The study at the retreat center in Colorado had yielded promising results. Those participants had improved, indicating that mindfulness could boost attention under ideal circumstances. But what about less-than-ideal circumstances? What about less than a full month of intensive, continuous meditation in a placid, remote place? Sounds great to be in an idyllic mountain retreat—but most of us need help with our attention while we’re in the midst of our day-to-day lives, under pressure, juggling a million things. And further, meditating 12 hours a day is hardly realistic for the vast majority of people. Could mindfulness help the rest of us? 

We’d been mulling over these questions at the lab when I got a phone call from a security studies professor from another university. A veteran who had turned to mindfulness after experiencing firsthand the difficulties associated with deployment, she was interested in offering it to other military service members. Since she didn’t have a background in neuroscience or experimental research, she was looking for a research collaborator. Richie Davidson, who I had stayed in touch with since his lecture at Penn, suggested she try me. 

I was intrigued and got to work poring over existing research on attention and military deployment. I was immediately engrossed and, frankly, quite concerned. The military represented a population that had to deal with extremely high-demand situations all the time, and it clearly took a toll. During pre-deployment, service members trained intensively, simulating scenarios in which lives were at stake all day, every day. Then they deployed into scenarios where lives were actually at stake.

Those potent forces we’ve been discussing that degrade attention are a constant way of life for military service members. Add to that other factors that degrade attention, like sleep disturbances, uncertainty, extreme temperatures, and mortality salience (thinking about your own death). And to punch things up even further, this was in the post-9/11 era of the military surge in Iraq. The year was 2007 and, as a nation, the United States had been at war abroad for six years. Units were going out on back-to-back deployments. Rates of suicide and PTSD among service members were climbing. Not only was high stress causing warriors to spiral into psychological disorders, but many were suffering from moral injury, struggling with regret, remorse, and guilt when their own reactivity led to behavior that violated their ethical code. 

As a nurse who’s passionate about working out and busy taking care of her two dogs, Leo and Arbor, nutrition is super important to Becky LaChance. But just like feeding herself the right food helps her life run more smoothly, Becky knows that her two pups also greatly benefit from wholesome, minimally processed food. That’s why she turned to Instinct Raw to better support the unique health needs of Leo and Arbor. Between Leo’s weight management and Arbor’s sensitive belly, she’s found that a raw food diet is the most supportive option. And after a regular raw diet, not only are her pups more excited come mealtime, but they have more healthful energy throughout the day. “Leo and Arbor are everything to me,” Becky says. “I call them my best friends.” And it’s only the best food for our best friends.

Researchers sought to observe the impacts of potassium on blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease. In the study, they specifically compared the effects of increasing dietary potassium through a whole food—in this case, potatoes—to supplementing with the nutrient.

“While significant emphasis is often placed on reducing dietary sodium intakes to better control for blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk, that’s only half of the story,” shared Connie Weaver, Ph.D., the primary investigator. “Potassium plays just as an important role, and perhaps the ratio of potassium to sodium is most important in the context of the entire food matrix.”

In a group of 30 men and women, who were either prehypertensive or hypertensive, researchers found that including a serving of baked or broiled potato (with no additional fat) in an otherwise typical American diet was effective for reducing sodium retention. It also led to a more significant improvement in systolic blood pressure than a control diet. It’s important to note that using baked French fries as the potato source did not have the same positive impact—but researchers noted it did not have an adverse impact, either.

“It’s important to establish clinical trials that follow observational research to establish a causal link between diet and health,” notes Weaver. “For example, in this clinical study baked French fries had a null effect on blood pressure, which counters observational findings, at least in the short term, and helps to prioritize the importance of focusing on a total diet approach for maintaining health versus one that overemphasizes avoidance of any single food or food group.”

“Through our carefully controlled balance study, we could determine the mechanism by which potatoes reduced blood pressure,” she continues, “Overall, we concluded that boiled or baked potatoes can help reduce systolic blood pressure—and baked French fries have no adverse effects on blood pressure and can be included as part of an overall healthy diet.”

Lastly, Engle says oral sex can be a good option if one partner isn’t as aroused as the other, but they’re still willing to go down on you. Obviously, don’t beg them if they’re not in the mood, but at least sometimes, she says, they might be happy to please you with no expectation of receiving themselves. “This won’t work for everyone, as some people who aren’t in the mood for sex like straight up are not in the mood for sex,” she adds, “but it can work for others.”

At the end of the day, satisfying sex will look different for everyone, and couples with particularly high sex drives might need to do a bit of experimenting to figure out what really gets the job done for them. You’ll never know if you never try, so be open to new things, enjoy the intimacy, and just have fun with it.