Category: Lifestyle

If it weren’t for electricity, life as we know it in the United States would grind to a halt. But how much do you know about where all the electricity you’re using comes from? In rough numbers, 67 percent of our electricity comes from fossil fuels: coal (33 percent), natural gas (33 percent), and oil (1 percent). The problem with using fossil fuels to produce electricity is that they generate a huge amount of pollution.
Let me give you a quick example. Your neighborhood utility company has to burn about 700 pounds of coal to keep a single 100-watt light bulb lit for a year. (Okay, I know you don’t keep your lightbulbs lit all year without turning them off, but you get the point, right?) Besides keeping the light on, burning that 700 pounds of coal produces five pounds of sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain) and another five pounds of nitrogen dioxide (which causes smog), according to the non-partisan website howstuffworks. But the biggest problem is the more than 1,800 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is the major culprit behind global warming.
Wait, what? When I first looked at these numbers I thought there was a misprint. How could burning 700 pounds of something generate 1,800 pounds of waste? Well, it’s all about the chemistry. Each molecule of carbon from the burned coal combines with two molecules of oxygen that are already in the air. The result is carbon dioxide—CO2—which weighs something.
Anyway, back to our light bulb. Powering it by burning natural gas would generate far, far less pollution. But there are other problems associated with natural gas production. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has released huge reserves of natural gas, but many opponents of the practice say that it’s causing earthquakes and polluting groundwater supplies.
Because of the nasty environmental fallout from fossil-fuel–produced electricity, scientists and entrepreneurs have been frantically experimenting with low-polluting, renewable alternatives, including hydropower, hydrogen fuel cells, wind, geothermal, and solar. Of these, solar is the only one that’s being marketed directly to consumers.
Should you take advantage of one of those enticing offers to install solar panels on your house? The answer is a resounding “maybe.” Let’s take a quick look at some of the pros and cons of solar energy.

The Pros

• It’s everywhere and we aren’t going to run out any time soon. There are very few places on the planet that never see the light of day. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “more energy from the sun strikes the earth’s surface in one hour than all the energy consumed on the planet in a year.” Best of all, since the sun will be around for another few billion years, we can use as much solar energy as we want without stressing about depriving our grandchildren.
• It’s quiet. Most other methods of producing electricity are pretty noisy. Solar power is nearly silent. And because there are very few moving parts in solar panels, they’re pretty cheap to maintain.
• It can save you money. Solar panels may allow you to produce your own electricity more cheaply than your utility company can. And if you generate more than you use, many municipal utilities are required to purchase the surplus from you.
• The technology is getting better all the time. That means more efficiency and lower costs.

The Cons

• It’s still expensive. Prices for solar panels are a fraction of what they were 10 or 15 years ago, but if it weren’t for rebates, tax credits, and other government incentives, they would still be out of reach for a lot of people. Unfortunately, many of those incentives are being discontinued, thereby making solar more expensive. In addition, some of the minerals and other materials used to manufacture the panels are extremely rare, and since future demand would exhaust world supplies, prices will surely increase.
• It’s intermittent and hard to store. On overcast days, you’re not going to get much from your solar system. And the technology to efficiently and economically store any extra power you capture when the sun is up is still in development.
• It takes up a lot of space. You need a lot of real estate to produce power. Putting panels on the roof doesn’t take much usable space, but we need a lot more acreage than we have on roofs.
• There is still some environmental impact. Capturing solar radiation doesn’t produce much pollution, but the process of manufacturing the actual panels does.

The Affordable Care Act may have played a beneficial role in early cancer diagnoses.

A study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology will make the case that the Affordable Care Act, commonly called “Obamacare,” resulted in an increase in early detection of certain cancers.

The study analyzed data from 273,000 patients, primarily focusing on breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and other cancers that can be detected through early screening. Researchers hypothesized that by improving access to healthcare, the Affordable Care Act would allow for improved early detection rates, thereby reducing the cost of cancer treatment and improving survivability for patients.

Those assumptions may be correct. Researchers showed a 1 percent increase in early detection of several cancers, including breast, cervical, lung, and colorectal cancer.

However, they also showed a 1 percent decrease in prostate cancer diagnoses. This may be related to public policy, as in 2012, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended against routinely screening for the cancer.

While 1 percent may not sound like an impressive number, it’s significant given the size of the study. Researchers also showed that the increases occurred in states that expanded access to Medicaid, an insurance program that provides low-cost or free medical care for the poor and disabled.

To the researchers behind the study, the results are hardly surprising.

“People without insurance are more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage, especially for the cancers that can be detected early through screening or symptoms,” said Xuesong Han, the lead author for the study and the strategic director of health policy and healthcare delivery research at the American Cancer Society.

“Obviously the changes aren’t enormous,” said Bruce Johnson, chief clinical research officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, in an interview with Bloomberg. “Because the uptake of screening is relatively slow, this is certainly consistent with the idea that doing the additional screening you could potentially find more stage 1 patients. The earlier the stage, the more likely the person is to be cured.”

“Whatever form our health care takes over the next several years, we advocate for patients to have early access to screening, which can identify cancers at an earlier stage in more curable forms,” Johnson added.

While this research seems credible, long-term research will be necessary to prove the study’s claims.

There are several important caveats; the study is limited in that it only compares data between two years, 2013 and 2014. It was also funded by the American Cancer Society, which has advocated for the Affordable Care Act through its political arm, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

However, the study used credible resources, as its information came from the National Cancer Database, a registry that covers about 70 percent of new cancer diagnoses in the United States. The American Cancer Society hopes that the information will be used to guide policy, as the Republican-led Congress recently launched an effort to replace the Affordable Care Act with the American Health Act of 2017 (sometimes called “Republicare”).

The AHCA may negatively affect Medicaid, and some policy experts have criticized the legislation’s treatment of preexisting conditions, as the proposed law would allow insurers to significantly increase premiums for people with certain diseases.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to be healthy, but what if the steps you’re taking aren’t doing anything? Some of today’s most popular health trends may not be worth it after all.

Forming a new habit can be difficult, especially when it’s one related to your health and wellness. No matter what you do, there’s no denying that junk food is still delicious despite how much we hear about its crappy ingredients, and that exercise still takes time and energy we don’t want to spend no matter how satisfying it can feel. However, there are few things that can make us feel more proud of ourselves than taking consistent steps toward better health—but are we really, though?

Whether a longstanding recommendation or a new trend that’s sweeping offices and gyms across the world, there are many health-related things we encounter every day that, as it turns out, really aren’t worth all the hype.

Eating Healthier

We can hear you screaming at your computer screen now, wondering out loud how we could dare say that putting a piece of kale in your mouth is somehow wrong. We promise we’re not saying that exactly, but hear us out on this one.

It’s a goal of pretty much every human being out there to eat healthier on a daily basis, regardless of what “healthier” happens to mean to them—for some people it’s becoming a vegan, while others just make the switch from drinking five sodas a day to only three.

At some point, however, making the switch to eating healthier can take a dangerous and very much unhealthy turn. An obsessive desire to eat only foods that are healthy is known as orthorexia nervosa, a condition that has been categorized as an eating disorder right alongside things like bulimia and anorexia nervosa.

Those who have it might spend 30 minutes figuring out what to order at a restaurant, only to eat nothing because they couldn’t verify that every ingredient used was organic. Or maybe it’s that they don’t take a handful of almonds because they weren’t first soaked overnight before being served.

Left untreated long enough, the condition can eventually cause nutritional deficiencies that can lead to even more serious health problems. Unfortunately, it’s a disorder that’s only becoming more common and sometimes even validated—some people are of the opinion that starving yourself to be thin is bad, but not eating because you don’t know the name of the cow your burger came from is somehow the picture of health. Do yourself a favor and don’t go overboard.

Using Fitness Trackers

By now, you might think that we’re just trying to take away everything you love—first your healthy diet and now your beloved Fitbit. Again, we’re not saying anything is inherently wrong with trying to keep track of your steps or fitness levels, but there are some unexpected downsides.

First of all, if you’ve been using your tracker to keep tabs on things like your heart rate, you should know that they have a tendency to be inaccurate. One study showed that they can calculate your heart rate incorrectly by up to 20 beats each minute, and that the miscalculation got even worse the harder someone exercised, which is probably when most people who use the feature care about it most.

For someone who absolutely needs to know their heart rate during exercise because of a heart condition, this kind of inaccuracy can also just be plain dangerous.

Not only that but, while studies do show that fitness trackers can help people exercise more, it often does so in a way that’s similar to a parent telling their child they can only have dessert after eating their carrots. Fitness trackers can eventually make exercise feel like even more of a chore than it sometimes does, and they might not even really help you get or stay fit!

One study kept track of 470 teenagers as they followed an exercise regimen and lower-calorie diet. Half of them kept track of their exercise on their own, while the other half used fitness trackers to get the job done for them. Believe it or not, the group that did it by hand actually lost more weight.

Flossing

Be prepared to run into your dentist’s office to gloat, because it’s been determined there is no scientific evidence that flossing is as great as they say it is. Go ahead, let all the times they judged you for your bleeding gums just roll right off your back.

Despite evidence that suggests flossing can help with plaque, cavities, and gum disease, that evidence is also considered to be “very unreliable,” “weak,” and “very low,” as well as being open to, “a moderate to large potential for bias.”

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that most studies that tout the benefits of flossing are often funded by floss-making companies, and they’re not even that thorough—one apparently made its pro-flossing conclusions after its subjects flossed just a single time.

Cutting Out Salt

We’ve all heard before that Americans eat way too much salt—in fact, according to the American Heart Association, the average person consumes around 3.4 grams of it day, when the recommended limit is a mere 1.5 grams.

There’s no doubt that most people could stand to cut some of their daily salt intake out of their diets—after all, too much can increase your risk for things like high blood pressure and heart disease—but cutting out some doesn’t mean cutting out all.

Believe it or not, your body does actually need salt, and research shows that the recommendation from the American Heart Association may actually be too low. One study monitored around 100,000 people and paid special attention to the amount of salt they consumed—the group who ended up being least likely to suffer from heart problems was the group that consumed between three and six grams of sodium each day.

Additionally, another study done in 2011 found that participants with high blood pressure were more likely to have a heart attack or stroke when they consumed over seven grams of salt each day, but also when they consumed less than three grams. When you consider the American Heart Association’s recommendation of 1.5 grams, it seems that it could put people at risk more than it helps.

Working at Standing Desks

It’s one of the latest trends in innovative offices everywhere: a desk that requires you to stand so you’re forced off your butt during the day. It makes sense—you can avoid slouching over, pinching your nerves all day, and just generally feeling like a lazy blob by making sure you’re keeping yourself somewhat active during the work day.

However, standing while at work isn’t enough to negate all of the things you choose to do outside of the office.

Scientists went over health data for around 5,000 people from the past 15 years, and they found that sitting doesn’t play as big of a role in our health as we think. It’s being stationary in general that isn’t good for us, and it doesn’t matter where we do it.

Basically, if you think that standing during works means you’ve essentially worked out during the day and can veg out in front of the TV all night when you get home, you’ve got another think coming. We’re not saying that your standing desk is totally useless, but you still need to get in an actual workout every now and then, too.

Taking Vitamins

Many people start their day off with a multivitamin as way for them to guarantee that they’re getting all the nutrients they need no matter what they eat. However, what most people might not know is that certain vitamins can build up in our bodies and lead to a number of issues.

When it comes to vitamins and nutrients, there are two main categories-water soluble and fat soluble. It’s actually good to consume water-soluble nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin B12 daily because your body will just excrete the extra in your urine.

However, fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin E can actually build up within your body’s fat cells and lead to vitamin toxicity. That does sound more severe than it can be—for most nutrients, an “overdose” won’t cause many noticeable symptoms, but can increase your risk for certain conditions over time.

That said, it’s still recommended that you try to get all of your nutrients from real food, and take supplements only for things you truly need more of.

It is terrifying how many potentially disastrous products you have underneath your kitchen sink right now.

1. Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide

There are some nice cleaning hacks out there that call for a quick scrub with white or apple cider vinegar followed by a spritzing of hydrogen peroxide. Those actually work. They’re great for disinfecting sensitive surfaces like cutting boards and even fruits and vegetables.

Whatever you do, though, don’t try to speed things up by mixing both household products together in a single container. When combined, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide form the very corrosive peracetic acid. It’s not the kind of acid that will eat through multiple decks of your space ship, but it can cause plenty of damage without getting into Alien territory.

That stuff won’t stop at just disinfecting your kitchen counter. It’ll also irritate your skin, eyes, and lungs. Too much can cause permanent lung damage. By all means, harness the disinfectant power of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar in combination. Just always keep them in separate containers.

2. Bleach and Ammonia

This may be the highest-profile of all the cleaning no-nos, but people still manage to kill themselves by mixing these ingredients together. It bears repeating: Never mix ammonia and bleach together, not even if your toilet looks like a Jackson Pollock.

The mixture reacts to produce chloramine gas, which is highly toxic. Also, it’s gas. That’s not something you want to go around inhaling.

3. Vinegar and Bleach

If you take anything away from this article, let it be this: Just don’t mix bleach with anything, except maybe water.

4. Bleach and Rubbing Alcohol

We weren’t kidding. Bleach doesn’t play well with others.
Mix bleach and rubbing alcohol together and you’ll end up with a big pool of chloroform, which can wreak havoc on your nervous system. It will also irritate any part of you it comes in contact with.

5. Multiple Brands of Batteries

When just one of the batteries in your remote control goes dead, it’s tempting to grab the nearest AAA and get back to watching the tube. Don’t give in if you have multiple battery brands lying around the house.

6. Different Brands of Drain Cleaners

Say you’ve got a clogged drain and just a bit of one type of drain cleaner and a full bottle of another. The last thing you want to do is blend them.

A drain cleaner is strong stuff. It has to be to dissolve all the gunk that accumulates in drains and eventually causes a clog.
Carolyn Forte is the director of the Cleaning Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute, and she told the magazine Good Housekeeping that mixing multiple brands of drain cleaners is a terrible mistake.
“I would never recommend mixing two different drain cleaners or even using one right after the other,” she said (their emphasis). “These are powerful formulas, and could even explode if combined.”

7. Milk and Red Bull

Unfortunately, this mixture is most likely to happen in your stomach. We can’t think of a reason to mix Red Bull and milk anywhere else.

If you’ve just enjoyed a nice, frosty glass of milk and you start to get sleepy, don’t reach for the Red Bull to perk up. Coffee is probably a better bet.
That’s because Red Bull instantly curdles milk like it was a witch in a bad fairy tale. The energy drink is pretty acidic, and milk proteins react with acids to form a salt. Then the casein, a particular protein found in mammal milk, clumps together in big gross lumps. (That’s a long way of saying that the milk curdles.)

8. Grapefruit Juice and Medicine

While we’re on the subject of household stuff you shouldn’t mix in the beaker of your belly, let’s add grapefruit juice and medication to the list.
But grapefruit is just a giant bitter orange, right? How could that change the way pharmaceuticals work?

9. Milk and Antibiotics

Grapefruit juice isn’t the only morning beverage that can mess with your medication. It turns out that milk can also interfere with your antibiotic regimen.

Substances in dairy products bind to certain antibiotics, preventing them from being absorbed in your body. That can ruin their effectiveness. Ask your doctor about dairy products whenever you get a prescription for antibiotics.

10. Vinegar and Baking Soda

The internet is full of cleaning hacks that involve the combination of baking soda and vinegar. This mixture won’t cause poison gas or an explosion (unless you seal it in a bottle), but there is a very good reason that you should avoid it: It doesn’t really help clean anything.

Vinegar is acidic, and baking soda is a base. Mix them together and what do you get? Neutralization! The result of this chemical reaction is mostly just water, which is easier to get out of the tap.
Do yourself a favor and save your vinegar/baking soda for making model volcanoes erupt at the elementary school science fair.

Generally, we’re not afraid of germs.

However, when we’re out in public, we can’t help but notice people with disgusting habits—habits that could easily make them (and other people!) sick, given the right set of circumstances.

Habits are hard to break, but some clearly warrant making the effort to quit. We’re talking about stuff like..

1. Trimming Your Nails

You’re waiting for your train stop, and you’ve got a few spare seconds. You pull out some clippers and try to discreetly trim your fingernails. What’s the harm?

Well, our fingernails are pretty disgusting. The nail’s basically holding in hordes of germs. One 1988 study described the space right under the fingernails as an “important site” for harboring bacteria, so if you’re cutting far enough, you might actually be releasing infectious agents in the world.

Oh, and your clippings are going everywhere. Nobody wants to get hit by flying bits of disease-ridden keratin.

While we’re at it, don’t bite your nails, either. That’s basically injecting your mouth with a big dose of bacteria.

2. Painting Your Nails

Okay, well, you won’t trim your nails; you’ll just paint them.

Obviously, that’s more obnoxious to the people around you. Nail polish fumes probably aren’t great for the human body; the New York Times reports that “of the 20 common nail product ingredients listed as causing health problems in the appendix of a safety brochure put out by the Environmental Protection Agency, 17 are hazardous to the respiratory tract, according to the agency.”

The same report notes that overexposure can cause “burning throat or lungs,” along with “labored breathing.” Granted, that’s mainly an issue for health care workers, but even limited exposure to nail polish fumes can be dangerous for people with respiratory conditions.

Some of the chemicals in nail polish can also leach into your body, according to HuffPost, so that’s another reason to avoid certain polishes. A 2015 study found that one of the chemicals commonly found in nail polishes can affect hormones in zebra fish—so if you’re a zebra fish, you definitely want to avoid nail polish.

3. Eating While You’re at Your Desk

Here’s the main issue with eating at your desk: You’ll probably touch your keyboard in between bites. Your keyboard is pretty disgusting.

One study found that computer keyboards contained more bacteria than an average toilet seat. Although we’re not sure how the researchers chose an “average” toilet seat, the results were pretty alarming. Toilets contained about 5,400 bacteria per swab, whereas keyboards contained around 7,500 per swab.

And some of the bacteria on the keyboards were of species commonly found in the human digestive tract, including E. coli. Go ahead and ponder that for a minute before taking the next bite of your sandwich.

Of course, you can clean your keyboard by lightly swabbing it with isopropyl alcohol, and you can use compressed air to clean between the keys. Let’s be honest, though, you’re not going to do any of that. Instead, don’t eat in front of your computer—unless you’re pairing your meal with a nice course of antibiotics.

4. Making, Ahem, “Adjustments”

You think that nobody’s watching, so you quickly adjust your underwear. Hey, it needed to be done.

That’s fine, provided that you didn’t make a big deal of it—but make sure you wash your hands. Your underwear are relatively filthy, since they’re in frequent contact with sweatier parts of your body, and that sweat tends to feed bacteria on your epidermis. Hey, science can be disgusting sometimes.

Of course, your outerwear might also harbor bacteria. One study found that typical laundry temperatures aren’t sufficient to kill E. coli, staphylococcus, and other potentially dangerous bacteria.

“If you wash a load of just underwear, there will be about 100 million E. coli in the wash water, and they can be transmitted to the next load of laundry,” said Charles Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona.

Detergents don’t really help, either, but bleach (or very hot water) can help to sanitize your laundry.

5. Brushing Your Hair

Your hair can be home to staph bacteria, although the minute amounts on a typical strand of hair won’t be enough to pose a serious health risk. The more important reason to avoid brushing your hair in public: It’s rude. You’ll end up showering nearby strangers with loose hair and dandruff, and even if you think that your hair is gorgeous, it’s not so alluring to strangers who are sitting behind you on the subway.

Guys, you’re guilty of this, too; fiddling with your beard is somewhat gross, as beards are covered in bacteria. One study from a local news station showed that some beards contain more bacteria than the average toilet, although again, we’re confused as to where this “average” toilet concept came from. In any case, fiddling with your beard is bad form, especially if you’re in a conversation with someone.

But even though loose hair can be disgusting, it’s worth noting that many of us eat a bit every day. Some food manufacturers boil hair in hydrochloric acid in order to extract L-cysteine, a common food additive used in bread-making.

6. Putting Your Purse or Bag on the Dinner Table

You arrive for a lunch date and put your purse on the table. That’s a major faux pas, since your purse (or handbag) probably rested on the ground several times on the way to the restaurant.

In a study helpfully titled “A study to investigate the importance of purses as fomites,” Susheela D. Biranjia-Hurdoyal and colleagues noted that “Purses hardly get washed and are discarded, mostly, when they are no longer usable.” As the title suggests, the study aimed to determine whether bags act as fomites—carriers of infectious organisms.

Go ahead and guess the results.

“Purses from both men and women are potential vectors for transmission of diseases across the community,” the study writes. “The use of synthetic purses should be discouraged, as they contribute to increased bacterial colonization.”

The study noted that 95.2 percent of purses were “contaminated.” (Shudder.) By the way, the study also notes that men’s purses seem to have higher rates of bacterial growth than women’s purses, so make of that what you will.

7. Sneezing Into Your Hands.

This is an especially common and disgusting habit, and the implications are pretty obvious.

You probably know that your body sneezes to get rid of germs. A typical sneeze travels at 100 miles per hour—fast enough to spread germs through a small space in a fraction of a second. Your sneezes contain relatively high viral and bacterial loads, so they’re potentially dangerous if you’ve been sick. If you’re going to sneeze, you’ve got to cover your mouth with something, or you’ll risk infecting the people around you.

But whatever you do, don’t use your hands. Public health officials recommend against this practice—you’re supposed to sneeze into your arm—but many adults don’t seem to know that.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius even called out a reporter for sneezing the wrong way in 2009, offering the reporter an Elmo video that taught the proper method. Ouch.

8. Using Hand Sanitizer

Okay, we’ve basically concluded that everything in your life is covered with a fine layer of germs. Better stock up on the hand sanitizer, right?

Nope. Germs are everywhere, which is exactly why you shouldn’t freak out about them. Although there’s some chance that you’ll get E. coli from your keyboard or a staph infection from your beard hair, either scenario is unlikely.

And hand sanitizer certainly isn’t the answer. One recent study from the University of Missouri showed that hand sanitizers may increase absorption of bisphenol A (BPA), a harmful chemical. Several studies have also shown that hand sanitizers can be too effective, killing off the majority of bacteria but leaving super-strong germs free to propagate.

Ultimately, you should avoid the behaviors on this list to be polite to the people around you, but you shouldn’t really worry about the latest viral story (pun intended) about how “everyday objects are as dirty as toilets.” Germs are everywhere—get used to them.

The average person spends 8.2 minutes in the shower.

1. Think of something creative.

The shower is a pretty relaxing place, and when your brain relaxes, you enjoy a nice dopamine rush. That’s extraordinarily helpful if you’re looking for creative inspiration, according to neuroscientist Alice Flaherty.

People vary in terms of their level of creative drive according to the activity of the dopamine pathways of the limbic system,” she said, and if you don’t understand that, don’t worry. Basically, warm showers can induce a dopamine rush, which temporarily improves creativity and allows your mind to work its magic.

2. Study something.

Obviously you’ll need to have some sort of audio playing in order to learn anything in the shower, but you might actually learn more effectively. One study showed that white noise slightly improved memory by enhancing connectivity between parts of the brain that modulate dopamine and attention.

3. Plan out the rest of your day.

For the same reasons that you can study effectively during your morning shower, you can plan pretty effectively. You might as well make a few goals while your critical thinking skills are in full swing, and the noise from the shower should help to block out other distractions in your house. Try making a list of the day’s most important tasks (or the next day’s tasks, if you shower at night).

4. Meditate.

Maybe you’re not into thinking things through in the shower; maybe you’d rather let your mind rest for a few minutes. That’s perfectly fine.

5. Sing.

Singing can fight depression and stress, probably by improving dopamine levels, and the effect might be accented by singing in the shower, since you’re already benefiting from a dopamine release if you’re feeling relaxed. Some research even suggests that singing can extend your life by strengthening your lungs and heart, although that research was completed by a vocal coach, so we’d take it with a grain of salt.

6. Clean.

Sure, it’s not as glamorous as some of the other items on this list, but eventually you have to clean the shower. Why not take care of it while you’re already cleaning yourself? Obviously you don’t need to clean the shower every time you climb in, but this is a good habit to get in if you have trouble finding the time to tidy up your bathroom.
We’d recommend keeping a clean brush in the shower specifically for this purpose. The brush can break up most soap scum and other grime without an added cleaning liquid, but if you feel like using a liquid, vinegar is a great option.

7. Turn down the temperature.

If you can stand freezing water, you can reap some surprising health benefits. One group of researchers found that cold showers dramatically improve the metabolic rate of certain types of fat (probably because your body thinks you’re trapped somewhere in the Arctic Circle).

8. Get out as soon as possible.

Let’s say that nothing else on this list caught your interest. That’s fine; shorter showers could save the planet.