A major heat wave is currently affecting the central and eastern United States, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The US National Weather Service predicts a hotter-than-usual summer nationwide.

Unfortunately, extreme heat significantly increases the risk of dangerous heat illnesses, especially for older adults. Research shows that people over 60 account for most heat-related deaths in the U.S. The World Health Organization reports an 85% rise in heat-related deaths among people older than 65 between 2000 and 2021.

This isn't a coincidence; the aging process and extreme heat simply don't mix well, experts say. Here’s why, and what older people can do to stay safe as temperatures soar.

Why Heat Is More Risky As You Get Older

Even if you're very healthy, getting older makes you more likely to get sick from the heat. This includes conditions like heat exhaustion, where your body struggles to cool down, or heat stroke, which can be life-threatening.

As we age, our bodies naturally lose some of their ability to cool off. Experts explain that older people tend to hold onto more heat than younger people and have to work harder to keep their body temperature steady. Here are three main reasons for this change:

Blood doesn't move as well

When it's hot, your body tries to cool down by sending more blood to your skin and making blood vessels wider to help you sweat. According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of Physiology as you get older, changes in your heart and blood vessels make it harder for your body to move blood efficiently. This makes it tougher to control your temperature.

You sweat less

MedlinePlus explains that as you age, your body also sweats less, which is how it naturally cools down. This happens because your skin gets thinner, and the tiny tubes that carry sweat move closer to the surface. Plus, you lose a protein called collagen, which can squeeze these tubes, making it harder for sweat to get out.

Easier to get dehydrated

The feeling of being thirsty, and the urge to drink, gets weaker over time. Also, your kidneys become less good at keeping your fluids balanced. Studies show that kidney function can start to drop around age 40, meaning older adults are more likely to get dehydrated. On top of that, older people often take medicines, like water pills or sedatives, that can cause dehydration or make it harder to sweat.

Signs to Watch For

Heat illness often starts with a headache. Some people might also experience:

• Dry mouth
• Dizziness
• Feeling very tired
• Confusion
• Heart fluttering

Tips To Avoid Overheating As Older Adults

If you must go out on hot days, make sure you protect yourself from heat and avoid heat illness. Here are some tips according to the National Institute of Aging,

Stay in air-conditioned places

Older adults should try to stay in air-conditioned buildings as much as possible. Closing your blinds or curtains during the day can also stop your house from getting too hot.

Find cooling shelters

If you don't have AC, call your local health department to find nearby cooling centers. Fans can help, but sometimes they're not enough to beat the heat at home.

Drink plenty of fluids

Drink more water than usual to help keep your body cool and hydrated. Drinks with electrolytes, like sports drinks and vegetable or fruit juices, can replace minerals you lose when you sweat. Remember, if you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated.

Dress lightly and rest

Wear loose, light, and light-colored clothes. Take cool showers or baths if you feel warm. Try not to do anything too strenuous, and get lots of rest until the heat passes.

At least once in our lives, most of us have dreamed of having a perfect memory. A brain that would remember crucial details at the nick of time, whether it is during your exam or an interview. But this is not just a dream, it is just another day for this young girl, who has a ‘Super Brain’.

Scientifically speaking, she has a very rare condition that makes her remember every detail of her life, like a record. In a 2024 interview by Official W5, Emily Nash, who was 18-year-old at the time of filming, from Ottawa, described her incredible ability to remember everything.

A Person Who Remembers Everything

The video explained how she is one of the few people in the world confirmed to have Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) She can remember the exact date and details of public events, from the death of Queen Elizabeth to celebrity news and movie release dates. Her memory is so precise that she can tell you what she was doing on a specific date, down to what she had for lunch and what was playing on the radio.

Her family even gave her the nickname "Wikipedia" because she was their go-to source for random facts and dates. Emily describes her memory as a "calendar" where each day is like a little movie she can rewind and fast-forward through.

How Is HSAM Different From Having Good Memory?

According to a 2024 study by Neuropsychology Review, HSAM is a very rare and special ability where a person can remember almost every single day of their life in incredible detail. If you give them a specific date, like "January 15, 2003," they can instantly recall what they were doing, what the weather was like, and even what they were wearing. Unlike memory athletes who use tricks to memorize things, people with HSAM do this automatically and without any effort. It feels like a movie playing in their mind. The review confirmed that HSAM is a truly unique type of memory.

It's Fast and Accurate

People with HSAM can recall memories quickly, with amazing detail, and the memories are almost always perfectly accurate.

It Doesn't Fade with Age

A person with HSAM who was studied at ages 75 and 80 still had an incredible memory, showing that this ability seems to resist the normal memory loss that comes with getting older.

It's Only for Personal Memories

The study found that people with HSAM are not better at remembering just anything. They are not smarter, and their memory for general facts, names, or things they learned in a textbook is normal—only their memory for their own life is special.

How Do People With HSAM Remember Everything?

The study explained what goes on inside the brains of people with HSAM.

Brain Activity

When people with HSAM recall a memory, their brain activity goes into overdrive. Areas that are normally used for memory light up much more intensely. This suggests that their memories are more vivid and that the brain's "memory network" is working at a much higher level.

Brain Structure

Interestingly, the physical structure of their brains doesn't appear to be bigger or different in size. Instead, the main difference is in the way certain brain regions are connected, particularly the hippocampus, which is a key part of the brain for memory. This suggests that the special memory isn't because of a bigger brain but because the brain's connections are wired differently.

How Does Researching HSAM Help Brain Health?

Understanding HSAM could be incredibly important for the future. By figuring out how these rare individuals remember so well, scientists might be able to develop new strategies to help people with memory problems, such as those caused by diseases like Alzheimer's. It could also help improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in legal cases. Ultimately, this research gives us a unique window into how memory works and how it might be strengthened.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is not something many people understand. We all develop this skill as we age and meet more people, however, the learning curve may be different for all of us. But why do we even need to be emotionally intelligent? And how is it a skill? This is not just a social phenomenon, but a complex inter-emotional communication that one needs to learn.

In simpler terms, you as a person need to have the ability to recognize your own feelings, manage them as well as understand other people. The best example of it would be when a young child who never had to share suddenly gets a sibling.

Now everything that belonged solely to the child gets divided, like the parent’s love and affection. In turn, the child acts out in different ways, like throwing tantrums, crying and pouting so that the attention is on them again. It is now the parents’ turn to teach children what they’re feeling and how to manage these feelings.

However, as you grow up, the situations are much more complicated, so are your feelings and you will still encounter people you may not understand or some situations. So how do emotionally intelligent people go about handling things like this. The first answer would be to explain yourself, expressing your feelings and showing your intent. But you are going about this the wrong way.

Tessa West, social psychologist and professor at New York University, speaking to CNBC News says even when you run into a difficult situation like a conflict with a spouse, leaving your feeling bare won’t help the situation as much. So, what do you do? She explains in 3 points what emotionally intelligent people do in difficult situations.

Smart Ways To Handle Conflict

Most people are taught that when you're in a conflict, the first thing you should do is tell the other person how you feel. But a social psychologist says this isn't always the smartest move. True emotional intelligence is not just about expressing feelings but also knowing when to do it. Sometimes, it's better to talk about what happened first.

We Don’t Always See the Same Thing

It’s easy to assume that everyone sees a situation the same way you do. You might feel disrespected because a coworker cut you off in a meeting. But that coworker might have done it because the meeting was almost over, and they had to make a decision.

Instead of starting with your feelings, a better approach is to talk about the specific event. You could say, "Here's what I remember happening. What's your side of the story?" This shows that you're open to hearing their perspective and aren't assuming you're right.

Our Guesses About "Why" Are Often Wrong

It's natural to assume you know why someone did something. But these assumptions are often wrong and can be hurtful. People tend to think the worst if they don't trust the other person.

A better way is to ask for their reasons. You could say, "I made some guesses about why you did that, but I'd love to hear your side." Admitting your assumption helps calm things down and makes room for a real conversation. The reason for their action might be something you never even thought of.

Talk About Feelings Later

Once you've cleared up what happened and why, your feelings might change. With a better understanding, you might not be as upset as you were before.

This is the right time to talk about how you feel. By waiting, you can have a more productive conversation. This approach helps build stronger relationships because it’s based on understanding each other, not just on emotions.

Music has a way to make you feel different kinds of emotions. Whether it is calm, excited or even sad. We all have playlists for different moments, whether it's for a workout, a commute, or a quiet night at home. Music isn't just background noise; it's a tool we use to match or change our mood, and it can even influence how we feel physically. Having playlists according to our routine is normal as well as having playlists dedicated to occasions like our birthdays and anniversaries. However, did you know, you could also have an anti-motion sickness.

A new study suggests that listening to certain kinds of music can help you feel better when you get motion sickness. Specifically, joyful and soft music were found to be most effective at relieving symptoms and making the travel experience more pleasant. Scientists found that these types of tunes help calm the brain and reduce the physical symptoms of feeling sick. This discovery offers a simple and easy-to-use solution for people who suffer from motion sickness, whether on a car ride, a boat, or even in a flight simulator.

What Is Motion Sickness?

Motion sickness happens when there's a disconnect between what your eyes see and what your inner ear feels. For example, in a car, your eyes see the inside of the vehicle, which appears still, but your inner ear feels the motion of the turns and bumps. This mismatch confuses your brain and can cause you to feel nauseous, dizzy, and just plain sick. This is becoming a bigger issue with the rise of self-driving cars, where passengers aren't always focused on the road ahead and are more likely to experience this visual-vestibular conflict.

What Kind Of Music Helps With Motion Sickness?

To figure out how music affects motion sickness, scientists created a driving simulator. This allowed them to safely make people feel motion sickness by creating the same visual and balance disconnect that happens in a real car. They then had the participants listen to different types of music—joyful, sad, stirring, and soft—and measured their brain activity using a special cap that reads brain signals (EEG). They also asked the participants how they felt. The study’s setup was designed to find a clear link between brain activity and the type of music listened to.

The study found a strong link between brain activity and motion sickness. By analyzing brain signals, they were able to accurately predict when someone was feeling sick. When they looked at the effect of music, they found:

• Soft and joyful music were the most effective. People reported feeling significantly better—up to 57% better with soft music and 56% better with joyful music.
• Sad music actually seemed to make things worse, performing even less effectively than a group that just rested with no music.
• Stirring music had mixed results; it helped according to brain data but not in what people said they felt.

The study concludes that playing the right kind of music could be a simple, non-drug solution for motion sickness. However, the researchers noted that more studies are needed with a larger and more diverse group of people to confirm these findings in real-life situations.