Loneliness is an encompassing, entrapping and all consuming feeling. It’s like a spiral of darkness you can’t pull yourself out of, someone else needs to be the one to do it. The feeling of connectivity is why we’re all here, to experience life together.

Research from Brigham Young University is showing that the feeling of loneliness and isolation are just as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes, and is a major threat to our longevity.

The lead author of the study remarks that “We need to start taking our social relationships more seriously.”

Being lonely and isolating yourself socially are two very different things. You can be in a crowd of people and still feel alone, yet others will physically isolate themselves because they want to be alone. The health effects of both scenarios still produce the same thing.

The likelihood of feeling lonely is actually greater in young people than in the older generations. As our society is littered with distraction, social media and things that are suppose to connect us, we are more disconnected than ever.

Tim Smith, a co-author of the study notes that, “Not only are we at the highest recorded rate of living alone across the entire century, but we’re at the highest recorded rates ever on the planet,” Continue reading →

Did birds look similar to how they do now 99 million years ago? Most people would assume no, but this recent finding is proving otherwise! When it was first found that feathers could survive fossilization, it turned everything upside down. It was assumed that only hard tissue like cartilage and bone could survive for millions of years.

A recent paper published in Nature Communications, discovered that two bird wings had been preserved in non other than amber! These wings date back to a staggering 99 million years old – so how is this possible?! Previous findings said that wings are preserved in 2 dimensions, like the bone and soft tissue. An odd feather or two had been found in fossilized amber before, but an entire intact wing like this is unheard of!

It has been found in the Burmese amber deposits which date to the mid-Cretaceous. Within these amber deposits, there are been an array of different bugs, flora and animals that have all been perfectly preserved. This tree resin has allowed things like entire lizards to stay frozen in time, over millions of years.

It’s not easy being a parent. It’s a full time job on top of everything else going on in your life, it is a life time commitment! Everyone has their own parenting style, but some seem to work better than others.

When your kid is crying about a little cut, spilling some ice cream or not being able to find their rubber ducky, it’s easy to have a “suck it up” kind of energy. You get tired, you want your kid to figure it out themselves; but is this really healthy for them? 

In a study of 33 preschoolers, researchers saw that children had more melt downs and intense emotional reactions when parents reacted harshly to their negative emotions.

When parents didn’t come to comfort them when they were upset, the research concluded that it was much more difficult for the child to behave in a socially competent manner. 

Children are naturally sensitive, emotional and absorbent beings. They soak up information, energy and emotion like a sponge that holds onto the experience as they grow up.  Continue reading →

Marriage isn’t really what it used to be. Today, many people are more open minded, feeling as if they don’t need a piece of paper to prove commitment. Out of all the people who get married, only 3 in 10 actually remain together.

During the 1970s, marriages started falling apart at very high rates. This urged social scientists to start observing their traits, worrying it would have an impact on children.

What are the specific traits that create happy, long lasting marriages?

Psychologist John Gottman was one of the people who wanted to figure this out.

He had a team of researchers hook couples up to a set of electrodes. They were all asked to talk about the dynamic of their relationship. How they met, large conflicts they face, and positive memories they share. As they shared their thoughts, they measured their blood flow, heart rates and the amount of sweat produced.

These couples were then contacted six years later to see how they were doing.

Gottman saw there was two main groups which he called the masters and the disasters. People who were masters were still happy after six years, and the disasters were broken up or fundamentally unhappy in their relationships.  Continue reading →

Still drinking milk? You might want to give this video a watch. Vox created an informative and comprehensive video on how exactly the government has tricked us into drinking so much milk.

During the first world war, milk started to be heavily produced to give nutrition to the soldiers around the world. Because of this, farmers starting focusing more on dairy and got rid of their other animals, predominantly making milk from cows. But as the war ended, there was way more milk than people to drink it.

This is why campaigns started to get people drinking more milk, instead of making less of it. Ever see those Got Milk ads? Those were created to try to keep selling all that milk.

This video breaks it down perfectly. At the end of the day, the FDA, who is in charge of creating these health regulations, also has a hand in the marketing for these massive companies.

You can eat dairy and have a healthy diet, but thinking that it’s essential is simply marketing.

Everything in this universe is fundamentally made of energy. The atoms that make up physicality, at the core, are vibrating geometries that are energetic structures.

So is it possible to detect electromagnetic fields around the Earth? This is an inherent ability animals like birds have, which help them navigate while flying.

They align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field which allows them to understand the difference between north, south, east and west. If this ability is present in animals, why couldn’t it be in humans?

Well, it is! And we are finally creating scientific research to help us understand how it works.

The geophysicist Joe Kirschvink at the California Institute of Technology recently showed the results of this study. He believes that people do inherently possess the ability to detect magnetic fields.

He says he has produced clear evidence that humans do in fact have functioning magnetoreceptors.  Continue reading →