More than half the world’s people are polyglots – they speak more than one language. Are you one of them, or do they put you to shame?

You are never too old to learn a foreign language. Yes, it might be easier when you are at school, but people who begin language study in their older years can become as fluent as younger learners – and reap the following mental benefits:

• You get smarter. How can you not, when you are challenging your brain to recognise, negotiate meaning and communicate in a different language? This skill boosts your ability in other problem-solving tasks too.
• You delay dementia. Several studies have found that adults who speak two or more languages delay the first signs of dementia by up to five years.
• Your memory improves. Exercising your brain with a new language improves overall memory – studies show bilinguals are better at retaining names, directions and lists.
• You boost observation skills. Multilingual people are better at observing their surroundings, more adept at focusing on relevant information and dismissing the irrelevant.

Learning one language makes it easier to acquire others. And you do not have to go back to school. Download one of the many language apps such as Mondly, Duolingo or Babbel and get started in minutes.

What you can do

Some recommendations:

• Prioritise sleep. You have to sleep when others are awake, so encourage others when you live to respect this.
• Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
• Control noise. You may need to remove the phone from the bedroom and have heavy carpet or curtains to absorb any noise. A fan or ‘white noise’ machine can also help muffle noise.
• Keep your bedroom cool and dark.
• Avoid caffeine, sleeping pills, alcohol or cigarettes before going to bed.
• If you can, sleep just before going to work. If this is not possible, taking a nap before going to work may help.
• If you are allowed to take a break during your shift, use it for a short nap. A nap should be no longer than 15 minutes, after which a five-minute walk can help you wake up properly.
• If you have any say when it comes to your shifts, rotate them forwards (morning to afternoon to evening to night) rather than backwards.

Harvard Health gives an important word of caution: “some medical professionals prescribe cortisol analogs to treat adrenal fatigue. Cortisol replacement can be dangerous even in small doses. Unintended consequences can include osteoporosis, diabetes, weight gain, and heart disease.”

Dr Ben Shlomo explains further: “the supplement can make you feel good at first because it’s a steroid. But over time, it can actually inhibit your adrenal glands.”

How to manage the symptoms

The treatments usually offered by alternative health practitioners for adrenal fatigue are sensible, and will probably help. This includes cutting down on coffee and alcohol, eating more fruit and vegetables, doing light exercise and prioritising sleep.

What about adrenal insufficiency?

As opposed to adrenal fatigue, adrenal insufficiency is a medically accepted diagnosis, and occurs when your body doesn’t produce enough of the hormone cortisol.

Chronic adrenal insufficiency is measured by a blood test that measures cortisol levels.

Rather than purely a stress response, adrenal insufficiency is most often caused when your immune system attacks your healthy adrenal glands by mistake. Other causes include cancer, tuberculosis and inherited disorders of the endocrine glands.

Primary adrenal insufficiency, also called Addison’s disease, occurs when your adrenal glands are damaged. It’s quite rare but can occur at any age.

If you’re concerned, see your doctor for proper testing.

Lift your depression

Resistance training is proven to help relieve depression. In a 2018 meta-analysis of 33 clinical trials that included 1877 participants, resistance exercise training was associated with a significant reduction in depressive symptoms.

It was shown to work for all adults, male and female, regardless of fitness, weight or other health status.

It is thought that the weight lifting helps trigger a release of endorphins which in turn lower levels of stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine.

Choose one place nearby that you have never been. It could be a new café, or a new park, or even a monument that has been there for a hundred years. And, like every good holiday, don’t forget to take photos and post on social media – you might inspire others to do the same.

Pineapple is not only a perfect snack or dessert, it also has surprising health benefits.

It contains an enzyme called bromelain, which has two seemingly different benefits, it’s good for your digestion, and good for tenderising meat: Bromelain breaks down proteins, so it helps your gut digest your dinner AND helps soften that piece of chicken on the BBQ.

Some studies even indicate that bromelain can reduce inflammation, swelling and bruising after injury or surgery. It’s even thought to help with pain relief.

Pineapple is also high in vitamin C. In fact, one cup of fresh pineapple chunks will give you more than 130 per cent of your daily vitamin C requirements. And it is full of other goodies such as thiamine, manganese, vitamin B6, folate and antioxidants.

How to avoid pineapple tongue burn

Ever eaten fresh pineapple and felt as though your taste buds have been wiped out? That’s the bromelain. It breaks down proteins, including the protective mucus that coats your tongue. To avoid this problem, while gaining the many benefits of pineapple, you could try one of these tricks:

• Soak the fresh pineapple in salt water first
• Eat the pineapple with diary such as yoghurt
• Cook the pineapple, as this destroys the bromelain (but also reduces the benefits)
• Cut out the tough core, where bromelain is the most concentrated.

Luckily, there are proven ways to speed up your learning, so you can achieve more in less time.

1. Keep a beginner’s mind

Even if you have been studying this field or skill for years, try to approach your next learning like a beginner. When you see yourself as an expert, you tend to be blind to unusual happenings, you assume things are a certain way. Beginners are more open to alternative ways of thinking and ask more questions.

2. Use a digital brain

A whole range of apps exist on your phone – use them. Not to procrastinate or distract yourself, but to help you remember things. A digital brain is like a second brain you can use to capture, organise, retrieve, and archive information, ideas and thoughts. If you use an online calendar, or master password app, you are tapping into your digital brain, but there is so much more you can do. You can use apps to remember to do lists, facts, formulae, links to read later, and you can even record someone delivering a presentation or speech (with permission of course). Try an app such as Evernote, Bear or OneNote.

3. Spaced Repetition

You know how your high school teacher told you to revise regularly and often for exams? They were right. The best way to remember information is to recall it soon afterwards. Spaced repetition looks like this:

• Within 24 hours of learning something, write down notes for yourself and then review them by reading those notes then looking away to recall the most important points.
• Within 48 hours (ie. the next day), try to recall the information with minimal reading of your notes.
• Within 72 hours, recall the information again, as you go about your day, eg while waiting in line or walking to the station.
• A few days later, read through the information all over again.

4. Break it down

Trying to learn something new all at once can set you up for failure. Say you want to learn how to surf. Expecting yourself to be able to stand up on a surfboard right away and catch a wave will only make you feel overwhelmed. Instead, break down each task into manageable bits. For example, start by learning how to jump up from lying to standing. Then learn how to swap your feet. Practice each skill with full attention before moving onto the next.

Listening does not come naturally. We want to be heard far more than we want to hear.

It’s rarely ill-intentioned. Often, we enthusiastically want to relate and show we understand or share their concern, or have had a similar experience. However, the outcome is the opposite: the relationship suffers, and the other person feels less connected, and more frustrated.

To improve your active listening, try these tips from experts:

1. Stop talking. The simplest but hardest tip of all. Give the other person space to talk, even after they seem to run out of puff. Often people only get to the real point after they have covered the superficial talk. Use the acronym WAIT to remind yourself: W.A.I.T stands for “Why Am I Talking?”

2. Clear your mind. Adam Bryant, author of The Corner Office and The CEO Test, says we should “think of listening as a form of meditation. You have to clear your mind of everything else, so you can focus entirely on what the other person is saying.” Bryant advises putting your phone down, and if you are at your desk, turning your chair around so you are not looking at the monitor.

3. Don’t jump ahead. “The best kind of listening is about being comfortable not knowing what you’re going to say next, or what question you might ask,” says Bryant. Have faith in your ability to respond naturally and sincerely to the other person, without formulating your response while they are talking.

4. Remove judgement. “Listening, done well, is an act of empathy. You are trying to see the world through another person’s eyes, and to understand their emotions,” Bryant says. Judging the other person for their words, tone of voice, actions or reactions is not going to help you achieve empathy.

5. Aim to learn. Use every conversation as a chance to learn more – about a topic, about a person. Billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkIn, Reid Hoffman, says the most important quality he looks for in employees is an “infinite learning curve.” “I’m looking for an ability to be learning constantly, and fast.”

Bryant adds, “If you show interest and energy, people will respond and share what they know and how they learned it. It’s a fast and free education, plus you’ll build relationships.”

Common listening mistakes to avoid

• Getting distracted. Someone is talking, but you are thinking about what to cook for dinner. You could be making eye contact and saying “yeah” and “OK” in all the right places, but you are not really listening.
• Adding your anecdote. We often want to show we understand, and that we have shared a similar experience, and so off we go with a “yes, the same thing happened to me!” story, and we have hijacked the other person’s conversation.
• Waiting to talk. You know how it feels: you get the very clear sense that the other person is just waiting for your noise to stop, before they say their piece. They haven’t listened, they just want to make their argument, or say something clever.

If you only eat turkey at once or twice a year, reconsider! There’s good reason to add it to your diet all year round.

We generally think of turkey as a good source of low fat protein (and it is – it has more protein per gram than chicken). Yet we forget that it is also high in all sorts of vitamins and minerals that can boost your health.

Turkey is high in selenium, which is great for your thyroid and immunity and as a powerful antioxidant can help fight free radicals. Free radicals cause cell damage and contribute to ageing and illness.

Plus, turkey gives essential B vitamins including B3, B6 and B12, along with niacin and zinc.

You might have heard advice to eat turkey before bed because it makes you sleepy. It turns out that is not quite true. Turkey does contain tryptophan, which promotes a good sleep and a good mood by helping to produce serotonin and melatonin, but turkey is not very high in tryptophan.

To put it in perspective, a tryptophan supplement to help with sleep usually contains 1-4 grams, whereas a serve of turkey only contains around 205 milligrams.

So go ahead and enjoy your turkey for its protein and vitamins, but do not blame it for making you sleepy.