When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Coffee is a morning constant for many, as reliable as the sunrise or the tides. However, when it’s removed from the equation entirely, you don’t just suffer due to routine alteration. You suffer chemically. According to Health, the side effects can be pretty noticeable and jarring. Some of the more common symptoms of caffeine withdrawal stem from the inherent perks of your Central Perk Venti Redeye which is a type of coffee in the menu of famous coffee company Starbucks. You’ll feel lethargic, sluggish, less cognitively aware, and physically delayed because caffeine plays a key role in kick starting your energy metabolism for the day and upping your motor function. But the symptoms extend beyond that. Headaches and blood pressures dips are one of the most common and easily measured changes that go along with caffeine withdrawal. But the downsides don’t subside there

Some exercises are tried-and-true winners, both from a functional standpoint—training movement patterns you use all the time—as well as in terms of muscle activation, as determined in studies like those done by the American Council on Exercise. Still, “fitness isn’t quite so black and white,” says Jessica Matthews, M.S., exercise science professor at Miramar College in San Diego, CA, and senior advisor for health and fitness education for ACE. “You can’t really say, ‘This exercise is horrible, never do it,’ or ‘This is the best to do ever.'” That said, when it comes to these six moves there are some good, science-backed reasons to reconsider them, or swap them out for something else. 1. The upright row: When it comes to evaluating any exercise, you first have to ask, “What do you expect to gain from this?” With the upright row, the intention is to train the shoulder muscles. Thing is, when ACE looked at popular moves to see which elicited the most muscle activation for t

What do being moody, getting cramps, and feeling exhausted all have in common? You guessed it: your period. But these standard symptoms aren’t the only things that can accompany your cycle. After all, "every woman is different,” says Christine Greves, MD, ob-gyn at the center for obstetrics and gynecology at Orlando Health in Florida. To learn more about less common period problems, we sent out a survey and asked real women to reveal some of the weirder symptoms they deal with every month. These are the four responses that surprised us the most—and made us curious as to why they happen and how common they are. Next time your teeth ache during your period, know you're not alone. Insatiable hunger "Before I begin menstruating, I get ravenously hungry," one survey respondent wrote. "I feel like a bottomless pit." Turns out a spike in your appetite might be a secondary symptom of PMS. You know how hormonal changes tied to your cycle can make you crave carbs an

The woman behind me at the checkout said, "Like bananas much?" I smiled as I unloaded the three bunches from my cart. "My family is like a barrel of monkeys!" That was a lie. Really, I was the banana-loving monkey. I never miss my one banana a day - OK, sometimes two. I can't resist when they are just the right amount of speckly sweetness (my fellow banana-lovers know what I'm talking about!). My slight obsession with this sweet yellow fruit didn't do me any favors in the bathroom department. In case you haven't heard, they can cause constipation. So for one week, I decided to swap my once-a-day banana for a big, bright red, juicy apple. An apple a day is supposed to keep the doctor away, but, really, what I hoped for was that it would keep me regular. I mixed it up between Fuji and Honeycrisp apples. I was shocked. I noticed a difference in the first day! Without going into too much detail, I had a wonderful trip to the loo. I didn't feel b

Sleep, a very fundamental process to our lives, there's a lot that we don't get right about it. Till few days back, we didn't have good answers to the question of "why" we sleep and it’s true importance, as UC Berkeley neuroscience and psychology professor Matthew Walker explains in his recent book, "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams." We're better at answering that question now. We know that sleep restores the immune system, balances hormone levels, lowers blood pressure, cleanses toxins from the brain, and much more than all this . "We no longer have to ask what sleep is good for," wrote Walker. "Instead, we are now forced to wonder whether there are any biological functions that do not benefit by a good night's sleep. So far, the results of thousands of studies insist that no, there aren't." But while we know far more about sleep now than we used to, there are a huge number of myths about sleep tha