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Consider this your permission to skip the gym today: Exercising too much without giving your body a break might make you sick, according to new research published in the journal Frontiers of Physiology. Researchers at Catholic University of Brasilia observed people who do CrossFit on a regular basis to see how the high-intensity exercise affected their muscles and immune system. After two consecutive days of the rigorous workout, people showed reduced levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines—proteins that white blood cells produce to help lower inflammation. In effect, the back-to-back workouts with no rest were hampering their immune function.

That study looked at CrossFitters specifically, but they’re not the only ones who need a little R&R. Taking some time off from the gym is essential, no matter what kind of workout you tend to do—whether it’s weight-lifting or running or something low-impact like a barre class. “Rest days are important regardless of intensity level because you’re placing the body and mind under some form of stress,” says Marlon Briscoe, a certified personal trainer and owner of BodyByBriscoe Studios in New York City. “Imagine going to school or work 365 days a year with no break—how would you feel?”

Keep reading for his tips about how to make the most of your days off.

1. TAKE OFF AT LEAST ONE DAY A WEEK.

If you’ve been exercising regularly for a while and are fairly advanced, you can probably get away with working out three or four consecutive days without any time off, says Briscoe; but even so, make sure to take off at least one full day each week. If you’re a newbie, you might want to ease into a routine and give yourself another day or two off (spread them out throughout the week).

“When you have a day or two off between workouts, your body will be able to come back at full force,” says Briscoe. Plus, he says, your mind will be rested, “so you’ll also be more encouraged to continue your program.”

2. ON WORKOUT DAYS, MIX IT UP.

If you do work out a few days in a row, make sure to target different muscles—for instance, do arms one day and legs the next, or alternate running days with cross-training. “Muscles break down during exercise and repair when you’re at rest,” says Briscoe. So if you keep working the same muscles over and over, they don’t get the chance to build themselves back up. “You’ll compromise your results if you work out the same body parts on consecutive days,” he says.

Another reason to change up the routine: You’ll lower your chances of injury. If your muscles are tight or sore and you try to work through the pain, you have a great chance of harming yourself, says Briscoe.

3. ON YOUR OFF DAYS, BE LAZY.

Don’t be tempted to go for an easy bike ride, jog, or yoga class on your day off—because you won’t really be giving your body the break it needs. “A rest day should be just that: rest,” says Briscoe.

If you want to do something a little active, he advises sticking to easy stretching (holding each stretch for at least 30 seconds) or foam rolling. Those will help keep your muscles loose without putting too much added strain on them.

4. PAY ATTENTION TO THE P.M.

Getting enough Zs is another key component to your recovery post-workout, says Briscoe. He also recommends eating something with casein protein before you head to bed to help your muscles further recover while you sleep. Science has shown this is a good strategy; in fact, downing a beverage with casein protein half an hour before bedtime improved exercisers’ protein synthesis rates (which helps repair muscles) by 22 percent in a 2012 study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. So feel free to enjoy a protein shake as a midnight snack.

October 7, 2016 – 4:00pm

October 7, 2016

What Makes Sulfur Smell So Bad?

Kirstin Fawcett

filed under: Big Questions, science

Image credit:

iStock

If you’ve ever caught a whiff of natural gas, you know the stench is similar to that of bad eggs or rotting cabbage. But the unsavory smell also saves lives: Gas leaks put our homes at risk for fires and explosions, and can even cause asphyxiation and death. Since pure natural gas (a.k.a. methane) has no smell, utility companies add smelly, sulfur-containing odorants called mercaptans, or thiols, to warn us if anything is amiss with our pipelines.

In fact, scientists say that our ability to discern even miniscule levels of volatile sulfur compounds is key to human survival in general, as it helps us detect rotten food, atmospheres with low oxygen levels, and even the urine of potential predators. That’s why chemists and neurobiologists from the University of Albany set out to find which of the nose’s olfactory receptors are responsible for their stench, along with factors that affect our sensitivity to it. Their results were recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Olfactory receptors are present in specialized sensory cells called olfactory sensory neurons, which line our noses. They’re responsible for detecting molecules in our surroundings and sending messages to our brain so that we can recognize and label a smell. Led by chemistry professor Eric Block, the scientists located the receptor—known as OR2T11—that’s most responsive to thiols.

The researchers also found that the presence of copper ions in our nose’s mucus greatly amplifies our sensitivity to them. “Using molecular dynamics simulations, the team found two binding sites which contained copper,” Chemistry World explained. “The importance of both sites in detecting thiols was confirmed by site-directed mutagenesis: genetically engineered receptors lacking the amino acids responsible for copper binding lost all functionality.”

“Obviously it is essential for everyone to be able to detect gas leaks by recognizing the smell of the sulfur odorant,” Block said in a release. “Unfortunately, some people have a diminished sense of smell, or the absence of smell all together. Understanding how we smell sulfur could help doctors treat those who are not responsive it.”

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

October 7, 2016 – 3:00pm

October 7, 2016

You Can’t Miss Friday’s Best Amazon Deals

Smart Shopping Team

filed under: shopping

Image credit:

amazon / istock

As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, October 7.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!

October 7, 2016 – 12:17pm

October 7, 2016

Portugal Will Give You a Free 3-Day Layover and Domestic Flight

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: travel

Image credit:

iStock

TAP, Portugal’s national airline, really, really wants you to visit the Iberian country. It’s launching a new program giving tourists free airline stopovers in Lisbon, Condé Nast Traveler reports. And for a limited time, TAP will even give you a free flight to Porto, one of the country’s largest cities, about 200 miles north of Lisbon. The free flight deal lasts until October 18, but the Lisbon stopover is a permanent program.

Iceland created a similar stopover program all the way back in the 1960s, and it’s given the country’s tourism industry a major boost, enough so that Icelandair has almost two dozen of its own branded hotels across the country. Earlier this year, the airline even launched a “buddy” program to connect stopover tourists up with locals willing to show them the sights.

Portugal is clearly hoping to replicate the success of the Nordic program, though the country’s tourism industry is already doing pretty well on its own—it hosted a record number of foreign visitors in 2015. More information and deals are at TAP’s Portugal Stopover page.

[h/t Condé Nast Traveler]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

October 7, 2016 – 2:30pm

October 7, 2016

7 Abandoned Hospitals From Around the World

Luke Spencer

filed under: History, medicine, travel

Image credit:

Luke Spencer

Of the wide variety of abandoned buildings, perhaps none are as eerie as deserted hospitals. Whether it’s old military hospitals once filled with wounded casualties, dilapidated facilities for contagious disease patients, or Victorian buildings once used as psychiatric asylums, abandoned hospitals can haunt the imagination with nightmarish thoughts of medical experiments and patient abuse. But while there have undoubtedly been some documented cases of cruel conditions, in truth many of these hospitals were originally considered state-of-the-art. Perhaps because these now-decaying buildings were once so immaculately pristine, it can feel like, of all abandoned institutions, hospitals have suffered the steepest fall from grace.

1. LETCHWORTH VILLAGE

Luke Spencer

Built in 1911 in the upstate hamlet of Thiells, New York, Letchworth Village was created to be a utopian village for the mentally ill. By 1950 over 4000 patients lived there, many of them children. The village was divided in two by a river (creating a girls’ and a boys’ half), and included its own power station, printing press, stores, and places of worship. At the center of Letchworth Village was the hospital and mortuary.

This self-contained village in the woods was designed to be at the forefront of progressive treatment, but Letchworth was closed in 1996 after reports of decades of abuse and neglect. Exposed along with Willowbrook in Staten Island by Geraldo Rivera, Letchworth was eventually shut down.

Today the hospital, like the rest of Letchworth, is completely abandoned. Empty wards still contain beds and paintings on the walls from the children who lived there. In the pitch-black basements are the laboratories, dentists’ rooms, and the morgue. The full story of Letchworth, exactly what transpired in the hospital, and how many passed through the morgue, is unknown. But a cemetery in the woods a few miles away is home to hundreds of unnamed graves, the plain crosses marked only with numbers.

2. BEELITZ-HEILSTATTEN

James C Farmer via Flickr // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Some abandoned hospitals seem more sinister than others by virtue of who was treated there—perhaps none more so than Beelitz-Heilstatten. Medical staff at this now slowly decaying site outside of Berlin once treated two of the most reviled figures in recent German history, Adolf Hitler and Erich Honecker.

Beelitz-Heilstatten was built around the end of the 19th century, initially as a hospital to care for the increasing number of tuberculosis patients in Berlin. A sprawling complex of over 60 buildings, it was converted into a Red Cross hospital during World War I. It was here that a young Adolf Hitler was brought to recuperate after suffering a wound to his thigh during the bloody Battle of the Somme. The hospital at Beelitz was occupied by the Red Army in 1945, and resembled its own small-scale village, complete with private power plant, a post office, restaurants, and even a butcher. In 1990, the recently deposed head of the German Democratic Republic, Erich Honecker, was treated here for liver cancer, and it was from the now-crumbling wards that he fled to Russia.

Beelitz-Heilstatten was finally abandoned in 2000, and like many other empty hospitals is marked by peeling paint, deserted corridors, and rusting medical equipment. But it is the specter of two of its most notorious patients that gives Beelitz-Heilstatten its most disturbing character.

3. NEPONSIT HEALTH CARE CENTER

Luke Spencer

Rockaway Beach in New York is a beach with a peculiar feature. Here, beachgoers and surfers visiting this remote shoreline enjoy the summer sunshine in the shadow of a foreboding presence: an abandoned hospital.

Located along Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Neponsit Hospital was built in 1918 as a children’s tuberculosis hospital. Campaigned for by Jacob Riis, the journalist and photographer who strove to highlight the abysmal conditions of New York’s slums, the hospital on the beach was considered the ideal location for children suffering from tuberculosis, who were thought to benefit from the air coming in from the Atlantic. In the 20th century, the hospital was converted into a care home for the elderly.

When the hospital was badly damaged during a storm in 1998 and thought to be on the verge of collapsing, the patients at Neponsit were evacuated in the middle of the night, with no warning to patients or their families. Two residents died while being relocated, and another disappeared for several weeks.

The hospital has been left to slowly decay ever since. There have been rumors of plans to convert the beachfront hospital into a hotel—plans thwarted by an existing covenant stipulating that the land could only be used for a hospital or public park. That means visitors to Rockaway Beach will continue to see sunbathers right next to an abandoned hospital for the near future.

4. PRIPYAT HOSPITAL

Luke Spencer

Deep inside the exclusion zone of Chernobyl is the doomed workers’ town of Pripyat. Now one of the world’s most infamous abandoned towns, Pripyat was opened in 1970 a few miles from the reactors. Designed as a model example of Communist life, the site featured a disco, fun fair, sports fields, river cafes, schools, bars, and a hospital. Big enough to house 400 patients, the hospital also featured a once-thriving maternity ward for the 1000 or so babies born there each year.

Like the rest of the exclusion zone, the hospital in Pripyat is disturbingly eerie. It’s filled with discarded medical equipment, glass-fronted cabinets still filled with vials of medicine, and medical wall charts. But there are also artifacts in the main ER entryway that tell the terrible story of what happened here. On the floor still lies some of the equipment from the firefighters who first responded to the cataclysmic explosion. Inside the hospital, most of the radiation levels are not particularly hazardous in limited doses, but measuring a fireman’s helmet on the hospital floor, the levels jump dramatically. Virtually all the first responders to the explosion died from radiation, as did many of the nurses and doctors who tried to save them.

5. THE ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANT HOSPITAL

Luke Spencer

Ellis Island and the neighboring Statue of Liberty remain two of New York’s most-visited landmarks. Over 4 millions tourists sail to Ellis Island every year, often to see the rooms where many of their ancestors first entered the United States. But Ellis Island has a hidden side—while the half of the island nearest Manhattan is home to once-thriving former immigration halls, the other is home to an abandoned hospital.

Opened in 1902, the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital served as a detention facility for those deemed unfit for entry into New York. Upon arrival from Europe, immigrants were subjected to a brief medical examination (often as quick as 30 seconds), and chalk marks made upon their clothing signified whether they were able to enter the U.S. or sent to the other side of the island for treatment and monitoring. The hospital had wards for patients suffering from contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, and cholera, as well as an autopsy room and vast sterilization facilities for the medical staff. Somewhere around 3500 unfortunate patients died on the island, while 350 babies were born there.

The hospital was closed in the 1930s, and has gradually fallen into decay ever since. In recent years, limited tours by the Save Ellis Island organization and an art installation have allowed a small number into the crumbling ruins of Ellis Island’s dark side.

6. YPRES ADVANCED DRESSING STATION

Luke Spencer

While the other hospitals on this list occupied grand, state-of-the-art facilities, the preserved remnants of an altogether more rudimentary medical facility from World War I lie outside Ypres, Belgium. The concrete bunkers of what was known as an Advanced Dressing Station are located there by a canal bank. Situated by the British trenches, these dark, concrete rooms were where casualties from the front line were first brought for immediate first aid. It was at these horrific sections of the western front that the Germans first used chlorine gas in 1915.

One of the doctors working in these hellish confines was Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who conducted his gruesome work amid the “constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed and a terrible anxiety lest the line give way.”

One of the casualties was his close friend Alexis Helmer, and McCrae conducted the burial service himself. As a result McCrae wrote one of the most moving war poems, In Flanders Fields.

Today the makeshift hospital where McCrae watched his friend die has been preserved with a memorial, and the field stations where he tended the wounded have been left untouched.

7. NOCTON HALL

Olga Pavlovsky via Flickr // CC BY 2.0

In deepest Lincolnshire is a ruined Victorian mansion, slowly crumbling and being reclaimed by the forest. Once it was a beautiful stately home, on grounds that originally dated back to before 1530. The mansion was rebuilt following a fire to be the home of the 1st Earl of Ripon. But Nocton Hall is more widely known as a military convalescent home, used mostly by the Royal Air Force. Wounded soldiers from World War I all the way through to the First Gulf War recovered there amid the stately grounds and historic home. The site was sold to a private owner in 1995, after which it became abandoned. A further fire in 2004 saw much of the roof of the venerable old mansion destroyed. Despite its status as a Grade II listed building, and its historical significance, Nocton Hall now stands as a haunting looking ruin in the woods, rather than the state of the art medical facility it used to be.

October 7, 2016 – 2:00pm

October 7, 2016

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October 7, 2016

With This Smart Microscope, You Can Play Pac-Man With Live Microbes

Shaunacy Ferro

filed under: education, games, science, bacteria

Image credit:

Screenshot via YouTube

A 3D-printed microscope attachment can turn scientific observation into a video game. LudusScope, a smartphone microscope designed by Stanford University researchers, could be a low-cost way to get kids invested in biology, its creators write in a paper in PLOS One. As reported by Gizmodo, the microscope can be connected to a phone to allow you to play games with microbes, particularly Euglena, a single-cell microorganism that’s attracted to light and often used in science labs.

LudusScope consists of a 3D-printed microscope with four LED lights controlled by a joystick. A smartphone holder keeps your phone camera positioned over the microscope eyepiece so you can see what’s going on in the microscope slide. Android software (the code is freely available on GitHub) allows you to play games by superimposing images over the view of the slide, so that, for instance, it looks like the bacteria are roaming around a soccer field.

Kim et al., PLOS One (2016)

Because the microbes respond to light, you can guide their movements with the LEDs. One game allows user to turn one of the microorganisms into Pac-Man, while another turns one into a soccer ball ready to be lured between the goalposts by the LED flashes. The software also tracks the real-time speed of the Euglena’s movements. Other programs included are purely educational, allowing you to collect data on the microorganisms’ behavior.

The PLOS One study showed that 12-year-olds could successfully assemble the LudusScope by themselves using basic instructions provided, and a second demo with 10 high school students found that all 10 were able to operate the microscope and accurately make observations of and draw the Euglena they saw. According to the researchers, building the full set-up on your own would cost about $100, but if you already have access to a 3D printer—as some schools do—it would only be $60, and even less if you just build the attachment to use on a standard microscope. They estimate that mass-producing the microscope (rather than 3D printing it) would lower the cost to about $30 per microscope.

Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, the Stanford bioengineer whose lab developed the technology, is currently working with an educational game company to develop science kits that would be available within the next year.

If you’re interested in building the kit for yourself, there are instructions in the paper’s supplementary materials.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

October 7, 2016 – 1:30pm

October 7, 2016

Archaeologists Find Man Buried With Shroud of Cannabis Leaves

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Archaeologists Find Man Buried With Shroud of Cannabis Leaves

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Economic Botany, Hongen Jiang, et al.

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Archaeologists Find Man Buried With Shroud of Cannabis Leaves

October 7, 2016

How Poe’s French Translator Made ‘The Raven’ Even Spookier

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How Poe’s French Translator Made “The Raven” Even Spookier

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How Poe's French Translator Made 'The Raven' Even Spookier

1. TAKE OFF AT LEAST ONE DAY A WEEK.

2. ON WORKOUT DAYS, MIX IT UP.

3. ON YOUR OFF DAYS, BE LAZY.

4. PAY ATTENTION TO THE P.M.

GADGETS

KITCHEN

HOME

HEALTH AND BEAUTY

OFFICE, SCHOOL, AND CRAFTS

OUTDOORS, GARDEN, AND SPORTS

ELECTRONICS

TOOLS

1. LETCHWORTH VILLAGE

2. BEELITZ-HEILSTATTEN

3. NEPONSIT HEALTH CARE CENTER

4. PRIPYAT HOSPITAL

5. THE ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANT HOSPITAL

6. YPRES ADVANCED DRESSING STATION

7. NOCTON HALL