4 moves to stave off chronic pain

Plus: How to get Americans eating healthier

View this email online September 4, 2022 by Andrea Muraskin This week: A physical therapist prescribes mobility exercises for everyone, a playbook for an inclusive sex ed curriculum, and new ideas to get Americans to eat healthier. Desk jockey or gym rat, these 4 exercises can help prevent (and relieve) your pain Photo Illustration by Becky Harlan/NPR What if preventing pain was like preventing cavities? Most of us learned dental hygiene from a very early age: Brush your teeth twice a day and don't forget to floss. We do it without thinking. Physical therapist Vinh Pham applies the same logic to preventing chronic pain in his new book: Sit Up Straight: Futureproof Your Body Against Chronic Pain with 12 Simple Movements. Practicing these movements consistently, he says, can extend your range of motion and increase your flexibility. And it's no surprise that research has found this kind of exercise can help decrease chronic pain over time.  Here are four of Pham's favorite 15-minute exercises... Fifteen minutes a day keeps the chiropractor away (no offense to chiropractors!) Plus: Virtual reality workouts are helping people stay fit at home Newsletter continues after sponsor message We're eating ourselves sick. Here are 7 ways Americans can fix our diets FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images The typical American diet is loaded with empty calories from all that sugary, fatty (and addictive) junk food many of us eat. And it's also, sadly, linked to the chronic diseases that are killing us. After decades of hand-wringing over this problem without much progress, there's new momentum to make policy changes to help. A group of food policy and nutrition experts are meeting at the White House later this month to come up with some concrete ways to shake up our eating habits and hopefully, load up our plates with more healthy fruits and veggies. Here is an advance look at seven big ideas to get Americans eating more nutritious food. Sex ed often leaves out LGBTQ youth. Here's what's missing Kaz Fantone for NPR "We're all expressing our sexuality all the time," my eleventh grade health teacher said on the first day of class. For me, it was a revelation. Sexuality wasn't something to be hidden away or be ashamed of, it was an intrinsic part of who we were as adolescents and who we would become as adults.  Sex ed at my suburban New Jersey high school in the early 2000s was sex-positive. No question was off limits, and we even watched the (in)famous Seinfeld episode, The Contest. But our education was completely heterosexual, and never ventured outside the traditional gender binary. Today, there is still no national mandate for sex education in the U.S., and even in the states that do provide courses, LGBTQ issues are often disregarded or vilified. With the school year starting up, NPR's Life Kit spoke with sexuality educators to understand how sex education could evolve to be supportive of queer students. Also: How to talk about sex in the context of monkeypox Before you go: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Boost me baby, one more time: What to know about the new reformulated booster shots Listen: How the rise of long COVID is affecting the labor market How to cope with climate anxiety Share your stories: Tell about the ways abortion laws have affected you, big and small We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism on Shots and follow us on Twitter at @NPRHealth. All best, Andrea Muraskin and NPR's health editors Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WBEZ (edit station). What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: shots@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Goats & Soda, Daily News, Best of NPR and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Health emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy