Happy Tuesday!
Welcome to the wabi-sabi letter, the digital newsletter that promotes healthy living, wellness, mental health awareness, fitness, positive habits, and all around happiness. Clear your head and cleanse your inbox with a tiny space for wellness as you set your intentions for the day. Badabing badaboom.
Rethinking Discourse Around Vaccines
The news has been awash with news of the Delta variant, travel restrictions, and shifting government mandates. It leaves the general public (hello) with more questions than answers as we whisper poolside or among family and friends, are we out of the woods yet? This piece in The Atlantic dives into why our immune systems are ready, and helps reframe how we think about vaccinations. Some takeaways from the piece below on breakthrough vaccination cases:
Post-vaccination infections, or breakthroughs, might occasionally turn symptomatic, but they aren’t shameful or aberrant. They also aren’t proof that the shots are failing. These cases are, on average, gentler and less symptomatic; faster-resolving, with less virus lingering—and, it appears, less likely to pass the pathogen on. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body’s barriers.
A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break; it does not erase the protection that’s already been built. Rather than setting up fragile and penetrable shields, vaccines reinforce the defenses we already have, so that we can encounter the virus safely and potentially build further upon that protection.
Action Item: You can read the full piece here to give you a better idea from immunologists on how to think about vaccine protection and breakthrough disease. It will also help give some fodder to explaining vaccine efficacy to friends and family that are confused.
Exercise for Brain Health
As we get older, we all want to look out for our brain health, and namely, preserve our memory. According to a new study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers have identified the best form exercise of exercise to help with this, plus why it's beneficial. Here's what they found.
Based on the findings of this research, it would appear that aerobic exercise is the way to go when considering which exercises are most beneficial for the brain. In fact, the regions of the brain that bear the brunt of aging seem to benefit the most from aerobic exercise.
The bottom line is, after just six months of working out three times per week, the participants doing aerobic exercise achieved noticeable improvements in their brain health and memory. It's never too late to improve your brain health, which is certainly good news for anyone looking to get in better shape.
Action Item: Try leaning into your summer surroundings and practicing some aerobic exercise outdoors. Check out these new outdoor workout ideas with guides from Shape.
Negative Communication vs. Positive Communication
Do positive changes in communication style actually lead to improvements in relationship satisfaction? This is the question that University of Alberta (Canada) psychologist Matthew Johnson and his colleagues sought to answer in a study they recently published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
According to the findings summarized in Psychology Today, It’s complicated. The study found that decreasing negative communication helps in the moment but not necessarily long term, while increasing positive communication doesn’t necessarily improve the relationship either now or later.
The study concluded, First, it’s far more important to cut down on negative communication patterns than it is to practice positive ones. At the very least, they’ll make dealing with conflicts less unpleasant than they would be otherwise.
Second, adopting a positive communication style alone isn’t enough to improve the relationship, in either the short or the long term. It will take action and collaboration to make meaningful difference.
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You're amazing. Enjoy the world today.
Love,
wabi-sabi team