Do you like drinking tea or taking a stroll in the rain? Did you know that walking backwards can help your memory – or that stopping yourself from being a mouth breather is good for your oral health?

This might sound like a bad mash-up of the ‘pina colada song’, but in fact these are all subjects (and more) that I’m covering in the new series of my podcast, Just One Thing (which launches next week).

As a reminder, in each episode of this series I take a close look at a different ‘thing’, something simple that could improve your mental and physical wellbeing in surprising ways. Here’s a preview of what I discovered…

Have a cup of tea 

We’ve become a nation of coffee drinkers, a recent survey found, with more Britons now drinking coffee than tea.

But has the pendulum swung too far – is it time to start drinking more tea?

The most popular tea in the UK is ‘black’ tea, which comes from Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to East Asia. The leaves are exposed to the air to darken, which, among other things, increases their caffeine content.

They’re also packed full of plant compounds called polyphenols that have multiple health benefits, including being good for our bones.

One study in Australia, which monitored more than 1,000 women aged over 75 for more than ten years, showed that those who drank more than three cups of tea daily were 30 per cent less likely to suffer a fracture due to osteoporosis, compared with those who drank one cup or less per week. (I’m particularly interested in this, as I have a family history of osteoporosis.)

On top of that, you will not be surprised to hear that drinking tea is a great way to relax. But not, as you might expect, simply down to the ritual; you stop work, put the kettle on, perhaps have a chat.

In fact, there’s a substance in tea, L-theanine, which studies show increases the activity of alpha brainwaves, which are associated with being calm and creative.

Stroll backwards

And after your cup of tea, why not put on your walking shoes and go for a stroll? Backwards. This might sound eccentric, but it’s a technique that’s been used in physiotherapy for decades to rehabilitate lower leg injuries.

It can improve your gait, balance and mobility, plus a study by Roehampton University in 2018 showed that walking backwards can sharpen your memory.

The scientists behind this experiment think that when you walk backwards physically, this helps you ‘walk back’ mentally, retrieving memories from something you did earlier. So if you’re wondering where you put those keys, perhaps a short stroll backwards will jog your memory.

When I first heard about this I was intrigued that something so simple and, frankly, weird could have such an effect.

It can be done on a treadmill, but with care you can do it safely in your own home or outside.

If you fancy giving it a go then start slowly, doing a few steps, then build up. Try it with a partner: the idea is that you face each other, holding hands, so while you are walking backwards they are walking forwards. Then you swap.

0r when it rains 

If walking backwards isn’t your thing, go for a conventional walk – but in the rain.

For starters, if you’re looking for fresh air, there’s no better time to go for a walk than a rainy day, because rain improves air quality.

A recent study in Japan found that as the rain falls, the droplets attract and wash away tens of thousands of polluting particles from the air. These particles, which are generated by traffic, are very harmful because they are small enough to penetrate deep into our lungs when we inhale them.

And then there’s that wonderful, earthy smell just after it’s rained.

It’s got a great name: petrichor, from the Greek word ‘petra’, meaning stone, and ‘ichor’, the fluid that in Greek mythology flowed through the veins of the immortals. That earthy smell occurs as water hits dusty or clay soils, releasing tiny air bubbles that scent the air.

The main component of petrichor is a chemical called geosmin, which is made by bacteria in the soil. There’s evidence that inhaling geosmin can make us feel good.

In a 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, researchers asked 30 adults to handle soil that contained geosmin, and soil that didn’t.

After just five minutes’ exposure to geosmin, the volunteers had higher levels of the mood-boosting chemical serotonin in their blood and reduced levels of C-reactive protein, a marker for inflammation that’s linked to depression (though why this happens isn’t yet clear).

Try to breathe through your nose 

I’d always dismissed claims that breathing in through your nose is healthier than through your mouth – after all, it still ends up in the same place (your lungs). But as I’ve discovered, being a mouth breather has considerable downsides, including reducing the amount of saliva you produce, making your mouth drier and increasing the risk of tooth decay and inflamed gums.

And nose breathing could also give your brain a boost. In a recent study, volunteers were given a memory test while in a brain scanner: when they breathed through their noses they performed better, and the scans revealed their brains were working more efficiently.

Studies at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have shown that nose breathing boosts levels of nitric oxide, a chemical that fights off infection in your sinuses and increases the blood flow in your lungs, raising oxygen levels in your blood and presumably your brain.

Listen to Just One Thing on BBC Radio 4 every Wednesday from September 20 at 9.30am – when you can also download the whole series on BBC Sounds.

Early nights may protect brain 

Trying to function after a bad night’s sleep is difficult: you feel tired, irritable and, if you are like me, you also feel an insane desire to eat something sweet.

While one restless night isn’t going to do much damage, night after night of poor sleep can raise the risk of dementia.

One theory is that if you don’t get enough sleep, especially restorative deep sleep, you get a build-up of toxins in the brain that can lead to brain damage.

That’s because when you are in deep sleep, a network of channels in your brain, known as the glymphatic system, opens up and washes away any toxic waste from the day.

Sadly, as we get older, we tend to get less deep sleep, which means that our brains aren’t as good at washing away the toxins. Indeed, young people typically have a couple of hours’ deep sleep a night, but when you get to my age (66), you’re lucky to get 30 minutes.

But the good news is that researchers at Binzhou Medical University in China have now identified a protein, pleiotrophin, that can – at least in mice – protect brain cells from damage by toxins. When mice were deprived of sleep, their pleiotrophin levels drop.

The hope is that we will find some way to pump up pleiotrophin levels. Until then, get an early night to try to maximise the amount of deep sleep you get.

Eat green bananas for healthy liver 

In last week’s column, I mentioned that cooking, cooling and reheating pasta turned the carbs in it into resistant starch, which isn’t readily broken down in the gut but acts more like fibre.

So not only do you get less of a blood sugar spike after eating it (because less of it is absorbed), but it also feeds the friendly bacteria in your gut. They, in turn, convert the resistant starch into a fatty acid called butyrate, which has many benefits for the gut, including reducing the risk of developing colon cancer.

Now a study has shown that consuming more resistant starch helps your liver, too. Researchers at Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital in China recruited 200 people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a build-up of fat in the liver – one in three Britons has early signs of this condition, which is associated with a raised risk of heart attack, stroke and liver damage.

Patients in the study were given a resistant starch powder made from maize or corn to have twice a day, for four months. When compared with a control group, they had 40 per cent less fat in their livers.

They also had reduced levels of liver enzymes and inflammatory factors associated with NAFLD. The good news is you can easily increase your consumption of resistant starch by eating oats, legumes and green bananas. Or by cooking, cooling and reheating rice, pasta or potatoes.

Drifting off to sleep while smelling lavender, eucalyptus or rosemary could help to boost your memory in later life.

Volunteers aged 60 to 85 who were exposed to fragrances at night for six months did far better in a memory test.

They improved their memory by 226 per cent compared to volunteers who did not get the same scent exposure.

The small study, of 43 people, suggests the act of smelling pleasant scents could stimulate the brain in a way which protects against memory loss.

The link between memory and sense of smell – known by scientists as the ‘olfactory’ sense – might help to explain why people in the early stages of dementia start to lose their ability to detect odours.

Professor Michael Yassa, a co-author of the scent study, from the University of California, Irvine, said: ‘The olfactory sense has the special privilege of being directly connected to the brain’s memory circuits.

‘All the other senses are routed first through the thalamus.

He said: ‘Everyone has experienced how powerful aromas are in evoking recollections, even from very long ago.

‘However, unlike with vision changes that we treat with glasses and hearing aids for hearing impairment, there has been no intervention for the loss of smell.’

The volunteers in the study were given a diffuser for their bedroom, and 20 out of 43 of them received essential oils, which smelled of lavender, rose, orange, eucalyptus, lemon, peppermint and rosemary.

They turned on the diffuser when they went to bed, and one scent per night was released into the air for two hours as they fell asleep.

The other 23 people, who were the control group, also switched on the diffuser when they went to bed, but their diffusers only pumped out distilled water with a minimal, undetectable scent.

The participants, who had no cognitive impairment or dementia, were given a battery of tests, including the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, where people have to recall words from a list to gauge their verbal learning and memory.

The 226 per cent better performance on this test was seen in the group exposed to the fragrances compared to the control group.

MRI scans revealed those who had fallen asleep with the seven scents over six months also had better functioning in the ‘uncinate fasciculus’ – a brain pathway which deteriorates with ageing and has been linked to memory.

The researchers of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, say the finding transforms the long-known link between smell and memory into an easy technique for strengthening memory and potentially protecting against dementia.

It follows evidence that exposing people with moderate dementia to up to 40 different odours twice a day boosted their memories and language skills and eased depression.

Cynthia Woo, who led the new study from the University of California, Irvine, said: ‘By making it possible for people to experience the odours while sleeping, we eliminated the need to set aside time for this during waking hours every day.’

A major cancer research project in memory of singer Sarah Harding will look for early signs of breast cancer in young women.

Harding, who was part of the pop group Girls Aloud, died from the disease aged 39 in 2021 and one of her final wishes was to find new ways of spotting breast cancer early when it is more treatable.

The new Breast Cancer Risk Assessment in Younger Women (Bcan-Ray) project will become one of the first in the world to identify which women are at risk of getting the disease in their 30s.

Around 2,300 women aged 39 and under are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year.

The project, which will run in Greater Manchester, is being made possible thanks to funding from the Christie Charity, Cancer Research UK and the Sarah Harding Breast Cancer Appeal, which is supported by Harding’s family, friends and Girls Aloud bandmates Cheryl Tweedy, Kimberley Walsh, Nadine Coyle and Nicola Roberts.

Speaking about the study before her death, Miss Harding said: ‘Research is incredibly important in the fight against cancer.

‘Although this research may not be in time to help me, this project is incredibly close to my heart as it may help women like me in the future.’

Miss Harding was treated at the Christie cancer hospital in Manchester.

Catherine Craven-Howe, 33, from Hale in south Manchester, is the first person to take part in the new trial.

She is studying medicine at Liverpool University while working as a healthcare assistant in an eating disorders unit.

Her first appointment included a low dose mammogram to assess her breast density and a saliva sample for genetic testing.

She said: ‘Although I don’t have breast cancer myself and I don’t have a history of it in my family, I know just how important clinical trials and research are.

‘I hope my participation will help devise a simple test to detect the likelihood of breast cancer for young women like me in the future.’

Eight to ten weeks after her appointment, Ms Craven-Howe will receive feedback about her risk of breast cancer.

Later, she will undertake a psychological impact questionnaire and receive a breast cancer risk statement at the end of the study, likely to be in 2025.

The project aims to examine the risk factors most commonly found in women diagnosed with breast cancer in their 30s with the hope of building a model to identify these women in the future.

Researchers hope their findings will enable all women to have a risk assessment for breast cancer when they reach the age of 30, with those deemed high risk given access to early screening and opportunities to prevent cancer developing.

The study will recruit 1,000 women aged between 30 and 39, including 250 with breast cancer but no family history of the disease.

The saliva samples will also help experts from the Christie and Cancer Research UK establish which types and patterns of genes are implicated in cancer with a view to developing personalised risk scores.

These can be combined with other breast cancer risk factors such as when a woman’s periods started, alcohol intake and use of the contraceptive pill.

The density of breast tissue may also play a part in the level of risk of getting the disease.

Miss Harding’s consultant, Dr Sacha Howell, who is leading the Bcan-Ray study, said: ‘Sarah spoke to me many times about breast cancer research and was really keen for more to be done to find out why young women are being diagnosed without any other family members having been affected by the disease.

‘There are too many young women in their 30s like Sarah tragically dying from breast cancer and we need to find out how we can more accurately identify those in whom it will develop.

‘Currently the only indicator we have is based on family history but this only helps predict one third of cases.

‘While there is research available in the over-40s, this will be the first study in young women.

‘With breast cancer still the leading cause of death in women under 50, we need to find ways to identify those most at risk and offer them breast screening to detect cancers earlier, when treatment is more likely to be successful.’

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Even in the darkest days of her cancer journey, Sarah Harding was a fearless advocate for research.

‘She bravely faced up to the pain the cancer caused her, undergoing treatment whilst thinking of ways to help other women in a similar position.

‘Since Sarah’s death, it has been inspiring to see people coming together in her memory to support life-saving research.

‘The money raised in Sarah’s name will go a long way towards diagnosing breast cancer earlier in younger women.

‘The Bcan-Ray project will fulfil Sarah’s dying wish to help women like her. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge science, we can look forward to the day where all women can live free from the fear of breast cancer.’

It comes after the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, thanked her social media followers today for their ‘kindness and support’ following her own breast cancer diagnosis.

She is now urging all people to get checked and said her diagnosis was a ‘wake up call’ to get ‘super fit’. 

The duchess, nicknamed Fergie, said she is ‘hugely thankful’ to hospital staff involved in the mammogram which detected her breast cancer and believes her experience ‘underlines the importance of regular screening’.

Sarah, 63, and Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, was diagnosed with an early form of the disease after a routine screening, her spokesman said, which had presented no symptoms.

After undergoing surgery at the private King Edward VII hospital in Marylebone, central London, she has been told her prognosis is good and she is recuperating at Windsor with her family.

In a statement, a spokesman said Sarah wanted to ‘express her immense gratitude to all the medical staff who have supported her in recent days’.

After Sarah Ferguson’s shock cancer diagnosis… here’s how YOU can check your breasts for cancer and the key signs to look out for

Sarah, Duchess of York, has undergone an operation to treat breast cancer, it has been revealed.

The 63-year-old duchess was diagnosed after a routine mammogram and has since undergone surgery, which her spokesperson said was successful.

Breast cancer is one of the most common forms of the disease in the UK, with around 55,000 women and 370 men being diagnosed with it each year, according to Breast Cancer Now. 

While breast cancer is highly treatable, it is crucial to spot it as early as possible, as the longer it goes without treatment the higher the risk it can pose.

Despite years of pleas from cancer charities, more than a third of women in the UK still do not regularly assess their breasts.

With thousands across the country unsure of how to spot the key signs of the potentially deadly cancer, here MailOnline gives a guide on how to check your breasts and other symptoms to look out for.

How and what should you check? 

Checking your breasts could help find signs of breast cancer early. This means you have a better chance of beating the disease, experts say.

It should be part of your monthly routine so you notice any unusual changes, charity CoppaFeel says.

But according to a YouGov survey commissioned by Breast Cancer Now, 39 per cent of women don’t bother.

More than half who do not check their breasts simply forget to, while 16 per cent do not know how to check. 

Dr Sarah Kayat, who, with the help of a topless cancer survivor, showed viewers on ITV’s This Morning how to perform a breast exam, said at-home breast exams save 1,300 lives in the UK each year.

You can check in the shower, when you are lying down in bed or in the mirror before you get dressed.  

Because breast tissue isn’t just found in your boobs, it’s also important that men and women check the tissue all the way up to their collarbone and underneath their armpit. 

There is no right or wrong way to check your breasts, as long as you know how your breasts usually look and feel, says the NHS.

But one of the most popular methods online involves using the pads of your fingers.  

Simply, rub and feel from top to bottom, feel in semi-circles and in a circular motion around your breast tissue to feel for any abnormalities, according to a guide shared in a blog post by the University of Nottingham. 

If you spot any changes you should get it checked out by your GP.  

Women aged between 50 and 70 should also be attending routine breast cancer screening. 

Check for… 

A lump or swelling

Using your fingers feel for lumps or swellings in the breast, upper armpit and chest.

A lump or an area of thickened breast tissue that doesn’t move easily is one of the first noticeable symptoms of breast cancer, says the NHS.

And according to the American Cancer Society, it’s the most common symptom. It says the lumps are often hard and painless.

But when feeling for unusual lumps and bumps it is important to know what is normal for you, experts say.

The NHS advises women get used to how their breasts feel at different times of the month. This is because some women have tender and lumpy breasts, near the armpit, around the time of their period.

The feel of your breasts can also change after the menopause as normal breasts can feel softer less firm and not as lumpy.

As well as checking for lumps, visible changes to the shape and size of the breast is also important.

Changes to the skin

Another common sign of breast cancer is a change the skin.

This can usually just be seen in the mirror and includes puckering or dimpling of the skin.

The dimpling skin is often compared to orange peel and can be associated with inflammatory breast cancer, which is a rare but aggressive form of cancer. 

A change in colour is also a warning sign to get checked out, says Breast Cancer Now.

If you notice your breast looks red or inflamed, it could be a sign of cancer.

Pain is only a symptom of breast cancer in rare cases, the NHS says. But if you feel pain or discomfort in one breast that doesn’t go away you should see your GP.

A nipple change

It’s important to not just check your breast tissue for abnormalities, but also your nipples, experts say.

Look for rashes or crusting around the nipple.

The NHS says this could look like eczema, crusting of the skin, scaly, itchy or red skin.

You should also check the position of your nipple, the NHS advises.

If it is being pulled in or starting to point in a different way to usual, it could be a sign of breast cancer.

Another warning sign to get checked out by your GP is discharge from either nipple.

Discharge is more common in ductal carcinoma in situ, which is an early form of breast cancer that starts in the milk ducts. 

Cancer Research says the discharge can also be blood stained.