If you’ve ever started an exercise with good faith and enthusiasm, only to be met with disappointment as the scale goes past the weight you started with, you may have had a question: Why does exercise make me gain weight? 【小题1】 Any post-workout weight gain is most likely the combination of a few factors.

While exercise plays a role in weight control, the other side of the coin is food intake. 【小题2】 At this time it’s worthwhile to review the quantity and quality of the food you’re eating. Their post-exercise weight gain could be explained by what and how much you’re eating.

【小题3】 If you’re not used to a good workout and then exercise a lot, you could end up making your muscle fibers suffer microtears (微撕裂). It’s the reason why your muscles ache the next day, but over time it leads to muscle growth. However, these microtears can cause swelling (肿胀). 【小题4】 In effect, this increased water can be another explanation for after-exercise weight gain.

The other potential explanation comes down to the amount of blood. When you do aerobic exercise, there may be an increase in blood volume, which is essentially an increase in aerobic capacity. Aerobic capacity is a measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can consume while exercising. Muscles need oxygen supplied by blood. 【小题5】

What all of this means is that people who have started to work out properly shouldn’t be discouraged from continuing, even if they gain a little weight.

Kids spend a lot of time looking at screens, and some parents worry, but a new study argues against the fears parents may feel.

“The danger is that they’re hearing a message that social media, digital technology use is causing very serious and harmful problems like depression（抑郁症) and suicide-related(与自杀有关的) behaviors. And the idea is that if you shut off social media, which lots of kids use to connect with each other, their friends, find out information about health, you could be making a situation worse. Parents are really being sent a message that is not supported by anything scientifically.” Candice Odgers, professor of psychological science at the University of California, said.

Odgers and her colleagues looked at the screen-related behavior of 400 public-school students in North Carolina aged 10 to 14. This group was picked as a representative sample of race and socioeconomic status for the entire U.S. The researchers found that the kids spent between almost five hours to seven hours per day on their devices, with the older kids online the most. That’s a lot of hours, but:

“Overall, what we find is no connection between the amount of time that young people spend online using digital technologies and mental health symptoms like depression and anxiety. When we do find associations, they were actually quite surprising to us. We found that young people who sent more text messages actually reported better mental health.

Now, again, this was a small association, but it reflects what other people have found: that people who are very connected offline and who use technology in the positive ways to stay connected often, are more connected online as well and experiencing better mental health.”

So why the fears about screen time? Odgers argues that the methodologies for older studies may have led to false conclusions.

“One of the issues with the research that’s been done to date has been that youths are, you know, in school.... They have a survey put in front of them, and they’re asked to recall(想), over the past six months, ‘How often are you online?’and ‘Have you ever felt depressed?’And the correlation (相互关系) between those two things has been used to spread a lot of fear around this connection between social media use and things like depression—99.5 percent of the reasons that kids differ in their depression are due to something other than the time they spend online.”

Analysis of people who eat mushrooms suggests they have a lower risk of developing depression. The association is still a puzzle, and for now, the authors say the data should be interpreted with caution.

The findings are still not clear between various types of mushrooms, but they are in line with several small clinical trials on lion’s mane mushrooms. The trials found eating certain types of fungi(真菌) can help reduce depression and anxiety. “The study adds to the growing list of possible health benefits of eating mushrooms,” says public health scientist Joshua Muscat from the Pennsylvania State University.

What it is specifically about some mushrooms that makes them good for our health is still unknown. White button mushrooms are the most commonly eaten fungi in the US and are full of potassium(钾), which is thought to help lower anxiety. Other eatable mushrooms like lion’s mane are known to contain certain factors linked to brain health, which are thought to help alleviate symptoms of depression.

The people most likely to eat mushrooms were college-educated, non-Hispanic white women, according to the authors. But the link to depression was only clear when they compared mushroom eaters to non-eaters. Within the group of mushroom eaters, those who ate them relatively a lot didn’t seem to show any additional benefits. In a further analysis of the data, the authors compared those who ate one serving of mushrooms per day with those who ate one serving of red or processed meat. Interestingly, the substitution was not associated with lower depression.

Clearly, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the relationship between mushrooms and mental health. But given how often the relationship keeps popping up in studies, it’s worth exploring more. “These findings highlight the potential clinical and public health importance of mushroom consumption as a means of reducing depression and preventing diseases,” the authors conclude.