The mental health benefits of moving your body are considerable, even though the barriers to entry can feel high.
Six days out of the week, at roughly 2 pm, I exercise. It’s my midday pick-me-up (as opposed to having another cup of coffee), helping me catch my second wind and finish out the day. How intense it is depends on how I’m feeling. It could be a Peloton class or a heavy weight-lifting session. Or it could be a more restorative practice such as yoga or a long walk.
It seems like a simple enough endeavor, baked into my schedule, and ready for me to execute. There are many days, though, when I just don’t want to. I could be sitting in my gym clothes, with my bag packed and by the door, willing myself to get up and go move my body. These are the moments when I step back and assess if I should push myself, do something lighter than planned, or consider it a rest day and watch Rick and Morty reruns.
This is a feeling most of us know well. There are days when you have the motivation, others when you have to muster up your willpower to get moving, and some when you decide to just take the day off. But movement, and resolving to do something even when you don’t feel up to it, doesn’t need to be about getting fit or hitting a personal record in the gym. The best benefits of being active in some way are often the ones we don’t see touted on Instagram — like having more energy during the day, building strength, boosting brain health, and other mental health benefits. Movement provides nearly everyone and every body with these benefits — no “perfect” aesthetic necessary. And while someone who is navigating a serious bout of depression or anxiety likely won’t have the same intrinsic motivation capacity as someone whose mental health is stable, everyone benefits from moving in some way.
So how can we structure our lives and environments to ensure that we get moving, in some way, on those days when we’re struggling to do so? I spoke with several fitness experts to see how. Here’s what they said.
Remind yourself how good it feels to move your body, and reframe what’s considered movement
The Department of Health and Human Services recommends getting at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity each week, plus two days of strength training.
This doesn’t mean you need to visit your gym each day and push heavy weights or take a HIIT class. There’s a difference between exercise and physical activity. The former refers to structured activity in pursuit of a fitness goal, while the latter can be anything that requires you to move — including going on a walk, taking a virtual yoga class, dancing around your apartment, playing with your kids or pets, or some light stretching. On those days when you don’t feel up to your exercise routine, taking it easier than usual can still be a way to hit the recommended physical activity benchmarks.
We feel different every day due to sleep quality, stress, work, family obligations, and our mental health. Saving the tough workouts for the days you feel amazing, and modifying on the days you don’t, allows you to take better care of your body in the long run. Striving for perfection is a sure way to burn out. It’s okay to deviate from the plan in order to meet yourself where you are and figure out why you don’t feel up to your usual. Is it a need for more sleep? Better stress management? Or more food?
“Any movement that you can do is going to benefit your body, whether or not it’s at the gym or structured exercise,” said Katie Heinrich, a professor of kinesiology at Kansas State University. “So maybe you’re in your gym clothes. You’re like, ‘Man, I just do not want to go to the gym.’ That’s fine. Just move. Put on a song you like to dance to. Or do 10 pushups, 10 situps, and 10 squats. Even just standing and moving is better than sitting.”
Find an accountability buddy
Having friends who support you in moving your body can be the deciding factor between getting some steps in for the day or crashing on the couch, according to Sami Yli-Piipari, a physical activity specialist at the University of Georgia. Making physical activity a group endeavor can foster a sense of community and make you feel like others are on your side — a powerful motivator. “Humans have a need to be autonomous. They have a need to be competent in what they are doing, but also they need to feel like a relationship is there,” he explained.
Plus, it’s harder to opt out of a pre-planned activity if friends or a trainer are waiting on you before class. Yli-Piipari also noted that less straightforward things, like scheduling an Uber in advance to pick you up for the gym, can help.
Create an environment that promotes sustainable movement
Our personal environments can promote or hinder our well-being — a complex reality influenced by someone’s various privileges and disadvantages — and it has a direct influence on how motivated we are to get something done. Taking your workout clothes to work, packing your gym bag the night before, laying out workout clothes in advance, or placing them on a chair you walk by frequently are just a few tips the experts I spoke to offered for building an environment that promotes movement.
It’s imperative to take stock of how you can fit bouts of movement into your day. Maybe it’s with a standing desk or walking around your room every hour. For others, scheduling physical activity in a digital calendar or planner the same way you’d note a doctor’s appointment is effective. For those of us who love crossing things off a list, writing down exercise as if it’s a task helps too.
But it’s also vital to be realistic about when it happens. If you’re not a morning person, don’t schedule morning workouts. If your evenings are spent wrangling family obligations or you want to go out with your friends, then maybe a lunch hour session is best. And if an hour block isn’t feasible, Heinrich suggests breaking it up into smaller chunks, which may work best for those with rigid or unpredictable schedules. Parents can also squeeze in workouts by joining their kids in running around on the playground, or doing a circuit as they’re watching their kids play. (A big selling point for at-home workouts is the fact that you can watch your children, take a meeting, or cook a meal in the oven during an exercise session.)
“Every minute of activity that you can do creates physiological and mental responses in your body,” she explained. “And typically, if someone is feeling exhausted, if you move your body, you will find that you feel better. And those aches and pains that you are starting to feel may just go away.”
Know the difference between feeling sluggish and actually needing to rest
Everyone I spoke with was clear that movement isn’t always the best solution to feeling blah. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is figure out the difference between needing to take a walk and needing to rest your body. Tiredness can occur for a number of reasons. Sometimes you’ve been looking at your screen for too long, and you need an activity break. Other times, you could need a nap. If the fatigue is overwhelming or persistent, your body could be signaling that there’s an underlying medical issue that needs to be addressed. And of course, if you’re experiencing a fever, pain, or an injury, that’s a clear indication that you need to focus on getting better.
But Brittany Brandt, the fitness and well-being coordinator for West Virginia University, said that if you just feel tired and want to skip that day’s physical activity, that’s okay too. Try not to beat yourself up over “breaking a streak,” and instead afford yourself some grace, she said. Throwing in a little something daily — whether it’s a walk around the block or a quick stretch before bed — will do your body much better than stressing out over not moving as you had planned for the day.
“People put themselves in a box sometimes of, ‘Oh, I have to work out Monday through Friday,’ or only on certain days, and if they get derailed, they say, ‘I’ll just try again on Monday,’” she said. “But there’s no stigma on that. You can move every day.”
Julia Craven is a writer covering anything she thinks is cool, and she’s the brain behind Make It Make Sense, a wellness newsletter.
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Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson re-team for Martin McDonagh’s riotous fable that’s about more than a friend breakup.
It doesn’t take a doctorate in Irish history — thank goodness, since I do not have one — to know that The Banshees of Inisherin is not merely a delightfully madcap tale of Irish zaniness. It is that, since writer and director Martin McDonagh (of In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) is incapable of turning out a boring story. But there’s more to it than what’s on the surface.
The Banshees of Inisherin plays like a very funny fable or a folk tale, the story of two lifelong friends, Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson). The two men live on a remote island off the Irish coast, which is sparsely populated by a collection of eccentrics who’ve known each other forever and are unlikely to ever leave. The only occupant with aspirations to get off the island is Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), who’s tired to death of everyone, especially the men, who are, as she says, “all feckin’ boring.”
Well, maybe not all boring. One day at the pub, their usual afternoon haunt, Pádraic discovers that Colm is no longer his friend. The reason for the break is elusive to Pádraic, and even a bit elusive to Colm, who just can’t deal with his friend anymore. But when Pádraic can’t accept Colm’s decision, Colm sets out to make his intentions clear in the most unhinged way possible.
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Searchlight Pictures
McDonagh (Irish, but raised in London) is a playwright at heart and by trade, and he thrives in this sort of setup: a tightly controlled world of weirdos, a hothouse for quarrels and inside jokes and petty beefs and grudges held so long that people barely remember where they started. It makes for immensely entertaining storytelling, and he’s at his best in this distinctly Irish setting. Reuniting Gleeson and Farrell, whose odd-couple pairing rendered the gothic crime comedy of In Bruges so unforgettable, was the right choice. They’re fantastic in the roles, Gleeson as a world-weary grump and Farrell as a naif who seems to be missing a few screws.
But if you don’t detect what’s happening in the background of The Banshees of Inisherin, then it just plays as a weird tale told late at night over a few pints. The film really expands when you look into the background.
Because just across the way, across the water from Inisherin, there are explosions visible on the coast. The characters remark upon them occasionally, musing on the fighting that’s happening over there, a conflict they hope and believe will be over soon. No matter — it doesn’t touch them here on the island, where it’s Colm and Pádraic’s break that occupies everyone’s attention.
That fighting, presumably, is actually part of the Irish civil war. The film is set in 1923, at a time when that conflict had been raging for nearly a year. It’s part of the long history of strife and violence in Ireland, mostly having to do with vastly differing views on British rule of the island. The civil war commenced after the Irish War of Independence, which led to the establishment of Ireland as a free state that nonetheless would remain part of the British Commonwealth (more like Canada than Scotland, in other words). Some who had fought for independence with the Irish Republican Army supported the treaty that created the Free State; others fiercely opposed it, believing that Ireland ought to be wholly free from British involvement.
The result was a bloody war in which men who had fought on the same side now were fighting one another, lasting from June 1922 to May 1923. Watch The Banshees of Inisherin with this in mind, and you can start to see what McDonagh is doing. The break between Colm and Pádraic works on its own terms, but it’s also a startlingly violent fight between men who are basically brothers, a fight that has a logic to it and yet is heartbreaking precisely because of the depth of history between them. It’s the conflict in microcosm.
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Searchlight Pictures
The “banshees” of the title (and of the song Colm is composing throughout) are significant, as well. They hail from Irish folklore: female spirits who shriek and wail and mourn, signaling that a family member will soon die. In The Banshees of Inisherin, there’s no literal banshee, but it’s clear that’s the role that Mrs. McCormick, the pipe-smoking old woman that Pádraic avoids like the plague, plays in the village. Her dark forebodings suggest death is on the horizon — literally, on the horizon they can see.
In the end, the characters muse that the conflict across the way seems to be subsiding, and it seems the conflict on Inisherin might be too, in the darkest of manners. But that dialogue is meant to take on a note of bitter irony — or perhaps the darkest of comedy, which are two sides of the same coin in Ireland. Because we know, 100 years later, that the conflict didn’t subside in Ireland, even if a tenuous peace held in the Republic. Plenty more fighting would transpire, much of it in Northern Ireland (now part of the United Kingdom), specifically during the Troubles, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. Plenty more blood would be spilled, and conflicts would divide Irish society for generations.
Which is what provides The Banshees of Inisherin — undoubtedly a comedy, and often a very funny one — with its tragic backbone. Friend against friend, brother against brother, love lost and grudges cracking the fabric of society; it’s all contained in this little fable. And the banshee foretelling doom stands in the background, shrieking and mourning it all.
The Banshees of Inisherin opens in theaters on October 21.
More kids and adults are finding out that they can’t eat their favorite foods. Why?
Peanuts. Shellfish. Soy. Wheat. Tree nuts. Dairy. Eggs.
For millions of Americans, these ingredients are a recipe for an upset stomach, hives, swelling, or even a trip to the emergency room — all because of allergies to food.
Food allergies are becoming increasingly common, in children and in adults. Yet it’s surprisingly difficult to get a handle on even the basics. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates about 2 percent of adults and 4 to 8 percent of children suffer from food allergies, but some scientists think the number is as high as 10 percent across the board, around 33 million people in the US. Some have even described food allergies as an epidemic.
It adds up to a tremendous burden across the health system and the economy. Allergies can be dangerous but are rarely lethal. About 150 to 200 people die per year in the US from food-related allergies. However, allergies lead to 30,000 emergency room visits and 2,000 hospitalizations annually. Even for people who avoid serious reactions, their food allergies can take a toll. They may have to say no to a favorite dinner for fear of contamination, or struggle with the anxiety that they have to trust their lives to strangers at restaurants. Managing allergies can get expensive, too. Between doctor visits, hospitalizations, medicines, caregiving, lost productivity, and specialized meals, food allergies cost the US economy close to $25 billion per year.
All this adds immense urgency to perhaps the biggest mystery of food allergies: Why are they on the rise? Why are more babies and kids reacting badly to cookies, ice cream, cake, and milk? Why are more adults discovering that they can’t eat a lobster roll anymore?
“Certainly the word ‘unexplainable’ fits here,” said Alkis Togias, branch chief for allergies at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
This week’s episode of Unexplainable, Vox’s podcast about unsolved mysteries in science, examines the drivers of food allergies and how doctors are working to treat them, even if they don’t know what’s behind them.
It turns out that some of the trappings of the modern world may have had some unintended consequences, and some well-intentioned guidance on how we should eat may have been completely wrong.
What makes an allergy an allergy?
Lots of things get lumped in as allergies, but scientists have a strict definition: Allergies are an overreaction of the immune system involving an antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE). This is a protein that’s produced to help the immune system identify and counteract invaders. When IgE finds a threat, it triggers the production of a hormone called histamine, which causes blood vessels to dilate, tissues to inflame, skin to itch, and the airways to wheeze, cough, or sneeze — all in the hope of getting the threat away from the body.
This mechanism evolved to help our bodies cope with parasites and venom. But occasionally, something benign like pollen or peanut proteins can set off the alarms. The immune system might have been trained wrong, or an allergen may have a structure in common with something that is a threat.
Most often, allergies are a nuisance, but they can sometimes ramp up the immune system to dangerously high levels. Blood vessels dilate so wide that they cause a major drop in blood pressure while inflammation forces airways to swell shut, a life-threatening condition known as anaphylaxis. For people with severe allergies, this reaction can turn deadly in minutes.
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Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Many things can cause allergies, but food allergies are particularly concerning. After all, people have to eat every day. They’re also confounding because allergies aren’t the only type of bad reactions people have to food. Being lactose intolerant is not the same thing as having a milk allergy, for example. The former involves the digestive system, while the latter is a function of the immune system, and thus they require different treatments.
So when someone feels sick after eating something, allergies aren’t the only suspect. In recent years, doctors have improved their ability to sort out these problems, which explains some of the rise in allergies.
“There is a little bit of an effect of better epidemiology and better diagnostics here, no question about that, but there’s also no question that a real increase has occurred,” Togias said.
That means there must be some other mechanism that is making increasing numbers of people unable to eat their favorite meals and snacks.
The theories behind the rise in food allergies
So why are food allergy rates going up? There are a few ideas, and they aren’t exclusive. No single theory explains everything, and there are likely several factors at work. And because we’re talking about a trend over years and decades across entire countries, it takes time to figure out exactly what’s at play.
Here are what scientists are thinking most about when it comes to food allergies:
Hygiene hypothesis
As sanitation and cleanliness have improved, food allergy rates have increased. The thinking is that with fewer germs and parasites to counteract, the immune system starts to turn against harmless things like allergens. But not every germ is equally important in this regard. There are specific benign, even helpful, microorganisms that evolved alongside humans and may play a crucial role in regulating the immune system: the so-called “old friends.” As people spend more time in highly sanitized environments, they are less likely to meet their old friends.
Circumstantial evidence for this is apparent around the world. Wealthy countries have some of the highest rates of allergies. Developing countries are seeing allergy rates rise as their standards of living improve. In China, food allergy rates rose from 5 percent in the decade between 1999 and 2008 to 8 percent between 2009 and 2018. People who emigrate from poorer countries with low allergy rates to wealthier countries see their allergy rates go up, and their children soon experience allergies as frequently as native residents. Allergy rates are higher in urban areas than in rural regions where people spend more time with nature.
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Dina Rudick/Boston Globe via Getty Images
But the hygiene hypothesis doesn’t explain everything we see with allergies. Sanitation has been improving for centuries, but allergies have spiked in the past couple of decades. Within wealthy countries, it’s minorities and lower-income residents who have the highest rate of food allergies.
Some researchers now object to the term “hygiene hypothesis” because it doesn’t capture all these nuances and makes it seem like being dirtier is the solution to allergies. It’s not, so keep washing your hands and don’t go out licking subway poles.
Exposure timing
Babies have malleable immune systems, and the first months of life are critical for calibrating an immune system’s response to threats. That time period is particularly important for infants who have a family history of food allergies or a risk factor for developing them, such as eczema.
“Our guidelines suggested initially that kids should avoid food allergens early in life,” said Douglas Mack, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at McMaster University. But this thinking may have been wrong, and it may have even backfired. It could explain why allergy rates have risen so much in the past 30 years compared to the decades prior.
A seminal 2015 study called LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut) randomized 640 infants with allergy risk factors to either consume or avoid peanut products. It found that by 5 years old, the babies who avoided peanuts had a peanut allergy rate of 13.7 percent while those that didn’t had a rate of 1.9 percent. Exposure to peanut proteins early in life actually reduced allergy rates.
Conversely, telling parents to avoid food allergens for their babies may have made things worse.
It’s not clear why, but it may relate to another idea sometimes called the dual exposure hypothesis. Food allergens can be introduced through the digestive system, but also through the skin, particularly in babies that have eczema. Allergen exposure through the skin seems to sensitize people, but through the gut, it appears to tamp down allergic responses. So even if a baby isn’t eating peanuts, soy, or eggs, the baby may still be exposed in the home through the skin, tilting the balance toward an allergy.
“I think we have to take some of the blame as clinicians,” Mack said.
Health officials in many countries now say that babies should be slowly exposed to potential allergens under the guidance of a pediatrician. According to the USDA’s updated dietary guidelines, “There is no evidence that delaying introduction of allergenic foods, beyond when other complementary foods are introduced, helps to prevent food allergy.”
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BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Genetics
It does appear that some people are more inherently susceptible to developing allergies than others. However, the genetic roots of allergies are complicated, as nearly 100 genes are known to be involved. Among twins where at least one in the pair is allergic, 64 percent of identical twins — twins that have the same genetics — shared a peanut allergy, while just 7 percent of fraternal twins had an allergy in common.
Genetic susceptibility may also explain why the rates of some types of allergies are leveling off in wealthy countries.
“What we think is happening is that there is a plateau we’re reaching now,” Togias said. “Perhaps this plateau is a genetic limit.”
Like other explanations, genetics don’t explain everything about allergies, but they could shed more light on other ways to prevent allergies, according to Togias.
Vitamin D deficiency
The human body produces vitamin D with exposure to sunlight, though you can also get it through your diet. Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating the immune system, and as vitamin D levels have declined across populations, food allergy rates have gone up.
People in wealthy countries that spend more time indoors have higher food allergy rates than those spending more time outside. Countries that are further from the equator have higher allergy rates than those along the planet’s sunny middle.
This is a less-studied explanation than the other theories, and researchers are trying to figure out whether vitamin D supplements could play a role in reducing allergy rates.
Theories behind adult-onset allergies
Many of these other theories get at the rise of foodborne allergies in children, but say little about adult-onset allergies, which are even harder to study. Stories abound of people finding out the hard way that they can no longer eat their favorite foods, but adults often don’t bother to get an official allergy diagnosis, which means that other types of food sensitivities can get lumped in.
As for why adults can suddenly develop allergies, there are a couple of explanations. One is that the immune system itself goes through an aging process. With time, it does a poorer job of regulating itself. So an adult might become sensitized to an allergen over time.
Allergies in adults might also arise from immunological stresses like “a strong infection that somehow affected the immune system and sent a message for the immune system to start developing IgE antibodies where it did not before,” according to Togias.
People with food allergies don’t have to suffer
Even though scientists are still grappling with why food allergy rates have shot up, the good news is that it’s easier than ever to live with them. The first order is to figure out whether you actually have an allergy. The gold standard is a test known as a food challenge, where you eat the suspicious shrimp, peanut butter, or omelet under medical supervision. There are also skin tests. Figuring out the mechanism can help you suss out whether you need to avoid the food completely or if you can manage it with treatment.
In terms of preventing exposure, more foods carry allergy warnings and more restaurants are aware of allergy risks, but it can still be dicey. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of fatal food allergic reactions came from restaurants and food service.
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
For severe reactions, tools like an epinephrine injector, commonly known as an EpiPen, can stem anaphylaxis. If you see someone having a severe allergic reaction and they have an EpiPen, remember: blue to the sky, orange to the thigh. More than 3 million Americans keep these emergency injectors close by, but one manufacturer, Mylan, has in recent years jacked up the price more than 400 percent.
As for ongoing treatments, there are drugs that can mitigate mild allergy symptoms. There is also immunotherapy, where a patient is gradually exposed to increasing doses of an allergen over time under medical supervision.
Right now, there is no known way to reliably “cure” an allergy, but scientists have some leads. One hot area of research is the pool of microorganisms that live on the skin, in the lungs, and in the gut, what’s known as the microbiome. This appears to be a critical element in all allergies, not just food allergies, according to Togias. By figuring out how the microbiome interacts with allergies, scientists hope to cultivate a way to reduce food allergy severity over the long term.