Little moves, big results

Grab your toes and pull
Wash the linens
Fly right
Do 25 jumping jacks
Silence your phone at night
Get your shots
Get a yearly flu vaccine? Great. Now add a TDaP booster. TDaP stands for tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis—and that last disease, also known as whooping cough, is a particularly dangerous respiratory illness. In fact, cases of pertussis in the U.S. have risen about 137% since 2000.
“For most adults, that means a nasty cough; in children, it can be worse,” says Ana Pantoja, MD, staff physician for AltaMed in Boyle Heights, California. “So if you have kids or are around kids, it’s essential to get vaccinated.” Even if you got the shot as a child, you still need one booster as a grown-up. (You’ll also need a tetanus booster every 10 years.)
Drop your underwear
Going commando once in a while (say, overnight) couldn’t hurt, especially if you’re prone to UTIs. “Wearing no undergarments—or just cotton ones—allows the external genitals to dry and reduces bacteria growth that could otherwise make its way into your urethra and cause a bladder infection,” says Sherry Thomas, MD, an OB-GYN and surgeon at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, California.
Keep medical info handy
Crank down the volume
Nuke the dish sponge
Don’t lose sleep
Check yourself out
Munch on carrots
Wear an activity tracker
Take a ticker test
Fight daylight savings blahs
When we “spring forward” this month, the lost hour can have a bigger effect on our bodies than we might think: “You might feel jetlagged, and it can take two to five days to adjust,” says Meir Kryger, MD, professor of medicine at Yale University.
His fix: “Get some sunlight as soon as possible”—by raising window shades or making a coffee run—”to help re-synchronize your body clock. Luckily, the switch-over happens on a Sunday morning, so many of us don’t have to go to work that first day!”