The Checkup: Bikram Yoga Founder Accused of Rape, Human Trafficking

• Well, this isn’t good. Bikram Choudhury, founder of the patented 26-pose hot-yoga regimen, is headed to court after former students filed two lawsuits alleging rape, sexual assault and human trafficking. Yikes. Listen to this: “During weeks of gruelling training Choudhury singled out Jane Doe 2 [one of the women who filed the lawsuit] claiming she was ‘a piece of gold in a roomful of brass.’ His approaches became more sexual and were rebuffed. The suit alleges the exhausted student was raped when she was ‘too weak and overwrought to fight him off.'” [The Guardian]

• Cool new gadget alert: Someone invented a heart monitor that’s thinner than a dollar bill and the size of a postage stamp. [Futurity.org]

• Drink more water, people! A new study shows how rehydrating today (or not) can impact fitness performance tomorrow—in very real, very precise measurements. [Runner’s World]

• It might be time to rethink everything you think you know about salt and blood pressure. New recommendations from a group of experts say that maintaining the super-low, government-recommended daily-sodium-intake levels—1,500 milligrams of salt per day if you’re at risk for cardiac problems and 2,300 milligrams for everyone else—isn’t really doing anybody any good. To wit: “Evidence is too weak to determine whether limiting sodium intake to under 2,300 per day increases or decreases the risk of heart disease or stroke. …Similarly, the report suggests that, as of now, there isn’t enough evidence supporting the 1,500 milligram recommendation for at-risk people. [U.S. News and World Report]

• Go ahead and light up a joint—a little pot may just lower your diabetes risk, according to a new study. [Blisstree]

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