharp abdominal thrusts to force air from the lungs into the windpipe, to dislodge an obstruction.
Henry J. Heimlich, MDs—the thoracic surgeon who developed this groundbreaking and life-saving procedure back in 1974— died on Saturday, a week after he suffered a heart attack. He was 96 years old.
The New York Times reports that just eight months before his death, Dr. Heimlich used his namesake maneuver on an 87-year-old woman who began choking at his table in their senior residence in Cincinnati; the famous technique forced a piece of meat and and a little bone out of her airway so she could breathe again.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, do your best to stay calm, and remember these instructions from the American Red Cross for conscious choking victims over the age of one.
RELATED: 5 Times You Really, Seriously Need to Go to the ER
Coughing is a good sign—it means they can still breathe. And the act of coughing may help dislodge whatever is stuck in their throat. But if they’re not making any noise and can’t breathe, ask, "Are you choking?" Assure the person you know what to do.
Send someone in the area to call 9-1-1.
The Red Cross recommends this step before starting the abdominal thrusts: Have the person bend forward and hit them on the back between the should blades five times with the heel of your hand.
Make a fist with one hand and place the “thumbside” just above the person's belly button. Grab your fist with your other hand and give five quick thrusts.
Continue performing five back blows, followed by five abdominal thrusts, until the object comes out, or the person starts to cough. If the person loses consciousness, however, lower them to the ground and begin CPR.
To become more familiar with the Heimlich maneuver, and brush up on CPR, it’s a good idea to take a first aid course. You can look up classes in your area at RedCross.org.
How healthy is your state? The United Health Foundation knows: For nearly three decades, the organization has been comparing all 50 states in its annual America’s Health Rankings.
This year's report is based on variables in a handful of categories, including behaviors (like smoking and excessive drinking), community and environment (access to clean water, for example, and violent crime rates), policy, clinical care, and health outcomes (such as the number of premature deaths).
The 2016 data revealed some good news, and also some alarming trends. For example, the rate of cardiovascular deaths went up for the first time since the foundation started putting out this report 26 years ago. And the national obesity rate is now 157% greater than it was back in 1990.
But on the bright side, smoking rates across the United States have dropped by an impressive 41% in that same period. And more Americans are insured today than they were five years ago.
So where should you should move to live your healthiest life possible? Consider Hawaii! The Aloha State snagged first place for the fifth year in a row, thanks in part to its below average obesity rate and low incidence of preventable hospitalizations.
To find out where your home state landed on the list, scroll down. Below are all 50 states, ranked from healthiest to unhealthiest.
RELATED: The 50 Best Bike Rides in American, State by State
Eat better, join a gym, drink more water, get eight hours of sleep every night…many of the most popular New Year’s resolutions are focused on living a healthier, more balanced life. But what do those people who are already extremely healthy (in fact, it’s their job to be) want to improve upon? We polled 18 wellness influencers, from nutritionists to celebrity trainers to healthy start-up founders, to find out what their self-improvement goals are for the upcoming year. From being more mindful to carving out time for themselves to working out a little less (if only we all had that problem), here are their resolutions for 2017.
RELATED: 21 New Year’s Resolutions You’ll Actually Keep
“Be even more mindful with the words I use, making sure they are influential in a positive, hopeful, and inspiring way; not just for the clients I train, but for everyone I interact with, including myself."
—Tanya Becker, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Physique57
"Furthering my meditation practice. I find that mindfulness not only allows me to react more calmly in stressful situations, but it also helps me feel happier overall and more in the moment, whether I’m eating, being active, or spending time with my hubby and pets.”
—Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, Health’s contributing nutrition editor
“I resolve to listen closer, breathe deeper, and be more present. I hope to think less and risk more. And while focusing on all these things, I hope to empower others to do the same. I’m very excited for 2017!”
—Olivia Young, founder of box + flow
“My New Year’s resolution is to commit—to be more instinctual and trust my gut. To work harder, and to live in the now.”
—Derek DeGrazio, celebrity trainer and managing partner at Barry’s Bootcamp Miami
RELATED: 13 New Year’s Resolutions You Shouldn’t Make
“My New Year’s resolution is to advocate on more result-oriented ways and less social ways to educate and support people’s lives. This is an important year in health and I feel a strong commitment to providing people tools that help them invest in their health and their futures. I feel that the trends in fitness will be taking a backseat to people wanting life-long solutions that pay it forward in a really meaningful way.”
—Tracy Anderson, Health contributing fitness editor, celebrity fitness trainer, and founder of the Tracy Anderson Method
“To do a random act of kindness every day. [It] forces you to think about how you can be more compassionate all day, so you can realize the perfect moment to act on it.”
—Danielle DuBoise, co-founder of SAKARA LIFE
“I want to make sure to spend more quality time with my closest friends and call my mom and sister more often. I’m going to work on improving my cooking skills. Professionally, I’m going to hire an assistant. And physically, I’m going to take more rest days. I’m on my feet working six out of seven days a week. I’d like to change that to five days a week."
—Lacey Stone, celebrity trainer and founder of Lacey Stone Fitness
"Put more ‘me’ time on the calendar. It can be difficult to manage the work/life balance when you own a business because you’re emotionally invested. This year, I’m going to make more of an effort to put the computer away and take time for myself.”
—Tracy Carlinsky, founder of Brooklyn Bodyburn
“I am so busy and pulled in so many directions—single parent to twin girls, business owner—I don’t take enough time to decompress. I know doing so will make me more grounded, balanced, and ultimately more productive.”
—David Kirsch, celebrity fitness and wellness expert
RELATED: 28 New Year’s Resolutions to Look and Feel Better
“Take it down a notch! As a fitness pro, I often push myself as hard as possible in every. single. workout, choosing the most advanced poses or sequences. Movement is my 'drug of choice’ and I’m working on sometimes allowing that movement to be peaceful or restorative rather than only the most intense.”
—Amy Jordan, founder and CEO of WundaBar Pilates
“Being an athlete—specifically a boxer and a runner—my body is always tight, and I often don’t take much time to stretch and recover, as I’m in a go-go-go mentality. I want to try out new yoga classes a few times a week and get into my own stretching routine so I can feel better doing what I love.”
—Ashley Guarrasi, founding trainer of Rumble Boxing
“Learn to only focus on controlling the things I can control. Too often we stress about things we really can’t control, and it just makes us put unnecessary worry and pressure on ourselves.”
—Skylar Diggins, Dallas Wings guard
“Be more mindful of how I’m fueling my body. Being 38 years old, it’s getting harder to bounce back from eating badly consecutive days in a row. My goal is to incorporate a more Paleo-based way of eating, with lots of chicken and fish!”
—Alonzo Wilson, founder of Tone House
“Most resolutions focus on things to cut out. Here’s what I plan to add more of in 2017: more colorful veggies on half of my plate, more outdoor workouts, and more books (for fun!).”
—Erika Horowitz MS, RDN
“I like to set my New Year’s resolution to be realistic and achievable, so my nutrition plan is based on the 80/20 rule: stick to the Ketogenic diet six days a week, and one day a week splurge with my cheat food of choice (rhymes with "rasta”).“
—Ross Franklin, CEO and founder of PureGreen Cold Pressed Juice
RELATED: 57 Ways to Lose Weight Forever, According to Science
"Trying new sports and workout classes. I want to break out of my comfort zone a bit more! I’ve never been rock climbing or snow skiing, so I’d like to try those. I would also like to make more of an effort to prioritize recovery. I work out hard and throw around some pretty heavy weights. Somewhere along the line I’ve started to skimp on stretching, foam rolling, and resting. Not okay!”
—Melody Scharff, instructor at the Fhitting Room
“I’m going to find a better balance between my strength training, mobility, and Jiu Jitsu. I tend to hyper focus on one type of training and my body needs the variety to perform and feel optimal. I’m committed to sitting down before the new year and re-structuring my schedule to reach my goals. If you don’t plan, it won’t happen!”
—Ashley Borden, celebrity fitness trainer
“Although I work out (and I’m lucky to LOVE working out), my exercise was all over the place in 2016 and I want to take it up a notch in 2017. This includes getting in a few races, planning a few hiking trips, and being consistent with four intense workouts a week.”
—Keri Glassman, MS, RD, CDN, and founder of Nutritious Life and the Nutrition School
There’s plenty of data supporting the connection between a positive outlook and a healthier life—being optimistic can help you fend off stress, eat better and be more physically active, all of which can lower your risk of chronic illnesses.
But despite how often it’s repeated, doctors haven’t been able to definitively tell you that a positive attitude will help you live longer, mainly because most studies on the subject haven’t followed people over long enough periods of time. Studies to date tend to ask people about their outlook at one specific time—and the response can be affected by a number of transient events.
So researchers led by Andrew Steptoe at University College of London decided to look at a long-term study to track how people’s outlook over time affected their longevity. In a report published in BMJ, he studied nearly 10,000 men and women in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging between 2002 and 2013.
During that time, the middle-aged volunteers were asked three times to assess their outlook by answering four questions that evaluated how they enjoyed the things they did: being with other people, their lives overall, and how energetic they felt. Nearly seven years after their last answers, people who reported more enjoyment (or the highest satisfaction scores on all three occasions) were 24% less likely to have died than people who reported no enjoyment. Those who said they were happy on two of the occasions had a 17% lower mortality.
“The longer people are in a positive state, the better it probably is as far as their health is concerned,” says Steptoe. “This adds weight to the evidence that outlook might be relevant to health.”
Of course, there are many aspects of one’s outlook—mood, or how happy or sad a person feels is one, as is a broader sense of satisfaction. In past studies, says Steptoe, most researchers captured the mood element, but weren’t able to incorporate the larger sense of satisfaction or well-being. “An emotional state is distinct from finding life satisfying,” he says. “And it’s distinct from having a fulfilled life. The criticism of past studies is that it just looked at the pleasure aspect. So what we are trying to do is to use a measure that cuts across different distinctions.” The four-questions in the study, he says, were designed to do just that.
And how did the people who reported more satisfaction and enjoyment achieve that state of well-being? Previous studies have pointed to things such as good mental health and social connections. Steptoe says that keeping up friendships and maintaining social interactions can be an important part of a satisfying life, particularly for older people. “Once you enter middle and older ages, investment is social relationships is crucial,” he says. “It’s something that is quite easy to forget about. When things are going well, you don’t make so much of an effort to maintain friendships. But in many ways it’s an investment in the future as well as the present.”
This article originally appeared on Time.com.
From an exponential price hike on life-saving EpiPens to a cleansing conditioner that may cause hair loss, these are the health and wellness controversies that made headlines in the past year.
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When it comes to coping with scary or stressful situations, mental health experts have long given a simple piece of advice: Take a deep breath in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Now, new research suggests that this particular breathing technique really does impact brain activity—and can even improve your memory.
Northwestern University researchers recruited about 100 young adults, some of whom were asked to make snap judgments about facial expressions that flashed quickly across a computer screen. Breathing did affect their performance: When people were inhaling through their noses, they were able to recognize faces expressing fear faster than when they were exhaling. In another test, researchers looked at participants’ ability to remember objects flashing on the screen. Here, too, they were more likely to remember objects if they encountered them during inhales, versus during exhales.
When mouth-breathing, all these effects disappeared.
The new study is the first to show that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the brain, according to the report, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Related: 20 Weird Ways Breathing Right Can Improve Your Life
“Our data is preliminary, but exciting,” says lead author Christina Zelano, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, to Health. “And though it is too preliminary at this stage, it has the potential to lead to some deliberate breathing strategies for cognitive enhancement.”
She says that one of the study’s major findings is that nasal inhaling causes a “dramatic difference” in areas of the brain related to emotional processing (the amygdala) and memory (the hippocampus), compared with exhaling.
Researchers discovered that when you breathe in, you’re stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.
Related: 12 Unexpected Things that Mess With Your Memory
Future studies on this topic may help explain the well-documented psychological benefits of meditation and focused breathing, says Zelano, which can essentially synchronize brain oscillations across the brain’s emotion center.
The findings may also offer a clue as to why our breathing tends to speed up when we’re scared or panicked. “As a result, you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state,” Zelano says. This could affect brain function, she adds, “and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.”
In fact, Zelano thinks we may even be able to use this knowledge to our advantage. “If you’re in a dangerous environment with fearful stimuli, our data indicate that you can respond more quickly if you are inhaling through your nose,” she says.
Related: 9 Foods That May Help Save Your Memory
Of course, this study is just a first step. Whether we can truly use our breath to enhance or control our fear response—or our memory, for that matter—remains to be seen, says Zelano.
If you’ve had trouble concentrating in an open floor-plan office, you’re not alone. Now, at least you’ve got science on your side: A new study suggests that overheard work conversations can decrease productivity—and increase annoyance—of other employees within earshot, more so than random and meaningless background buzz.
Open office plans are becoming increasingly common in workplaces, allowing companies to optimize space and, theoretically, encourage dialogue and collaboration among employees. But they also have their fair share of critics, and complaints about lack of privacy and noisy coworkers abound.
It’s no surprise that noise can be distracting, but researchers from Yamaguchi University in Japan wanted to see how work-related chatter might compare with other, less meaningful hubbub. So they performed a series of experiments to investigate the impact of different types of noises, using a test known as the “odd-ball” paradigm.
During odd-ball tests, people are asked to identify unique events sprinkled throughout a series of repetitive events. “To complete the odd-ball task it is necessary to regulate attention to a stimulus,“ said Takahiro Tamesue, associate professor of engineering, explained in a press release.
In one experiment, participants watched pictures flashing on a computer monitor while listening to either pink noise (similar to white noise, but with a spectrum closely resembling that of human voices) or actual male and female speech. Over a 10-minute period, they were asked to count the number of times a red square appeared in a mix of otherwise similar objects.
In the second experiment, people were asked to count the instances of an infrequent 2-kilohertz tone amid a series of 1-kilohertz tones. Afterward, they were asked to rate their level of annoyance at each sound, on a scale of one to seven.
During these and other trials, researchers measured participants’ brain waves using electrodes on their scalps. They looked specifically at two responses known as the N100 and P300 components, which peak approximately 100 and 300 milliseconds after a stimulus (in this case, a sound) is presented. These are thought to represent the activation of neurons involved in analyzing and making decisions about incoming sensory information, Tamesue says.
The researchers found that when participants listened to meaningful speech, they experienced large reductions in their N100 and P300 components—indicating that their selective attention to thinking-related tasks was influenced by the noise. Other experiments also showed that meaningful noises, such as music and conversation, led to greater declines in performance on memory and arithmetic tasks.
And yes, you guessed it: Meaningful noises had a stronger effect on levels of annoyance, as well, compared to meaningless ones.
Tamesue’s research focuses on improving environments by analyzing the physiological and psychological effects of noise. He presented his new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, at a joint meeting of the Acoustical Societies of America and Japan, occurring this week in Hawaii.
The findings suggest that settings used for cognitive tasks, such as workplaces and schools, could benefit from designs that take into account the sound that’s likely to be present, says Tamesue—not just the volume, he adds, but the meaningfulness, as well.
“Surrounding conversations often disturb the business operations conducted in such open offices,” he says. “Because it is difficult to soundproof an open office, a way to mask meaningful speech with some other sound would be of great benefit for achieving a comfortable sound environment.”
As for employees already stuck in a poorly designed office space? You could always don your headphones and crank up the white noise. Or, take a cue from other scientific research: Studies have shown that music without lyrics can enhance mental performance, and that natural sounds like a babbling mountain brook can be relaxing (and not distracting) in stressful workplaces.
This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.
