Are You a Softy?

Is camping, hiking or horseback riding your thing? Then you’re in line with the 46% of Americans polled by the Travel Industry Assn. of America who like “soft adventures.” The poll, reported in the winter Exercise & Fitness, showed that 16% of Americans like the hard stuff, such as kayaking and climbing. The most popular soft adventure trips were, in order: camping, hiking, biking, bird/animal watching and horseback riding. The most popular “hard” adventures, in order, were white-water rafting or kayaking, snorkeling and scuba diving, off-road or mountain biking, backpacking and rock/mountain climbing.

A Halloween Trick

While contact lenses the shapes of cats’ eyes may be a hit at the Halloween party, they may also be hazardous to your health. That’s especially true if you put on somebody else’s contact lenses. Companies are marketing fashion contact lenses that can make your eyes look like 8-balls or the black-and-white concentric circles that hypnotists use. But physicians warn that dirty lenses can spread serious viral infections or communicable diseases such as herpes, according to a report by HealthScout, an online medical news service. Such lenses typically do not require a prescription because they are noncorrective and are ordered through the mail or purchased at retail stores. “A contact lens is a dish of bacteria sitting on somebody’s brain that can cause a blinding infection,” Dr. Eric Mandel, a corneal laser surgeon in New York, told the news service.

Here’s the Rub II:

Last week, we told you about something that could rub you the right way: drugs in gels and creams. Now, there’s this news: Rubbing your wrist may help insomniacs catch some Zs. In the winter Exercise & Fitness, Michael Blate, executive director of the G-Jo Institute, a natural health educational foundation, says the acupressure technique can help induce sleep. Some 70 million Americans suffer from insomnia or other form of disturbed sleep, and about 70,000 deaths (many of them car crashes) are attributed yearly to sleep disorders, the magazine says. For more information, check the institute’s Web site: https://www.g-jo.com.