Your health: Sunscreen for the commute

Commuting hazard

One more thing to worry about: being blasted by ultraviolet rays during your morning commute. In “Sun Hazards in Your Car,” an article in this year's issue of the Skin Cancer Foundation Journal, dermatologist Susan Butler cautions readers who, through excessive time spent behind the wheel, are working up a left-arm tan.

“For years, dermatologists have observed that patients in the U.S. often have more sun damage (which can lead to wrinkles, leathering, sagging, brown ‘age' spots and even skin cancers) on the left side of their faces than on their right,” she writes. “Research increasingly points to Ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation penetrating through car windows.”

Windshields are specially treated to block UV rays, but side and rear windows are not sunshine-proof. Eventually, the exposure adds up. Solutions are fairly easy to come by, though. For one, Butler suggests wearing sunscreen. She also recommends wardrobe changes and vehicle modifications: wear big sunglasses, don a hat with a wide brim and tint your windows.

Rock-star yoga tips

In the latest issue of Yoga Journal, platinum-selling rockers dish on how holding the lotus position has brought them peace of mind, physical fitness and creative inspiration, according to The Washington Post. Blues singer Bonnie Raitt finds it difficult to pencil in time for practice, so she crams “yoga bits” between walks and household chores.

Other performers go a little farther. “It gives me a microcosmic snapshot, a clear picture of what's going on in my life,” reveals Alanis Morissette. Electro-blues guru Moby uses his five-days-a-week exercise program to moderate rock-star excess. “Before I had a yoga or meditation practice, I'd want to stay out until six o'clock in the morning and desperately grab every last bit of fun I could,” he says.

Doing a body good

Exercising for 15 minutes a day adds three years to a person's life expectancy, according to the first study to show there's a health benefit from even low levels of physical activity, says The Washington Post.

In a study involving more than 400,000 people, those who exercised for 90 minutes a week were also 14 percent less likely to have died after eight years than those who were inactive, researchers at Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes wrote in The Lancet medical journal this week.