Fiona I.

In the 1960s, professor Yoshiro Hatano invented the 10,000 step rule after he became interested in figuring out the most impactful method for preventing heart disease and obesity.

Hatano theorised that taking 10,000 steps a day, the equivalent of about five miles, would result in 20 percent of burned calories for the average person. The idea spread to the U.S. and other countries and became the recommended health standard in several organisations.

Anticipatory anxiety is worrying about the bad things that could happen. The anxiety typically focuses on things you can't control or predict.

While fears are normal, they can become signs of anticipatory anxiety if they start to interfere with your daily life.

Processed foods are often looked at with disdain, and not without reason. We conjure up an image of ultra-processed, plastic-like foods with suspicious flavours, dipped in synthetic almost-edibles.

But processed food wasn’t always so bad, and has changed our relationship with food over the ages.

• German-born Joseph Pilates was living and working in England as a circus performer and boxer.
• At the start of WWI, he was placed in forced internment. While in the internment camp, he developed floor exercises.
• Later on, he began rehabilitating detainees who were suffering from injuries and illness. Necessity led him to use available items like bed springs and beer keg rings to create resistance exercise equipment.

Repression in psychological terms is a defence mechanism that involves keeping our feelings, thoughts and urges out of our conscious awareness. Our unacceptable desires are kept away from our consciousness so that we are less anxious.

It is a process by which painful and disturbing thoughts are intentionally hidden, and was first identified by Sigmund Freud. He compared the mind to an iceberg, where only the tip is visible and the major portion is hidden.

Studies have shown that having breakfast can boost concentration and memory, and it also plays an important part in blood glucose regulation.

But despite the media hype, there’s no clear-cut link, for example, between breakfast and body weight, blood pressure, or cholesterol.

Many of us have tried to fix an ongoing lack of energy. We get more sleep, but then still feel exhausted.

Sleep and rest are not the same thing. We need equal restoration in the key areas of our lives.

• The caffeine in your morning coffee binds to your brain's adenosine receptors, preventing the biochemical from making you tired.
• Caffeine also builds your adrenaline supply, which increases your heart rate and allows blood to pump faster.
• Caffeine prevents dopamine from being reabsorbed into your system, causing you to feel happy for longer.
• The dopamine that lingers in the brain can trigger the brain to crave more caffeine.
• The more coffee you drink, the more adenosine receptors are formed, which means you may need more coffee to keep you awake.

While it's established that cardio and weight lifting build muscle, new research in mice shows that endurance exercise boosts the growth of vital muscle stem cells and fundamentally changes their metabolism.

It is too early to translate the findings directly to people. Still, this research could inform strategies to help people bounce back from injury, resist the loss of muscle mass that comes with ageing, and gain benefits even if people can't exercise.

Some jobs require night shift work, such as hospitals or 24-hour shops. With planning, it is possible to work all night and still get eight hours of sleep in the day.

While it is possible to get used to night shift, there's evidence that some people find it much harder than others.