After Volkswagen, other car manufacturers that have been implicated for allegedly installing illegal emissions test software include Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche, BMW, Vauxhall, Fiat, Renault, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Nissan, and Ford. The emissions scandal is one of the major contributors to air pollution in the UK and the whole of Europe.

Three years after the Dieselgate scandal broke, findings from a 2016 report came out indicating that yearly traffic emissions damage costs billions in that year alone. According to a CE Delft study conducted for the European Public Health Alliance, the total cost of non-health and health-related air pollution in 2016 was approximately £57.34 billion (or about €66.7 billion) in taxpayers’ money. Of this amount, 83% or £47.76 billion (€55.6 billion) is attributable to diesel emissions or fumes.

Taxpayers bear the burden for a large fragment of the costs via health services funded by the government.

An 80% reduction of the abovementioned numbers by 2030 is only possible if stricter actions and regulations are undertaken.

The dangers of traffic emissions

Car owners who bought diesel cars did so because they were told that these vehicles were clean and, therefore, were not a threat to the environment. This changed after the initial diesel emission claim, which proved that diesel engines aren’t part of the solution but actually contribute to air pollution. They released more pollution than any driver can imagine when out on the road in real-world driving conditions. A 2017 research revealed that more or less 38,000 early deaths in one year are attributed to the emissions mistake.

Road transport contributes a significant volume of benzene and nitrogen dioxide emissions in various cities across the UK and Europe.

Exhaust emissions release primary particulate matter (or PM). NOx or nitrogen oxides are also emitted by diesel vehicles. These emissions result in the formation of pollutants such as acid rain, smog, and carbon monoxide.

Additionally, traffic emissions are responsible for the greenhouse gases that may lead to an even bigger problem: global warming.

Air pollution from traffic emissions also has other less reported health-related effects. Particulate matter enters the respiratory system when a person inhales. This can cause cardiovascular and respiratory disease, among other health-related issues. There are also reports indicating a possible link between NOx emissions and diabetes and dementia. Individuals who have asthma may experience serious symptoms while those who do not have the disease may develop it after regular exposure to NOx.

The long-term effects of PM and NOx emissions exposure are many, but the most significant are cardiovascular mortality, chronic asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and pulmonary insufficiency.

Continuous exposure to traffic emissions may also cause mental health-related problems like anxiety, schizophrenia, and depression.

What can be done

As mentioned above, ambitious and strict regulations must be implemented if Europe wants to cut down traffic emissions by 2030.  Here are some suggestions (some of which have been implemented already):

• TROs or Traffic Regulation Orders

Traffic Regulation Orders can help minimize or altogether eliminate traffic congestion. This can also lead to better air quality.

• Clean Air Zone or CAZ

UK’s Clean Air Zone or CAZ targets areas or regions where air quality is poor. Vehicles that travel through or on a CAZ are charged a particular fee if they have high emission levels. Only cars with ultra-low emissions may enter the Clean Air Zone freely, without paying fines.

The CAZ classifies vehicles as Class A, B, C, and D and assigns specific charges for each.

This initiative may not solve the traffic problem per se, but it does help reduce the number of high NOx emission cars moving through or entering an area.

• Low/Zero emission alternative solutions

The latest generation of diesel engine vehicles have very low NOx emissions in real-world driving conditions. As such, fleet policies must be renewed and strengthened to focus on air quality target compliance. Old diesel cars and fleets must be slowly phased out. Pre-2014 manufactured cars could be banned.

Other solutions include the use of plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles, and cycling or walking instead of driving cars.

City officials must also come up with plausible solutions like vehicle road tests, car-free days, and pollution charges.

Emissions compensation claims

If your vehicle is one of those in the Dieselgate scandal list, you can verify if it is installed with a defeat device by visiting your manufacturer’s website. Once it is verified, you can file an emission compensation claim. Get in touch with an experienced solicitor or a team of emissions experts to help you with the requirements and process. The experts at Emissions.co.uk should be your first priority. They are currently seeking Mercedes diesel owners to bring forward a Mercedes Diesel Compensation Claim. Get in touch if you think you may be eligible.

A healthy approach to diet

In today’s world, conversations about diet tend to revolve around weight loss. For most people, this isn’t actually helpful. There are quite a few very unhealthy weight-loss diets out there, and frequently changing weight as a result of dieting like this can also damage your body over time. Unless you face serious health risks due to obesity, it’s much better to find a diet that prioritizes your general health – if you’re happier and more active, you’ll find that you tend to shed problem weight anyway and that you do so more slowly but in a way that makes it easier for you to maintain a shape that pleases you. There’s no universal ideal diet because different people have different needs, but if you get a good balance of nutrients and reduce toxins, you’ll be most of the way there.

Healthy diet planning

Eating a healthy diet starts with getting the right balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat – you need a bit of all of these (yes, even the last one) to support your body properly. Generally speaking, about half to two-thirds of the calories you consume each day should come from carbohydrates. The best ones to choose are those that release energy into your body slowly, such as rice, pasta, bread, other cereal-based foods, potatoes, beans, and squashes. Healthy fats come from foods such as nuts and oily fish, and most of us can benefit from cutting down on animal fats, as well as alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and salt. Often, people have no idea how many calories they consume each day in soda, without getting any useful nutrients in the process. Meanwhile, eating more fruit and vegetables – fresh if possible – ensures that we get the balance of different micronutrients needed for optimum health.

A healthy approach to exercise

Like diet, exercise is often focused on trying to change our bodies – to make them thinner or more muscular. For a wide range of quality exercise equipment, consider https://www.magmafitness.ca. Aside from the fact that most of us will never achieve our desired goals this way, it can become obsessive, actually making us less happy. All these changes if we set those goals aside to focus on having fun. Some of us can find this in the gym, but for others, there’s nothing like being in the great outdoors, or in a pool, or zooming along on a bike or playing a competitive sport alongside friends. Other people prefer activities not always thought of as exercise, such as dancing or simply walking around the neighborhood. The trick is to build exercise into your life in forms that make you happy directly.

Exercise planning

The best form of exercise for coping with stress is aerobic exercise – any activity that makes your heart and lungs work hard – and you should aim to be physically active for at least an hour and a half every day. Activities such as walking around as you clean the house or playing with your children can contribute to this. As a rule, the more intense the exercise you do, the less time you need to spend on it. You should also try to do some stretching exercises, such as touching your toes or arching your back, to keep yourself limber, and you should do some strength-building exercises such as push-ups or squats. All of this becomes more important as you get older.

Diet, exercise and physical health

Eating well, getting plenty of exercises, and attending to other forms of bodily maintenance, such as staying well-hydrated and getting enough sleep, will help you to stay in the best possible shape throughout your life, but there’s more to this than looking good. Self-care of this sort will boost your energy levels, increasing the amount of time during the day when you feel wide awake and able to do things. You’ll get ill less often, suffer less from stiffness or soreness, and be able to take on physical tasks, from climbing stairs to lifting furniture around, with minimal difficulty. You’ll find your healthier body a lot more fun to inhabit, and if you keep up your good habits, it will stay that way.

Diet, exercise and mental health

What’s less well-known is that people who eat healthily and exercise well have much lower rates of mental illness. It’s not uncommon these days for a PMHNP-BC to recommend changes of this sort to chronic patients, and this can be every bit as important as medication or talking therapies. Exercise is great for working off stress and balancing serotonin levels while getting a good balance of nutrients and maintaining a steady blood sugar level reduces anxiety and depression. There is even some evidence that it can slow the progression of schizophrenia. It also reduces episodes of metabolic stress, which can lead to common symptoms such as nightmares and panic attacks.

Diet, exercise and lifestyle

Working out how to fit a healthy diet and exercise into your life can be a challenge. The important thing is to find a balance that works naturally for you because if you create a situation in which trying to do these things is putting you under ongoing strain, you won’t be able to keep it up. Making changes slowly is fine as long as you keep making definite gains in working towards the healthier life that you want for yourself. Bear in mind that as you do so, your energy levels should start rising, so what seems like an impossible effort now may, in time, feel quite easy.

Looking after your body creates feelings of happiness and contentment at a deep level, so you become less dependent on reinforcing those things through external factors. As you take better care of yourself, you’ll also become more aware of your own value. It’s easier to be happy when you know, deep down, that this is what you deserve.

1. Coffee can reduce your risk of becoming diabetic
Almost 10% of Americans are diabetic, and a major factor behind its development is a poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle. Drinking too much coffee each day comes with its own health risks, but it also reduces your risk of developing diabetes.

Harvard School of Public Health evaluated data from 128,000 healthcare professionals that were surveyed about their diet for more than two decades. During those more than 20 years, 7,300 of them were developed Type 2 diabetes, but the participants that drank more than one cup of coffee daily, had an 11% lower risk for the disease.

2. Healthy teeth
Coffee actually decreases tooth decay. Are you surprised? Several studies revealed that roasted coffee beans have antibacterial properties against S. mutans, the bacterium that eats away at your pearly whites. Studies also show that roasted coffee prevents the absorption of such bacteria. In these studies, different types of coffee beans were used both roasted and unroasted, Arabia and Robusta. While all of them provided similar benefits, the roasted beans were more active in preventing teeth from absorbing bacteria.

3. Coffee helps to delay Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s rates seem to be growing rapidly, but did you know that certain studies show that high caffeine intake can delay the development of this terrible disease.

4. Coffee the mood enhancer
Coffee is chockfull of caffeine. Caffeine is a non-tropical that improves the state of your mood and overall cognitive function. You may have experienced this firsthand if you are a longtime coffee drinker: Go ahead and skip one day of coffee and you might feel a bit sad. Chances are it’s related to (and cured by) coffee.

5. Coffee for liver health
To put it simply, drink more coffee and less booze. Alcohol can do irreversible damage to your liver. Coffee, on the other hand, helps to protect it.

6. Coffee preventing skin cancer
Skin cancer rates are on the rise. While easy ways to avoid skin cancer include applying sunscreen, there are other things you can do to cut your risk. One of those things includes drinking more coffee. Scientists have theorized think that caffeine is to thank for this benefit, though results are generally inconclusive.

7. Coffee for heart health
Have you ever been warned that coffee is bad for your heart? It’s true. A cool thirty cups might have devastating effect on your heart. But drinking coffee in moderation, every day, actually improves heart health.

8. Coffee strengthening DNA
DNA is very invisible, and to no one’s surprise, quite fragile. Strands of DNA break often, but that might be avoidable. You probably guessed it by now: Coffee is good for you, all the way down to your DNA. Caffeine tightens DNA integrity, so drink up.

9. Coffee is full of antioxidants
Oxidation and free radicals contribute to the aging process, while antioxidants fight the good fight against aging. Coffee contains more antioxidants than many fruits, including oranges and grapes.

To be brief, coffee is great for you. So long as you moderate your intake, you will live longer, be happier and have stronger DNA!

1. It’s full of antioxidants
Most Americans get antioxidants from coffee than they do from the rest of their diet. While fruits and vegetables have a ton of antioxidants, you might be surprised to find out that your body absorbs the most antioxidants from coffee. So, grab another cup!

2. Coffee as a stress reliever
According to researchers at the Seoul National University, smelling coffee is enough to lower stress levels. The study wasn’t about stress alone, but about stress brought on by sleep deprivation. Therefore, if you are feeling groggy, either grab a cup of fresh coffee or smell one!

3. Coffee supporting liver health
In 2006, 125,000 individuals over the age of 22 participated in a study about the benefits of coffee. In the study, those drank just one cup of coffee a day were less likely to develop cirrhosis of the liver, an autoimmune disease. Liver cirrhosis is caused by drinking alcohol in excess.

Coffee offers protection against alcoholic cirrhosis. Heavy coffee drinkers are in luck and will end up hospitalized, or dying, from liver cirrhosis less often than non-coffee drinkers. Several other studies have revealed that nonalcoholic fatty liver disease can be prevented by drinking coffee.

4. Long-term brain health
Looking to keep your mind sharp for the long-term? Well, grab another cup (or two) of Joe! A study done by researchers at the University of Miami and the University of South Florida found that high levels of caffeine might actually delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 4 years. The results were based on higher blood levels of caffeine in individuals over the age of 65.

While this doesn’t mean that coffee prevent Alzheimer’s disease outright, it does shine some light on the fact that a moderate amount of caffeine on a regular basis can reduce risk of developing this awful disease.

5. Coffee as a cup of happiness
Caught up in feeling blue? A little depressed? A cup of coffee might be your ticket back to happiness. The National Institute of Health completed a study that revealed an interesting benefit of coffee. According to the study, individuals that drank a minimum of four cups of coffee every day were less likely to be depressed than their coffee-avoiding peers.

No, before you think this has to do with participants catching a caffeine high, the euphoria is exclusive to coffee. Sodas have caffeine, but many sodas are actually linked to depression.

6. Coffee might just raise your I.Q.
Coffee might actually make you smarter. In general, most drink coffee when they are feeling sleepy or lethargic. We all know the benefits of coffee before a long day at work or school.

But according to some reports, coffee offers much more than a boost in energy. It can also boost your I.Q. That’s right; according to CNN, coffee makes you more intelligent by causing your brain to be more efficient. Caffeine improves your attention span, reaction time, logical reasoning and vigilance. All four of these components are associated with overall intelligence.

So, how much coffee should you drink?
Ingesting too much caffeine can have an adverse effect on your body, leading to anxiety, jitters and insomnia. To avoid the negatives, the Mayo Clinic says that adults limit themselves to 400 milligrams (mg) of caffeine daily. This is just about four cups of your average coffee. However, portion control might be easier when you brew your own. For example, a 6-ounce coffee from Starbucks can have 200 mg more of caffeine than that served at Dunkin Donuts.

The challenge posed by lifestyle issues is that they are difficult habits to beat. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “quitting cold turkey” before. Well, adjusting your lifestyle is not something you can just do overnight. Many people expect immediate results, get discouraged, then go back to old habits out of comfort.

Incremental changes in daily activity make the process much easier. While changing routine behaviors may take a few days or weeks to adopt, understand that you will see results in time and it will make you a healthier person.

Many weight loss programs are implemented carefully, ensuring that lifestyle changes happen gradually. The same approach applies to exercise. Choose an exercise you enjoy, and increase your activity as you become accustomed to working out on your terms. Do you like going for walks? Well, maybe start your new exercise regimen by walking around the block. When you’re ready for more, walk two blocks, then three blocks, then four, etc. Soon enough you’ll be jogging, then running towards your fitness goals.

The trick to creating new, healthy habits is to approach your goals gradually while understanding that changes are rarely immediate. Avoid trendy exercise programs or diets that promise fast results. Many of these present the risk of shocking your system and hindering real progress.

Just a few simple changes can lead you to a happier and healthier life. Start with these five changes to create better habits today.

1. Want to eat healthy? Start with one meal.
Even if most of the food you eat is processed, try to slip in some healthy foods at least once a day. Your body will thank you! Healthy meals consist of fruits, vegetables, whole grain products and lean meats. The benefit of healthy foods? Well, beyond them being good for you, you can usually eat more. If it’s healthy, it will contain fewer calories and won’t cause weight gain the same way that processed food does. Despite these wild benefits, be cognizant of your portion sizes.

2. Start by drinking water.
Water is by far the best thing you can drink. Drinking an eight-ounce glass of water before a meal will make you feel fuller, and you won’t feel the need to eat a huge meal.

3. Pair your lunch with physical activity.
Even if you only have thirty minutes for lunch, it usually doesn’t take all that time to eat. After you finish your lunch, consider taking a brisk walk. Not only will this give you a boost of energy, but it aids with digestions and burns calories. That’s right, the calories you just finished eating. The type of exercise you do is not that important. Any physical activity within reason will help you feel better and just might help alleviate some stress.

4. Supplement a meal with a power bar.
This means choosing a healthy protein bar over junk food. Most meal replacement bars are high in good nutrition and fiber. Not all options are obscenely high in calories but many work wonder sin staving off hunger pangs. Buy them in bulk and keep then in drawer at work, or in your car or purse so they are available whenever hunger strikes. Look for meal replacement bars that are high in fiber and have at least 10 to 15 grams of protein per bar.

5. This one is important: EXERCISE.
If you pay for a gym membership, put it to good use. Go to the gym three to four times each week. Choose a physical activity that you truly enjoy and do it for at least a half hour. Don’t have a half hour? Then exercise for fifteen minutes twice each day. Exercise will energize you, build muscle mass and will help with weight loss by burning excess calories.