Summer is half over, where did time go?

Summer is half over, and you have A LOT of important stuff to do today and this week, this summer, this year. The most important of which is to remind yourself not to go it alone. 

Leverage your friends and engage the magic. 

New Recognition

For regular readers, you may notice a new badge on my site. I just received this email and I was very surprised but honored by the recognition.So for at least a week, I am on the list.

Hi, I'M A SONIC BOOMER Team, 

My name is Anuj Agarwal. I'm Founder of Feedspot. 

I would like to personally congratulate you as your blog I'M A SONIC BOOMER has been selected by our panelist as one of the Top 100 Senior Blogs on the web.

http://blog.feedspot.com/senior_blogs/

I personally give you a high-five and want to thank you for your contribution to this world. This is the most comprehensive list of Top 100 Senior Blogs on the internet and I’m honored to have you as part of this!Also, you have the honor of displaying the badge on your blog.The Best Senior blogs from thousands of top Senior blogs in our index using search and social metrics. Data will be refreshed once a week.

The blogs on the list are ranked based on following criteria:

• Google reputation and Google search ranking
• Influence and popularity on Facebook, twitter, and other social media sites
• Quality and consistency of posts.
• Feedspot’s editorial team and expert review

Top 100 Senior Blogs Winners
CONGRATULATIONS to every blogger that has made this Top Senior Blogs list! This is the most comprehensive list of best Senior blogs on the internet and I’m honoured to have you as part of this! I personally give you a high-five and want to thank you for your contribution to this world.

If your blog is one of the Top 100 Senior blogs, you have the honour of displaying the following badge on your site. Use the below code to display this badge proudly on your blog. You deserve it!

Life's Simple 7

A new study led by researchers collaborating on the Framingham Heart Study, from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University in Massachusetts - is published in the journal Hypertension.

First author Teemu J. Niiranen, a research fellow at Boston University School of Medicine, says that many people assume that "vascular aging" is a normal result of aging.

"As people get older, their arteries become stiffer and they develop high blood pressure. In fact, that's what happens to most people beyond age 70. But it doesn't have to happen," he explains.

He and his colleagues suggest that a healthful diet and lifestyle can reduce the risk of high blood pressure and stiff arteries, both of which raise the risk for heart disease.

The team studied nearly 3,200 people aged 50 and older who took part in the Framingham Heart Study, and they assessed how many participants met the requirements for healthy vascular aging.

The researchers defined healthy vascular aging as having normal blood pressure and the arterial stiffness of people aged 30 and under, which was assessed using a method called pulse-wave velocity.

In fact, they found that participants who were meeting six out of the seven targets of the American Heart Association's (AHA) Life's Simple 7 program were 10 times more likely to meet the requirements for healthy vascular aging than participants who met none or only one of them.
In 2010, the AHA for the first time linked "ideal cardiovascular health" to seven simple diet and lifestyle changes that people can make to reduce their risk of stroke and heart disease.

The AHA called the seven changes "Life's Simple 7." The following list summarizes the seven steps and their associated ideal heart health targets as set out in the association's My Life Check toolkit:

1. Manage blood pressure: keep it below 120/80 millimeters of mercury
2. Control cholesterol: keep total cholesterol under 200 milligrams per deciliter
3. Reduce blood sugar: maintain fasting blood glucose below 100 milligrams per deciliter
4. Get active: every week, exercise at a moderate level for at least 150 minutes, or at an intense level for 75 minutes
5. Eat better: adopt a heart-healthy diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy, and skinless poultry and fish, and limits red meats, saturated and trans fats, salt, and sugar
6. Manage weight: maintain a BMI of under 25 kilograms per square meter
7. Stop smoking: ideal heart health target is "never smoked or having quit for more than 1 year"

The AHA launched the seven-step plan with two goals in mind: to improve the cardiovascular health of all people in the United States by 20 percent by 2020 and to reduce deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke by 20 percent by 2020.

Would you wear a heart on your sleeve?

From the Medical News Today newsletter some interesting information about wearable health technology. New research published in Scientific Reports shows that a heartbeat-like vibration delivered onto the inside of the wrist can make the wearer feel significantly less stressed.

Researchers from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London assessed the calming effects of a new wearable device called doppel - a wristband designed to actively reduce stress by using the intuitive responses that we all have to rhythm and especially to heartbeats.

Inate rhythm

Humans naturally respond to rhythm. For example, the tempo of a song can naturally alter our breathing and heart rates. Slower tempos result in lower arousal and positive or calm emotional states, while we associate fast rhythms with arousing emotional states such as joy, excitement, surprise, fear or anger. Beyond music, several studies report similar effects in responses to biological rhythms, and the heartbeat is perhaps the most ubiquitous biological rhythm in nature.

"High arousal is correlated with increased heart rate, whereas calmness is physiologically correlated with lower heart rate," said Professor Manos Tsakiris from the Department of Psychology. "We also intuitively associate higher and lower heart rate with anxiety or high arousal, and calmness. The design of doppel, the device that we used in our study, was inspired by these insights".

The art of public speaking

To test the efficacy of doppel, the researchers exposed volunteers to a socially stressful situation and measured their physiological arousal and their reported anxiety levels.

In a controlled, single-blind study, two groups of participants were asked to prepare a public speech - a widely used psychological task that consistently increases stress. All participants wore the device on their wrist and a cover story was used to suggest to participants that the device was measuring blood pressure during the anticipation of the task. Importantly, for only one of the two groups of participants, the device was turned on and delivered a heartbeat-like vibration at a slower frequency than the participants' resting heart rate, while they were preparing their speech.

The researchers measured both physiological arousal and subjective reports of anxiety. The use of doppel had a tangible and measurable calming effect across both physiological and psychological levels. Only the participants who felt the heartbeat-like vibration displayed lower increases in skin conductance responses and lower anxiety levels.

"Wearable devices are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, but across the board, their primary aim is to quantify our activity. The results we got suggest that, rather than measuring ourselves, we can instead harvest our natural responses to heartbeat-like rhythms in ways that can assist people in their everyday life," said Professor Tsakiris.

Article: The calming effect of a new wearable device during the anticipation of public speech, Ruben T. Azevedo, Nell Bennett, Andreas Bilicki, Jack Hooper, Fotini Markopoulou & Manos Tsakiris, Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02274-2, published online 23 May 2017.