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5 Scientifically Proven Health Benefits To Kissing

What’s a more natural way to express affection for another person, than by kissing? This sign of care isn’t limited to lovers and those in relationships, for we also kiss babies on the cheek and friends upon greeting. Yet did you know there are actually scientifically proven health benefits to kissing?

Kissing Releases Positive Hormones

When kissing another person, the brain releases several hormones that make us feel good. One of these is dopamine, the hormone that boosts and regulates our mood. Kissing also signals the brain to release ocytocin, the love hormone that helps us create bonds with partners and babies. Both are solid factors in keeping us positive and optimistic daily.

mom and dad kissing their daughter on the cheeks.

Locking Lips Heightens Your Alertness

Kissing stimulates a chemical response in the body, causing it to release adrenaline and noradrenaline. These chemicals are responsible for making you feel excited as well as making your body more alert as your heart rate increases. This means you are more perceptive to responding to any threats with the necessary actions.

Kissing Reduces Your Chances Of Cavities

Every time you kiss someone, your salivary glands produce more saliva. In addition to helping you swallow food, saliva is important in removing food particles caught between your teeth, which if not removed or cleaned can turn into cavities. A little smooch can go a long way!

woman at dentist office with a thumb up and smiling.

Smooches Reduces Stress

One study by the Western Journal of Communication found that physical forms of affection help to reduce the “physiological effects of stress.” Kisses are considered one of these top exchanges, and were found to inhibit the prime stress hormone cortisol. All the more reason to pucker up after a long work day!

A Natural Healing Remedy

Love and lust both help to promote physical and mental healing. By releasing feel-good hormones, kissing helps your body stay in top form, and reduces your body’s stress levels so that it can focus more on recovery. Therefore, your injuries and mental health can all be improved with a little help of a peck!

Woman blowing kiss to camera.

Photos: Freepik

If music gives you goosebumps, you’re pretty special

Goosebumps

Does it happen to you that you listen to a piece and your body immediately fills up with thousands of tiny bumps? You wake up and already throw on a song. You feel sad and you listen to music. Music is everywhere you look, and it has completely filled your life.

No matter what type of music you listen to, whether you prefer listening to classical music, or you like to rock out at festivals, we all have one thing in common: how music makes us feel.

However, some people do feel it stronger than others. So, if you’ve ever been told you’re too “sensitive” for reacting emotionally when listening to music, this might just be your article.

Listening to music

Musical stimuli and goosebumps

It’s amazing to see how your body responds to musical stimuli, be it through goosebumps, shivers or even tears. We often don’t realize the massive impact music can have on us. Has it ever occurred to you this might make you special?

A structurally different brain

What we feel when faced with a song that tugs on our heart strings has been looked into by Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. According to them, people with such strong responses to music are not just “emotional”; they have, structurally, a completely different brain than the rest.

Brain

The auditory cortex

These musically-sensible people have a different auditory cortex, which communicates more efficiently with other parts of the brain. The fun part is, that the parts they’re connected to are the areas associated with emotional processing.

Research shows communication is better between those regions because there are a lot of fibers that connect both areas. These findings shed light on why music is so essential to human life, and why it has been around for so long. It goes directly through the auditory channels into the emotional processing and social parts of the brain.

Images: Unsplash

Finally Fix Your Brain Freeze In Seconds

We all know the dreaded feeling. One minute you’re enjoying a tasty ice cream to cool off in the hot summer months, the next your brain feels a sharp icy tingling that makes you (almost) regret having dined on the delicacy in the first place. Have no fear, you don’t have to give up your beloved treat. We have the quick cure to fix your brain freeze in seconds.

What Causes A Brain Freeze?

Two girls enjoying an ice cream cone.

As you might have guessed, the root cause of your brain freeze is from eating or drinking something cold. Specifically, when this cold drink or food touches the roof of your mouth in the upper palate, a quick rush of blood goes to your brain. This response is what causes the chilling headache.

A Tongue In (Mouth) Solution

A quick, easy solution to warm the upper palate and reduce the pain is by pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. By holding your most flexible muscle for 5-10 seconds in that zone, you will get quick relief as the cold and brain freeze starts to subside.

A Self-Made Mask

Boy covering mouth with hands to create a mask to prevent brain freeze.

Another way to warm up the area inside your mouth to reduce the blood rushing to the brain is by creating a small mask over your mouth with your hands. If you breathe in and out several times, you’ll feel the hot air re-enter your mouth, thus counteracting the chill of the food or drink.

Drink A Lukewarm Beverage

Woman drinking out of a mug.

The first reaction to combat the cold might be to drink a beverage that is hot, but this can actually cause more damage and pain! The severe contrast of hot and cold can burn the inside of your mouth, creating a new problem far worse than the original. Rather, try drinking lukewarm water that can steadily and safely increase the temperature of the inside of your mouth.

Photos: Freepik

Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know About “The Lion King”

Disney is all about the live action remakes this year. One of the most anticipated classics set to release this month is “The Lion King.” With an all-star squad of voices for the characters, we know that this film is bound to have roaring approval. Yet before we get too excited for the remake, we thought it would be fun to look back and share some amazing facts about the original beloved animation from 1994.

Hakuna Matata Was Not In The Original Script

“The Lion King” objectively has one of the very best Disney soundtracks to date. With so many great songs, it’s nearly impossible to choose just one favorite. And yet, could you even IMAGINE “The Lion King” without Hakuna Matata? The song that taught us about the ultimate problem free philosophy to live by? Turns out, the original script did not include Hakuna Matata, but rather a song about eating bugs. However, the team couldn’t all agree upon the song, so the research team went to Africa for inspiration. They came back with the catchy phrase and a song was born!

The Original “The Lion King” Was Not Supposed To Be A Musical

As stated previously, the music is an iconic part of “The Lion King,” and yet during the movie’s initial creation process, it wasn’t supposed to include songs. Rather, the goal was to create an animated movie that resembled an animal documentary like with National Geographic. George Scribner was intended to be the original director, but he ditched when the movie went in the musical direction. The main characters however were developed under his guidance.

The Movie’s Original Title Was “King of the Jungle”

Don Hahn, the movie’s producer, said the original title was to be “King Of The Jungle,” as a “metaphor for this allegorical story about human behavior.” However, the team decided to scrap this title because the movie itself takes place in the savannah, not the jungle. After trial and error, they decided to stick with the simple, yet representative title that we all know and love; “The Lion King.”

Be sure to roar and sing along with all of your favorite animals in the remake set for release this month!

Animals are starting to come out at night to avoid humans

Nocturnal animals

That human life affects fauna all around the world is no news, but up to what point do we have influence on other living beings? What’s clear is that our existence on earth has slowly but surely been killing our planet. However, up until know we thought it was just climate change we had to be worried about. But studies have shown we also have a big impact on wildlife.

Scientifically proven

A study carried out in Berkeley noticed that activity patterns of numerous species have been changing: animals are becoming nocturnal, even if they had previously always been daytime creatures. This change affects mostly the mammal species around the world, like tigres and coyotes.

Nature tourism

Nature tourism

Scientists claim the reason behind this change seems to be “nature tourism”, amongst other reasons. Nature tourism is the main argument for such pattern changes: their instincts are to avoid human life. However, throughout the last couple of decades they have become more and more invaded by humans, thus being forced to come out at night.

Serious consequences

Although it might be an evolutionary adaptation for these species, researchers do believe these animals are put under high amounts of stress, meaning the changes could have serious consequences in the future that are yet to be discovered.

Worldwide

A world-wide study

This is not just any study: research has been carried out on data on a global scale collected from tens of studies on movements of 60 different mammal species from all five continents. Apparently, where human activity has invaded, animals are on average 1,36 times more nocturnal. Will we ever stop damaging our planet?

Images: Unsplash

Why do we like cat videos so much? Here’s the answer

Cats

We’re sure it’s happened to you before that someone has sent you a cat video and before you know it you’ve spent your entire afternoon watching felines caressing each other. It’s okay. Been there, done that. But it does keep you wondering, what do cat videos have that we like so much?

Cat

Cat videos are the number one favourite videos online with an number of 26,000 million views a year. But why is it? There might not be a definitive answer just yet, but there a several studies that seem to come close.

It hits home

On the one hand, we have that a lot of people have a cat at home. And when we say a lot, we mean a lot. This means that, in the same way we like pictures in which our friends appear, we prefer to watch videos with animals similar to our own.

They serve as a distraction

Cat

Another reason could be the “humanizing factor”. This phenomenon is why we find a cat playing dead or any other “human” activity amusing. Watching such videos makes us feel close to the animals and puts us on the same level.

However, one of the most important reasons why we like them so much is the feeling these videos give us. We almost never actually look them up directly; we rather “bump into them”. This means a distraction for whatever other boring activity you were carrying out, while at the same time having a small feeling of guilt for wasting time.

“The forbidden fruit” effect

Cats

Something that previously might seem negative, stimulates us to keep watching these types of videos. A phenomenon similar to when someone tells us not to do something: we immediately feel the urge to do it.

Lastly, we find that cats don’t care if they are being filmed or not. This doesn’t happen with dogs or humans. It’s why we often capture (even by accident) animal’s reactions naturally.

Still no definite conclusion

Cat

These are all reasons that make the question even bigger: why do we like cat videos so much? Unfortunately, there’s still no definite answer.

Images: Unsplash