Healthbeat by Deirdre Cox Baker

Stress and anxiety are a part of adult’s daily life, but there are times when levels of each emotional component become real health challenges.

It’s well known that exercise is one way to increase coping mechanisms, but researchers recently wondered whether the type of exercise mattered or not. Happily, gardening is one accepted form of physical work-out. Less happily, perhaps, housework is also on the list.

As an expert on the subject of housework, and a very interested participant in gardening, I took note of the study’s findings with some satisfaction. Those whose physical activity consisted only of housework or gardening for 20 minutes at a time, 1-3 times a week, reduced their likelihood of being stressed or anxious by 24 percent.

The study analyzed data on 19,842 people over age 16, and 3,200 of them had high levels of psychological stress or anxiety. Those who reported daily exercise of any sort were 41 percent less likely to be highly stressed or anxious than those who did not.

The study was in the April 10 edition of Online First issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine. For more details about stress, see apahelpcenter.org/articles, and click on “Health and Wellness.” Learn about anxiety at familydoctor.org.

The Baker household has been upended for months as the family readies for a major celebration at the home of a teen, who will graduate from high school. Dust, dust and more dust in this rural Scott County home has been captured and tamed by a determined cleaning woman (me).

Guess I needn’t have bothered. A recent study from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, shows that enormous efforts to corral dust mites really isn’t necessary to fend off health problems like asthma.

“We can conclude with confidence that there is no need to buy expensive vacuum cleaners to mattress covers or to use chemical methods against dust mites because those treatments do not work,” Dr. Peter Gotzsch said to a Los Angeles Times reporter.

Even if the cleaning and covering measures reduced exposure to dust mites by half as much as to 90 percent, the study found, the level of allergens is still high enough in most homes to trigger an asthma attack.

Asthma sufferers are instead advised to pin down their symptoms to, for example, the pet dog or cat. Limit exposure to the exact cause.

There is no specific advice for a stubborn, asthma-free, housecleaner who simply wants a nice, healthy and attractive home.

Do or did you fight dust mites in your home this spring? How’s it going?

The recent warm, sunny weather has prompted many of us to get sandals out of the storage closet. These sandals, of course, set off one’s toes for the world to see.

I recently had a pedicure and found it to be a fun experience, especially because I was doing it at the same time as my teen-age daughter. The prom season is coming right up and that means that teens across the Quad-Cities will be getting pedicures for the festive event.

Most people don’t give a thought about pedicure safety, but it can be an issue in some places. Here’s a couple of precautions passed along by a Philadelphia-based podiatrist, and from a pedicurist from Los Angeles.

1. Avoid pre-pedicure shaving. Shaving just before the procedure can irritate the skin and also create tiny nicks or abrasions that may be open gateways for bacteria.

2. No cutting. The use of razors, credo knives and other cutting instruments are banned in most states. Safer is a file on heavily callused feet.

3. Keep your cuticles. Don’t have them cut, but push them back with a nail stick with ends covered in cotton.

4. Bring your own tools, or bring a box and watch the salon sanitize the tools that they use in your box.

5. You don’t have to use communal footbath. Salons may allow you to instead soak in a tradition bowl or basin.

In just over a week we can join hands and rejoice that May has finally arrived with all its promise, including the designation as “National Salad Month.”

Yes indeed the basic salad, that diet-friendly food, packs some well-publicized nutritional benefits. It’s said brightly-colored salads are essentially more healthy than the monochromatic green style.

We Bakers have been trying to improve our salad consumption after the college football tailgate season expanded family waistlines to record proportions last year. Since January, I’ve pumped up the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in the house and tried to promote them as snacking items to the other people I live with.

I basically use those bags of washed, fresh salads from the grocery store, sprinkled with various vegetable items and a low-calorie, low-fat dressing. The dressing use is really key in keeping salad healthy — slather on the heavy, creamy styles, and you’re likely to eliminate all salad benefits.

The Soyfoods Council has passed along an easy ranch dressing that has only 48 calories for each 1/4 cup. For it, you simply mix together 1 and 1/4 cups soymilk, 12 oz. silken tofu, drained; and 1 oz. package ranch salad dressing mix.

Regular Ranch dressing has 140 calories in 2 tablespoons, or 280 calories for 1/4 cup.

One sad part of my own diet tale is that I’ve had to basically give up my favorite brand of pure mayonnaise for the foreseeable future. Why must sacrifice so often be involved when developing a healthy diet?

We now discover that the ability to multi-task might be very, very valuable when selling your job skills to a potential employer, but it’s not nice to do to your brain.

There’s a brain scan study by (I’m not kidding) the Federal Aviation Administration and the University of Michigan. Researchers showed that jobs done while multi-tasking may take 2-4 times as long to finish as tasks done one at a time. That’s because, they say, our brains have to work harder to switch back and forth between tasks. The findings were published in a recent issue of Consumer Reports on Health.

As the mother of a teen-age girl, career reporter, wife and conscientious homeowner, I think all I do is multi-task, especially on weekends around the house. One time, I put the newly-purchased gallon of milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the refrigerator, and did not discover the switch for hours. No wonder I feel like I have a fried brain!

Can you top that multi-tasking tale?

Talk about losing weight, and many health professionals will bring up your Body Mass Index, or BMI.

In fact, that BMI is such a common indicator of overall health that we