Stress Test

Hate Mondays? You and me both! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying, there’s a little Garfield in all of us! Everyone feels tired and overwhelmed sometimes! But for those with chronic fatigue syndrome, every day is Monday! Up to two million Americans suffer from

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Chummy Chimps

Stressed out? SERENITY NOW! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Social interactions help keep our stress response well-balanced. But are all social encounters created equal? Enter researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. To understand how friendship impacts stress levels, they monitored wild chimpanzees

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Stressed-Out Chicks

Are the most popular kids also the most stressed out? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: You’d be surprised what the little birds tell us! At Oxford and Saint Andrews universities, researchers investigated what factors make youngsters more social adults. The researchers turned to

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Going Gray

ANOTHER gray hair? Oh no! Break out the Lady Grecian Formula! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, on going gray! Oh, those silvery locks, at too young an age – is stress to blame? Melissa Harris from the University of Alabama, Birmingham studied how stress

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Cutest Study Ever

Ah, nature! Trees, rivers… hamster wheels? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Running wheels aren’t just for pet hamsters. They’re lab tools—used, say, to study exercise in mice. But running literally in circles seems nutty. Indeed, many consider the behavior a neurotic byproduct of captivity.

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Good News, Bad News

The good news is…the BAD news? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. We LOVE good news and tend to filter out bad news. This could be why some folks ignore warnings to leave disaster areas. Is there any hope for us cheesy optimists? Tali Sharot

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Stressy Study

Are you STRESSING OUT right now? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Life is full of stressful situations – exams! Traffic! Which remote goes with which appliance?!! And the effects of stress are usually thought to be harmful to our health. But WHY do we

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Let It Go

HULK ANGRY! HULK… does yoga? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. The superheroes in the Avengers don’t always get along. When they’re not fighting villains, they tend to bicker with each other. But it’s not just superheroes! Mere mortals often experience rude interactions at work,

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Laundry Stinks!

Dirty laundry stressing you out? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Ahhh… the smell of freshly washed clothes. Some even find it relaxing. But what about DIRTY laundry? Enter Marlise Hofer from the University of British Columbia. Her team studied the laundry likes of almost

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Scary Movie

Uh oh: blood-curdling screams aren’t just figures of speech anymore! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, and a terrifying new study from Leiden University Medical Center. Researchers there showed a group of healthy volunteers the twenty-ten horror film “Insidious.” After a week, the same group

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