Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Reader's Digest

I COULDN’T BE more excited to join Reader’s Digest as we celebrate our 100th anniversary. Since 1922, this magazine has shared stories about remarkable people across the country and the kind and heroic things they do for one another. I grew up in a family of storytellers. My father, a police officer in our central Illinois town, came home every day with stories about the people in our community: funny anecdotes or dramatic stories that revealed the lives of the individuals in our town and what they went through every day. My mother was a gifted storyteller and her job in the front office of our local middle school provided a lot of material. My sister and I heard about classmates who were caught skipping school forced by the principal…

HEART HEALTH IN THE SPICE AISLE If you like to use herbs and spices when you cook, you’re not just flavoring your meals—you’re doing your heart some good. In an American study of adults with obesity and other risk factors for heart disease, participants who added an average of 6.6 grams of dried herbs and spices to their meals every day lowered their blood pressure. And people with type 2 diabetes who added ginger, cinnamon, or turmeric to their diets lowered their cholesterol levels, another review found. One caution: Check the labels of prepackaged herb and spice mixes and avoid those with salt and sugar additives that will have the opposite impact on your heart health. Hit the Sauna Instead of the Gym? A Coventry University study reports that sitting…

I first heard of Alex Haley sometime around 1967 when I was a student in high school. My brother, Paul, who was a student at the School of Dentistry at West Virginia University, called to tell me that this man had given a dazzling lecture on campus, and he was so excited that he wanted to share the experience with me. The lecture was part of a book the author would be publishing, based on stories he had heard from his aunt. He was on the circuit, he told his audience, trying to raise enough money to complete it. “It’s one word,” Paul said of the book’s title. “I can’t remember what the word is, but it’s bad, man! You are gonna eat this up.” I said, “Well, what’s the…

BEFORE DR. GOOGLE, there was Dr. Reader’s Digest—“the public’s leading source of medical information,” as the influential Duke psychologist Kelly Brownell, PhD, called Reader’s Digest in a 2009 study. Indeed, millions of people might read one of our health articles and then—when a mysterious symptom raises questions—recall its advice and be alerted to act. Sometimes they’re even able to help inform their doctors. When we asked readers how this magazine has influenced their lives, the responses included very specific, vivid tales of how (in their words) “Reader’s Digest saved my life.” These are some of the stories they shared: “I yelled at my husband, ‘This is what I have!’” –Deborah Barber, of East Pharsalia, New York, after reading an April 2013 article about a patient being diagnosed with achalasia. The…

FROM TEXAS MONTHLY Almost 100 feet under the sea, I was flying. I glided through a seascape of vibrant corals and tropical fish, inspecting the reef’s caves and nooks. I crossed a sandy area toward an emerald hillock, pushed my flippered feet downward, and hovered vertically. The coral before me was massive and majestic. I took in the matriarchs and patriarchs that surrounded me: enormous amber colonies as well as limestone thrones overlaid in jade green clusters. To explore a grove of these ancients, possibly dating back 1,500 years, felt like hiking among the redwoods in California. Some scuba divers venture to this place for the manta rays as big as living-room carpets and whale sharks the size of school buses. But for me, these grand corals were the true…

JEFF JENSEN WAS in a quandary. The entrepreneur and Boy Scout leader was hobbled by painful nerve damage in his leg and foot. He needed surgery, but he doubted he could afford it, even with insurance. “There’s nothing more depressing than seeing a bill for 18, 20, 24,000 dollars and going, ‘How much of this will my insurance cover and how much is mine to cover?’” Jensen told WWAY-TV. Luckily for Jensen, his doctor is Demetrio Aguila. The nerve specialist gives patients at his Healing Hands of Nebraska practice in Papillion the option to pay for surgery though volunteer work. He calls it his M25 Program, inspired by the Bible verse at Matthew 25:40: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine,…

It was the first week of school, and one first grader was having trouble adjusting. As his teacher offered comfort and reassurance, the boy looked up at her and demanded, “Who signed me up for this anyway?” —FROM SCHOOLSPUN HUMOR, TOLD TO OPAL YOUNG BY JAN SEIGLA I was working at a 7-Eleven when a man tucked four six-packs of beer under his arms and bolted without paying. I called the police, then went home when my shift ended. The next day, the police came to the store with a suspect in tow. They asked the clerk working then, “Is this the man who stole the beer?” The perp shouted, “How would he know? He wasn’t here when I ran out the door.” —R.N. via e-mail After ordering a sandwich…

“Once he invented the wheel, it was only a matter of time before he came up with the food truck.” “How come you’re late?” the boss asks his assistant as she walks in the door. “It was awful,” she says. “I was walking down the street and saw a terrible accident A man was lying in the middle of the street badly injured. There was blood everywhere. I’m just glad I took that first aid course.” “What did you do?” “I sat down and put my head between my knees to keep from fainting.” —SOURCE: JOBHUNTEXPRESS.COM In England, “booster shot” is spelled “borchestershire shot.” — @SARAHSURGEY1 Grandpa always said, “When one door closes, another one opens.” Great man, horrible cabinetmake —Submitted by BUD FRAMPTON Lewes, Delaware Stop, Drop, and Roll:…

AFTER WARREN WIEDHAHN works through his Reader’s Digest, cover to cover, with a Marine’s precision, he passes it along to the employees at his travel company, which gives tours of military sites around the world. Now 92 years old, Wiedhahn first flipped through the magazine in the 1930s in his family’s outdoor privy in upstate New York. And he’s been passing his copies of the magazine around to others since he fought in the Korean War—when the ground was too frozen to dig foxholes but the mail still arrived, an always-welcome morale boost. He shared his magazine again in the steamy jungles of Vietnam, where he was awarded the Silver Star for rallying his men to drive back the North Vietnamese troops who had surrounded them. The mail was delivered…

M Marjon van Eijk was excited. The 57-year-old from the Netherlands had just landed on the island of Mallorca with her family for the wedding of her daughter Iris van Eijk. It was a day she’d dreamed about. The intimate ceremony was taking place the next day, October 10, 2018. Twenty-one guests were planning to gather at a stunning villa in the hills near the picturesque town of Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, Spain, just under an hour’s drive from the airport. “I can’t wait for the barbecue tonight, never mind the wedding,” Marjon told her mother, Bets Kasiu. Kasiu was a sharp, warm-hearted 84-year-old, but she wasn’t in the best of health. A year earlier, she had had emergency surgery on a perforated intestine and now wore a colostomy bag.…

Think your pet can’t top Buster’s story? Don’t be so bullheaded! See terms and submit your story at rd.com/petpals. TO BE CLEAR, Buster wasn’t my bull. He escaped his pasture next door and showed up in my barn. I was afraid of the loose behemoth that day, but—maybe because I was new to the area—he soon became my therapist, teacher, and friend. Once he was back in his pasture, we’d chat over the fence, covering such topics as hard days at work and exciting happenings at home. He did most of the listening, giving knowing glances and huffs when appropriate. When it was time to end the conversation, he’d turn and walk away. He had impeccable timing. I posted Buster photos and stories on Facebook—he had quite a following. One…

1 WHILE CRYPTOCURRENCY is often associated with shady deals on the dark web, it’s a digital form of money that anyone can use. It’s virtually immune from counterfeiting or government interference, but the main appeal is the potential profit from trading it, making cryptocurrency more commodity than cash. 2 MOST CRYPTOCURRENCIES work using blockchain technology—a type of database that serves as a permanent ledger for transactions. But their value is based on the activity of their users: The more “coins” people buy, the more those coins are worth. 3 THE BEST-KNOWN cryptocurrency, or crypto for short, is Bitcoin, which has grown nearly 12,000 percent in value over the past five years. By contrast, the value of Amazon stock grew by 465 percent during that same period. One of the first—ever…

FROM THE BOOK RATIONALITY When we look beyond the headlines to the trend lines, we find that humanity overall is healthier, richer, longer-lived, better fed, better educated, and safer from war, murder, and accidents than in decades and centuries past. Having documented these changes in two books, I’m often asked whether I “believe in progress.” The answer is no. Like the humorist Fran Lebowitz, I don’t believe in anything you have to believe in. Although many measures of human well-being, when plotted over time, show a gratifying increase (though not always or everywhere), it’s not because of some force or dialectic or evolutionary law that lifts us ever upward. On the contrary, nature has no regard for our well-being, and often, as with pandemics and natural disasters, it looks as…