La Rosa Knows

Admittedly, Valentine’s Day is a bit of a weird holiday filled with too much pressure and not enough drinking. It is, however, an excuse to send hearts to people and boxes full of chocolate. (And I am all for anything that includes me getting fatter.)

That being said, I’d like to wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to my boyfriend, who some of you may know as “E”. Hopefully he and I will both get fatter tonight! Dream big!

I’ve been doing a lot of scientific research to sort out exactly how I feel about him, and came up with the following results (again, this is extremely factual):

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Here’s hoping we all get fat! xoxo

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• valentine's day
• my life
• boyfriend
• love
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• pie chart

In what might possibly justify a lot of how I live my life…

A new study found that looking at photos of cute baby animals can help boost your productivity. The reason?

One conclusion is that the affective response from seeing something cute heightens our focus. That feeling of “awwwww” is a kind of attention stimulus.

Really? So, kittens yawning is actually good for me? Well, then, don’t mind if I do!

Feel more productive now?

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• kitty
• cat
• cute overload
• cute animal
• science
• study
• productivity

As someone with a shameless addiction to coffee, nothing pleases me more than when a new study comes out singing the praises of my drug du jour.

NPR reported on the study and its findings, stating:

Freedman and his colleagues undertook the biggest study yet to look at the relationship between coffee and health. They analyzed data collected from more than 400,000 Americans ages 50 to 71 participating in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.

“We found that the coffee drinkers, they had a modestly lower risk of death than the non-drinkers,” he tells The Salt.

Here’s what he means by “modestly:” Those who drank at least two or three cups a day were about 10 percent or 15 percent less likely to die for any reason during the 13 years of the study. But you don’t necessarily need to be a heavy coffee drinker.

I bolded the parts that spoke to me or, rather, that validated my 3-4 cup a day habit.

Do you see, my mouses? Do you see how now I will live forever?!

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• coffee
• science
• NPR
• health

I decided to try Tom’s natural deodorant because someone told me that real deodorant has aluminum and that gives you breast cancer. I dunno, it sounded scary and I am easily swayed by people who sound like they know it all.

However, they didn’t warn me that this au naturale approach doesn’t really work at helping you smell like a lady daisy—which is my preferred smell. So, now I reek of lavender and day old socks (TMI?!?).

When I looked into this for myself the truth is mixed. Yes, normal deodorant has parabens and parabens have been found in women with breast cancer. However, there’s no research that supports that parabens cause the development of breast cancer and, furthermore, there’s no evidence that deodorants cause any kind of cancer.

The other shitty thing is that parabens aren’t just found in deodorant, they’re in our lotions, sunscreens and most makeups. So, if you’re cutting out deodorant that’s no guarantee that you won’t get your paraben fix from any number of the cosmetics you use (and I do use a number, by the by).

I would still like to use natural deodorant because, in my mind, my armpits are neighbors to my breasts and if I can do one healthy thing for myself it might as well be this.

My question is this: has anyone found a natural deodorant they actually like or have any advice on how the eff to handle this?

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• deodorant
• Tom's
• breast cancer
• cancer
• science
• beauty