Vacations are an excellent opportunity to rest and recover, but what if you're trying to increase your fitness? Can you maintain your fitness journey without compromising your vacation?

Walking Tours: History, Culture, and Fitness?

One way you can build in exercise plans while exploring and maintaining flexibility is to sign up for walking tours of the city or area you’re staying. This combines walking exercise with a more guided exploration and can get you into areas you may not normally have access to. For example, your Rome trip could include a walking tour of the Colosseum and Roman Forum that gets you onto the Forum and into normally restricted areas of the Colosseum, like the Underground. For a more vigorous walking day, a walking tour of historic Central London may include several miles of walking, depending on how much the tour visits. You can pick tours based on your interests and your fitness. The only downside is that many of these tours cost money, though there are free and less expensive options. 

Enjoy the Rest Time

It’s important to remember that you’re on vacation. It’s completely acceptable to take that time to relax and rest up. In fact, it’s likely a good idea to do so if you’ve been on a fitness journey and pushing yourself, because recovery is a key part of fitness. It’s when your body heals from the exertions of exercise and allows your muscles to adapt to the new level of fitness. Without it, you become less reflexive, more tired, and more prone to injuring yourself. This is why we don’t suggest trying to improve your fitness on vacation but maintaining it. Give yourself a well-earned break. If you do a little exercise to maintain your healthy fitness, that’s a great bonus.

Does Maintaining Proper Hydration Help Lower Blood Pressure?

Hydration and Heart Health: An Essential Connection

The heart is a relentless worker. Every minute, it pumps blood to every cell in your body, supplying necessary nutrients and oxygen. But this process becomes increasingly challenging when we're dehydrated.

When the body is lacking sufficient water, it triggers a response in the form of vasopressin, a hormone which causes blood vessels to constrict.1 This constriction, combined with the loss of blood volume due to dehydration, means the heart has to work harder to pump blood throughout the body. As a result, heart rate increases and blood pressure rises, creating a situation that, if prolonged, could affect the heart's health.

On the flip side, when we maintain proper hydration, the heart is able to pump blood more easily, resulting in lower blood pressure and less strain on this vital organ.

How Hydration Helps Lower Blood Pressure

Blood pressure is essentially the force that blood exerts on the walls of blood vessels. When this pressure is too high over a prolonged period, it's termed hypertension or high blood pressure. It's a silent killer, often presenting no warning symptoms but increasing the risk for heart disease and stroke. <Read More> 

You probably already know that your taste buds have something to do with your food preferences, but you'll be surprised to learn how deeply those preferences are rooted in your body's survival instincts. We spoke to the experts to learn more about taste buds, and uncovered loads of surprising information, from how pregnancy can affect taste to why some people have more sensitive palates. Read on to learn seven surprising facts about taste buds.

Outside of how appetizing it appears, most of us don't really think much about the aesthetics of our food. Can the colors of our fruits and vegetables tell us more about their nutrition than we think?

When you’re making up a plate of food for dinner, the aesthetics are rarely at the top of your mind. Plate composition and the look of a meal are really only a consideration at high-end restaurants, where dishes are sometimes works of art. But there’s another reason why you may want to pay attention to how your plate looks, and that’s nutrition. The colors of the food you’re eating, especially the fruits and vegetables, can tell us more about the nutrients we’re taking in than previously considered. Should you pick your fruits and vegetables to make a healthy rainbow with your meal?

Why Different Colors Matter with Food

So, what do different colors in fruits and vegetables tell us? The simplest explanation is that different colors in food can tell us which nutrients are present. Think about it. Something in the food has to be turning it distinct colors, and those are often nutrients that can be healthy for you. For example, red meat is often red because of the iron content in the myoglobin protein. Iron, in turn, is important for healthy circulation and muscle development.

By eating a variety of foods, we can make sure we’re getting a diverse nutritional diet.

In plants, these nutrients are called phytochemicals or phytonutrients. You’ll even recognize some of the most common ones. Flavonols, flavonoids, resveratrol, and carotenoids are all phytonutrients. By eating a variety of foods, we can make sure we’re getting a diverse nutritional diet.  <Read More>