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.

Jennifer Garner braves the rain as she gets in an early morning jog near her Brentwood home

By Sam Joseph Semon For Dailymail.com

Updated: 03:05 EDT, 3 September 2023

There’s a leak in parliament! Stormy weather stops MPs during question time as rain starts seeping through the roof of the House of Representatives chamber

• Australian MPs were forced to deal with a leak at parliament house
• Speaker Bronwyn Bishop called for a mop and bucket
• The nation’s capital was pelted with rain, hail and lightning as a severe thunderstorm passed through Wednesday afternoon 

By Amy Ziniak for Daily Mail Australia

Updated: 08:33 EDT, 3 December 2014

Stassi Schroeder in tears as rain pours through light fixtures and nursery is damaged in Hurricane Hilary… one month before birth of second child

By Cassie Carpenter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 00:38 EDT, 21 August 2023 | Updated: 00:38 EDT, 21 August 2023

It’s fair to say it’s been a somewhat topsy-turvy British summer.

Last month’s heatwave brought with it temperatures in excess of 86F (30C) and made it the UK’s warmest June on record. But as July arrived, so did the rain.

Worse still, forecasters now expect this dreary weather to continue for much of August, dashing hopes of a warm end to the summer holidays.

That is in stark contrast to the extreme heat experienced by most of Europe, as back-to-back heatwaves ushered in record-breaking temperatures and wildfires across the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu.

So why has Britain had rain while the continent has sweltered in unbearable heat? The answer, Met Office experts and scientists have told MailOnline, lies in the arrival of a series of low pressure systems above the UK which have been held in place by a ‘blocked weather pattern’.

Essentially, this low pressure is what is ‘in charge of weather right now in the UK’, according to the Met Office.

It has been pushed in from the Atlantic because of the position of the jet stream – a fast moving strip of air high up in the atmosphere that’s responsible for steering weather systems towards Britain.

Normally it is to the north of the country during the summer and to the south in winter, but for July it has staunchly remained to the south, bringing with it miserable weather.

‘In recent weeks, the jet stream has been locked in quite a rigid pattern, to the south of the UK,’ said Met Office spokesperson Stephen Dixon.

‘For us, on the northern side of the jet stream, what it has meant is for low pressure systems to move off the Atlantic towards the UK, bringing us periods of wet and windy weather that you wouldn’t typically associated with summer.’

He added that this was also responsible for allowing high pressure to dominate in Europe, causing the extreme heat which has been commonplace this month. 

The bad news, however, is that we likely won’t be seeing such high pressure any time soon. 

Forecasters don’t anticipate the hot weather returning to the UK until towards the end of August at the earliest.

‘When the jet stream is to the north of the UK – as it often is in the summer – this is when there’s a higher likelihood of warmer, more settled weather, though that isn’t in the forecast for this week,’ Mr Dixon said.

‘There are some signals for more settled interludes of weather later in August, with more dry weather, though this is uncertain at present. 

‘There are no signals for prolonged or excessive heat at the moment, though more settled weather is likely later in the month.’

According to scientists, another reason we have endured such wet weather while Europe has been blanketed by heat is because of what is known as a ‘blocked weather pattern’. 

Professor Richard Allan, an expert in climate science at the University of Reading, told MailOnline that atmospheric Rossby waves – or planetary waves – created by the Earth’s rotation were partly responsible for the two extremes.

‘When giant, planetary waves in the atmosphere become blocked they can cause relentless heat to build in some regions, like we’ve seen in parts of North America, southern Europe and areas of Asia,’ he said.

‘But also intense rainfall and flooding in others, or just persistent cool and showery conditions like the UK is currently experiencing.’

Professor Nigel Arnell, of the University of Reading’s Meteorology Department, agreed.

‘It’s the blocking which has made the European heatwave so extreme, so there is a connection between the hot conditions in Europe and the windy/cool conditions in the UK.’

But it’s not just planetary waves that get blocked – the jet stream can also stall weather patterns. 

If this flow of winds is rushing quickly in a straight line from west to east then the weather often changes day to day.

When it weakens and becomes bendy or wavy, however, that’s when we get stuck with certain conditions for longer.

At the moment that’s cooler and wetter weather, but in June it was hot. In fact, most of this year has seen conditions persist for many weeks.

For instance, January began unsettled but February was the driest in the UK since 1993, before March was Britain’s wettest March on record.

April and May were largely cooler than normal before the heat stepped up a notch in June.

Why are weather patterns persisting for longer then? Climate change is a distinct possibility, according to some experts.

There are studies which suggest that global warming might be making blocked weathers patterns more common.

The problem in relation to the jet stream however is that it naturally has waves, so just how much impact, if any, climate change is having is unclear.

But Professor Allan added that ‘it would be surprising if the unprecedented ocean warming patterns due to human-caused climate change were not disrupting the planetary waves and jet streams of air many kilometres above our head that affect our weather patterns’.

With the Arctic region warming more quickly than areas further south there is certainly an argument to be made that climate change is interfering with the jet stream.

That is because the flow of atmospheric winds is driven by the contrast in temperatures north-to-south, meaning that if this lessens the jet stream could weaken longer term and become wavy more frequently, sparking a prolonged type of weather.

What is more certain, Professor Allan said, is that global warming is ‘intensifying the heatwaves, droughts and deluges where and when they occur’.

‘Without rapid cuts in the climate warming greenhouse gases we’re emitting, these extremes of weather across the world will continue to worsen,’ he added.

Professor Arnell said climate change ‘has two big effects’.

‘The first is to raise temperatures in general, so when blocking conditions arise then the resulting heatwave is more intense. 

‘The second effect is on what we call the dynamics of weather – the features such as cyclones, anticyclones, jet streams and blocking patterns. 

‘This is effect is much more complicated to unravel, but it’s fair to say that climate change has disrupted these dynamic systems because it alters the temperature gradients between equator and pole and it has led to warmer sea surface temperatures. 

‘So whilst we can’t say yet that what is happening now is totally due to climate change, we can say that it is consistent with what we expect the effects of climate change to be.’

He added: ‘We’re poking the climate system by adding greenhouse gases, and we therefore can no longer expect to get “normal” weather.’

Whether climate change is making blocked weather patterns more likely or not, it is certainly intensifying the extremes when they do get locked in for longer in a certain region.

At the moment that’s a cold spell for the UK. Last month it was a heatwave. The question is what will follow next month and beyond.