HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

Tips for Healthy Diet and Better Nutrition

2009-08-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

Healthy eating is not about strict nutrition philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible – all which can be achieved by learning some nutrition basics and incorporating them in a way that works for you.

Choose the types of foods that improve your health and avoid the types of foods that raise your risk for such illnesses as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Expand your range of healthy choices to include a wide variety of delicious foods. Learn to use guidelines and tips for creating and maintaining a satisfying, healthy diet.

Healthy Eating: Strategies for a healthy diet

Here are some tips for how to choose foods that improve your health and avoid foods that raise your risk for illnesses while creating a diet plan that works for you.

Eat enough calories but not too many. Maintain a balance between your calorie intake and calorie expenditure—that is, don't eat more food than your body uses. The average recommended daily allowance is 2,000 calories, but this depends on your age, sex, height, weight, and physical activity.

Eat a wide variety of foods. Healthy eating is an opportunity to expand your range of choices by trying foods—especially vegetables, whole grains, or fruits—that you don't normally eat.

Keep portions moderate, especially high-calorie foods. In recent years serving sizes have ballooned, particularly in restaurants. Choose a starter instead of an entrée, split a dish with a friend, and don’t order supersized anything.

Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes—foods high in complex carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, low in fat, and free of cholesterol. Try to get fresh, local produce

Drink more water. Our bodies are about 75% water. It is a vital part of a healthy diet. Water helps flush our systems, especially the kidneys and bladder, of waste products and toxins. A majority of Americans go through life dehydrated.

Limit sugary foods, salt, and refined-grain products. Sugar is added to a vast array of foods. In a year, just one daily 12-ounce can of soda (160 calories) can increase your weight by 16 pounds. See suggestions below for limiting salt and substituting whole grains for refined grains.

Don’t be the food police. You can enjoy your favorite sweets and fried foods in moderation, as long as they are an occasional part of your overall healthy diet. Food is a great source of pleasure, and pleasure is good for the heart – even if those French fries aren’t!

Get moving. A healthy diet improves your energy and feelings of well-being while reducing your risk of many diseases. Adding regular physical activity and exercise will make any healthy eating plan work even better.

Reference : http://helpguide.org/

Where's the health in health care reform?

2009-02-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

In the months and years ahead, you're going to hear a whole lot of talk about health care reform, but most of what you're going to hear is about reform, not health. You see, there's this great lie out there, this huge misconception, this big shell game, where all these politicians and power-hungry people think they can convince the public that health care reform is just about shifting paper around and deciding who pays.

But I say that you cannot talk about health care reform with any degree of honesty or credibility until you talk about health. None of the discussion I have seen from anybody out there – not the press, not the health care authorities, not the American Medical Association, not the politicians who are going to ride this issue all the way into public office – covers substantial ideas about actually making people healthier. So I ask: Where's the health in health care reform?

You can't reform your way out of chronic disease by changing who pays for it. You can't take away a nation of degenerative brain disorder sufferers and a whole generation of children who have been born with malfunctioning nervous systems because of the malnutrition the mothers have been experiencing. You can't take that away by changing who's writing the check. You can't solve obesity and diabetes by insuring all the uninsured. This is not a paperwork problem, yet that's the solution we hear out there. It's all about paperwork.

It's all trending towards a national system – a government-sponsored health care system, just like they have in Canada. Now, personally, I'm not necessarily for or against the government-sponsored system. I've seen countries do it very well; I've seen countries do it poorly, too. It's not the system that's good or bad; it's the idea that you can wiggle your way out of the health care crisis just by shuffling paperwork around and changing who's writing the checks to cover the costs.

Health care reform: Money vs. people
Now, let's get serious about this: If you want to reform health care, what are you really talking about here? You're talking about two things: Cost and people. And that's the order that most people think of them in, by the way. It's the money first. Why? As a nation, we're going bankrupt. We're already bankrupt, actually, but we're just making it even worse with these sky-high health care costs.

Our employers are going bankrupt trying to fund the health insurance of their employees. It makes U.S. workers unable to compete in the global marketplace. This is one of the reasons jobs are increasingly shifting overseas. It's because U.S. workers are just too expensive to insure due to our health care system (if you can call it that). I say you can't solve this problem by subsidizing insurance or by forcing employers to cover everybody. You can only solve the problem by making people healthier. You've got to address the health.

Now, secondly, it comes down to the people because now we have a whole nation of unprecedented illness and chronic disease. Anywhere from 25 to 46 percent of our nation is suffering from mental illness, depending on whom you ask. We have 40 percent of our people on prescription drugs – drugs that take away mental clarity and quality of life. These drugs are killing people at a rate that's approaching the Holocaust.

At the same time, we've got a nation with a public school system that continues to feed our children junk food, soft drinks and candy bars. The school lunch programs are a nutritional disaster. We've got hospitals serving hamburgers and fries. We've got hospitals where we can buy a pizza. "Come out of heart surgery and get yourself some extra cheese!"

Health reform starts with food reform
You see, all this talk about covering the uninsured and saving people money and all these ridiculous distractions like the Medicare drug discount card are all a shell game. It's all a show; it's just theater designed to keep people occupied so that nobody has to talk about the real issues.

The real issues start with the foods – that's right, the foods. These products are manufactured by big businesses that have a whole lot of influence in Washington, and they don't want anybody talking about them because their foods are causing these diseases. It's all that added sugar and white flour, and all those refined carbohydrates. You've got hydrogenated oils that function as brain poison and heart poison in the human body. You've got sodium nitrate that causes cancer. That's why people who consume processed meats have a risk of pancreatic cancer that is 67% percent higher than everybody else. You've got added salts, artificial colors, all kinds of preservatives and monosodium glutamate (MSG) hidden in foods. It all starts with the foods, so all this talk about who's going to pay for the disease is all just a distraction so no one has to talk about the foods and the beverages that are causing these diseases in the first place.

The food and beverage companies, of course, would love to keep it that way. They would love for everybody to just keep arguing over who's paying these sky-high prescription drug prices while ignoring the simple fact that prevention programs and junk food advertising bans could make prescription drugs practically irrelevant. Of course, all these drug companies say they need the money to "find a cure for cancer." What a brilliant con!

You don't need to find a cure for cancer if you stop poisoning the public with the national food supply. You don't need a cure for cancer if nobody has cancer. The way you have a population that's cancer-free is to teach people about the healing power of sunlight – about getting some sunlight and some vitamin D. You teach people to avoid these dangerous ingredients and you ban them from the food supply: You outlaw hydrogenated oils. You outlaw refined sugar. You outlaw sodium nitrate. That's what you do if you want to reform health care.

It's the only approach that makes any sense. It's the only sane approach. That's exactly why no one's talking about it. No, we can't have anything that actually works in this country because the pharmaceutical industry would lose money. What would all those people who work for the hospitals do and what would the drug companies and all those drug reps and doctors do? Gee, what would people do for jobs if so many people weren't so sick?

Big Business makes big bucks off a nation of diseased people
Health care and all the discussion about health care reform is really a discussion about managing a nation of diseased people. It's not about ending disease. It's not about curing cancer. It's not about preventing heart disease. It's about managing these illnesses. The question essentially becomes: "How are we going to keep people on just enough prescription drugs so we make a lot of money from them, but not so many that it kills them?" That's basically the strategy of Big Pharma. "How are we going to extract a whole lot of profits out of the general public and call it science-based medicine?"

There are all sorts of people – most of them in Washington D.C. – who are scheming about how to make this happen. And sitting to the right of them is, of course, the food industry – the Big Sugar people, the oil processors and the grain processors – the big food companies. They're all saying, "Hey, don't mention the foods. Don't talk about us. Make sure you frame this whole discussion of health care reform in terms of who pays for it and who gets coverage." That's because if they can keep you in that little box of thought, then you won't talk about the causes of these diseases, which are largely found in foods.

Then over on the left side of these decision makers, you've got reps from the pharmaceutical industry, and they're saying, "Make sure our drugs are covered because we want to keep selling drugs and have the government pay for them. That way we'll shift money from the pockets of taxpayers to ourselves and our investors and we'll call it public health."

Wow, what a great scheme, and if the FDA is protecting the U.S. drug market, they can set any price they want because the FDA will say the drugs from overseas are dangerous. The drugs you buy in the United States are perfectly safe, but if you buy the exact same chemical compound from Canada, "No, no, those are dangerous. You're unpatriotic. How dare you buy them from overseas? You must buy them here in America where we set the prices." It's called a monopoly. It's called protectionism. It's called screwing the U.S. consumer and it's what's going on right now, every single day in America.

Everyone's out to make a buck
Unless we see a radical shift towards disease prevention rather than disease treatment in this country, what we're really going to end up with is a health care system that is ultimately designed to do two things. Number one: Extract as much money as possible from the taxpayers and shift it into the pockets of drug companies. Number two: Distract people from the real causes of disease so that everyone continues to believe that disease is just a matter of bad luck or bad genes, and that only drugs can treat or cure any disease.

It seems that everybody out there is greedy and wants to make more money. And most don't really care who suffers in order to make that money. The politicians, they want to get in power. How do you get in power? You keep big, rich companies happy. That's how you get in power, and that's how you stay in power. And once you're in power, you thank them by passing new legislation that makes sure there is a windfall of public money headed in their direction.

And how do you do that? You announce the Medicare drug discount card and make it illegal for the government to negotiate volume discounts with drug companies. You mandate mental health screening for the entire population. You make sure that health insurance has to cover Viagra even if it's being prescribed to sex offenders, which is exactly what's going on in this country. That's a good example of how insane our health insurance industry and health care coverage really is. We're using taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for people who have been convicted of sex crimes.

Health care reform goes far beyond crunching numbers
Now, I repeat my first statement here, which is that you can't have an honest debate about health care reform unless you address the issue of health. Yet in the months and years ahead, you're going to see a whole lot of people out there with all kinds of credentials, degrees and positions of authority, who are going to try to convince you, the consumer, that health care reform has nothing to do with heath. It only has to do with promoting a financial shell game by pushing nonsensical ideas like "the government here to rescue you." We're going to mandate coverage for all drugs and it's going to be paid for by the government.

They don't talk about who funds the government: The taxpayers. It's your money. It's just a matter of how you wish to redistribute it. And frankly, if our nation continues to be so diseased (cancer, obesity and diabetes are all at record heights), then we're going to basically drive ourselves into extreme poverty because you cannot afford to keep funding chronic disease and the treatment of symptoms through prescription drugs and expensive medical procedures. You can't keep doing that over and over, with the same patients, generation after generation, if you want your nation to be financially solvent. You just can't keep doing that. You can't spend 25 percent of the GDP on health care and be the world economic leader. Do the math.

You've got other nations spending a fraction of that on health care. They manage to cover everybody. Most nations will spend at least one or ten percent of their health care budget on prevention. But here in the U.S., we don't spend anything on prevention. Nothing. In this country, we think prevention should almost be outlawed. "How dare you teach people about nutrition? It's unproven," say these doctors, medical researchers, medical journals and corrupt health authorities. "How dare you teach people to heal themselves with foods?" They want to outlaw healing. They want to outlaw nutrition. They want to make sure people only choose drugs. Choose drugs: that's what makes money for the people in power.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
The bottom line is that if you have a nation of people who are healthy, your health care costs plummet. Do you know what my own personal health care expenses are? Zero. I spend nothing on over-the-counter or prescription drugs and nothing on doctors; nothing whatsoever.

I do spend some of my money on prevention, of course. How do I do that? I visit natural health care practitioners and naturopaths to keep me healthy – not because something hurts or is falling off, not because I'm having a heart attack, or I'm going blind or I'm having seizures and my leg went numb because I'm diabetic and I'm still drinking soft drinks by the gallon. I'm going to my health practitioners because I want to stay healthy. It's all about prevention, people. Prevention is dirt cheap. So is good nutrition.

A drugged nation can't think clearly about health
Now, here's the ironic thing about all of this: No matter what health care reforms they come up with and try to pitch to the public, no matter how ludicrous and insane they may seem, most people will buy into them because half the nation is drugged. I'm not making this up. Half the nation is literally drugged up. They've lost mental clarity. They can't think straight. They can't make good decisions anymore. They've got brain fog side effects from their prescription drugs (like anti-inflammatory drugs).

So, when a politician comes along and says, "We're going to provide universal health care and cover everybody," people are going to say, "I'm voting for you!" But they don't realize what it means. What it means is financial bankruptcy because, again, if you don't address the health, there is no real solution. We are at a crossroads here in terms of the history of human civilization on this planet. What's going to happen to this particular nation, the United States of America?

I think that if we had some courage, some honesty and some people who were willing to stand up and tell the truth, we could turn this around. We could ban junk food advertising to children. We could ban dangerous ingredients. We could arrest the criminals at the drug companies and decision makers at the FDA who have deliberately put us in this mess. We could reform the USDA and break the ties between food companies and regulators. There are people in government who have been colluding with the very industries they are supposed to be regulating.

With some major changes in place, in one generation we could have a nation of really healthy and happy children who have the ability to learn well, who are emotionally balanced and who are not predisposed to diseases like schizophrenia, type 2 diabetes, heart disease or obesity. We could have a nation that could get back to doing some good things, some creative things, and a nation that could take a leadership role in the world.

But we've got to make that decision now because, if we don't make that decision, if we go the other way – that is, the way of protecting special interest groups, protecting the corrupt profits of drug companies and keeping the FDA in power so it can continue to exploit public health in order to send more profits to the drug companies – if we make this decision, we keep protecting the politicians that act on the interests of private business instead of protecting the public. If we allow junk food companies to keep marketing to children, if we allow our schools to be infiltrated by all these foods that promote disease and learning disabilities and aggressive behavior in young children, then we are doomed as a nation. We really are. We're heading down the path of self destruction and we won't be the first nation to go down in history as one that imploded.

America could fall, simply from bad health
You might recall that the Roman Empire did sort of the same thing. It's amazing what a bit of heavy metal in the plumbing will do for a city. In the case of ancient Rome, the lead poisoning drove the citizens (and their leaders) mad. But today, instead of poisoning ourselves with lead, we are poisoning ourselves with food additives. We are doing it consciously. We know it's happening. It isn't a mystery, but we are allowing it to happen because the special interest groups are running the country; they are arm-twisting these politicians who don't have the courage to stand up and do what's right for the people.

If we don't make some changes fast, we're going to get past the point of sanity. We may be past that point already. We're going to get to a point where maybe 60 or 70 percent of the people in this country are diseased and beyond the ability to think. How do you run a democracy when 60 or 70 percent of the people don't have the presence of mind to even vote rationally? How do you run a democracy like that? Well, you don't. It's gone. It's basically run by the special interest groups, just a few people in power who are acting like it's a democracy. I think that's actually where we are today.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we can turn this around, but I don't see any indication of it. I don't see any honest discussion of health care reform, do you? Look around out there! We don't see people talking about health care reform and saying, "We need to address the health: We need to ban dangerous food ingredients. We need to teach people about sunlight and water. We need to educate mothers on how to have good nutrition for their children." Have you seen any of that going on out there? I haven't and I've been paying attention. I review hundreds of news articles every single week and I haven't seen a word about this. It's all about who pays for the drugs.

A nation invested in disease must change from the top down
We are a nation invested in disease. There are so many vested interests in chronic disease that it's almost impossible to change the system incrementally. You have to really reform this system from the top down. You have to overhaul it; you have to unleash a health care revolution.

All the top Fortune 500 companies out there (and a lot of people's egos, careers and positions of power) are all invested in disease. Did you know the top ten drug companies in America make more money than the other 490 companies on the Fortune 500 list?

On top of that, you've got the American Cancer Society, which is based on cancer. You've got the American Diabetes Association, which is based on diabetes. You've got drug companies that are counting on the next wave of Alzheimer's patients and counting on another generation of obese children growing up and consuming these foods so that they're obese just like their parents are today. They are counting on all of this. They've mapped this out and they're rolling out new, patented drugs to cash in!

So, what happens if you try to challenge this system? Oh boy, you're in for a ride! You're going to be discredited. You're going to be censored. You're going to be attacked because there's simply too much money at stake here. Politicians and power brokers are counting on this disease to pay some salaries, make some profit, pocket some cash and to keep them in office because when there's a health care crisis going on, somebody can always get elected by promising a solution, regardless of whether or not that solution makes any sense.

Any real solution to health care must involve addressing health; any solution that addresses health must challenge the status quo; any solution that challenges the status quo will be viciously attacked by the interests that already hold positions of power and profit in our nation. So, you see how this system is very difficult to change. In fact, if I was a betting man – and I'm not – I would bet that this system's going to implode. I don't think we're going to turn this around.

I think only a few individuals are going to emerge from this with any degree of sanity or health, and those will be the individuals who take charge of their own health, who work outside the system, who find a naturopath, who say no to prescription drugs and who start feeding themselves healing foods and outstanding nutrition. They'll be parents who take charge of the health of their children and don't feed them soft drinks and candy bars and who don't allow them to eat those nutritionally depleted school lunches. These are the people who are going to emerge from this system as being sane, healthy and emotionally balanced.

But the masses will probably never come around to the power of nutrition. If you have a nation of people who are mad (who don't have fully functioning nervous systems), I don't think you can last very long in the competitive global marketplace. You've got people in India who make top U.S. students seem retarded. You've got people in China who work for a fraction of what we work for. You've got schools with real quality standards all around the world; meanwhile, in America, we have daycare that we call public education. We're stuffing our children full of these toxic foods, just to make sure they don't "misbehave." You can't compete like that anymore.

No health discussion = No health care solution
Unless we make some changes and really start talking about the health in health care reform, nothing's going to change. It will just be the status quo applied to another generation of sorry, suckered Americans who are now chronically diseased just like their parents. To drive this point home, America used to be number one in a lot of things: We used to be number one in information technology and computer programming. We used to be number one in science and math. You know what we're number one in today? Mental illness. We are the best in the world at driving our population mad. That's right, mental illness – number one in the world; no one comes close to us. We're also number one in obesity.

Here in the U.S., we poisoned an entire generation with fast food, sugars and hydrogenated oils. We made sure they never got good nutrition. We drove them mad with violent television programming, violent video games and insane public school systems. We did a good number on those kids, didn't we? What are we going to do when those kids grow up and they have diseases? What are we going to do then? There's an estimate out there that says that 100 percent of the population will be diabetic if the current trends continue – just in the next decade or so, 100 percent. Think about that and then think about the real conversation out there about health care reform. Remember, if you don't address health, any discussion is essentially pointless.

It's like the captain of a sinking ship arguing about the color of the deck paint.

Now frankly, if the mentally unstable people who run this country were crazy enough to put me in charge of the national health system, oh my, we would have this thing licked in a couple of years. Every pharmaceutical company out there would hate me and the food companies would hate me because I'd make them use nutritious ingredients. I would outlaw those toxic substances that are now added to the food supply (like MSG, aspartame, yeast extract, etc.).

I would make school lunch programs actually serve nutritious food to children. I would ban junk food vending machines. I would have the taxpayers pay for nutritional supplements for all pregnant women because we would save billions of dollars in long-term health care costs by spending PENNIES on nutrition for each expectant mother. I would have some pretty radical ideas that would definitely disturb the status quo. Not surprisingly, we'd end up with a generation of people who are actually healthy.

Wow, imagine that for a change. Drug companies would go out of business. And that's why they can't let it happen. That's why they would never let a guy like me, or even someone with a lot of public health credentials who shared my beliefs, call the shots. It's just too good. It solves so many problems. It eliminates all these jobs in the health care and disease management industries. It would shrink the pharmaceutical industry. It would shrink the sick care system out there. Hospital beds would go empty.

People would live longer and start collecting more social security because now they'd be living longer. The government would have to pay more money because these people wouldn't be dying off as they are today. It would cost the government and the pharmaceutical companies money. Gee, the only people that would be better off would be... well... real people! The public would experience happier people, longer lives, greater cognitive function, greater clarity of mind and healthier, happier children. There would be far less disease, more stable mental states and enhanced learning abilities. These are the benefits that would occur.

So, call me a pessimist if you like, but I think I'm actually a realist and an optimist on a personal level. I'm an optimist in my own health and the health of everybody who wants to take responsibility for their own health. And there are many, many people like that. Just don't expect to hear anything sane or useful from our public health officials or politicians who claim to be solving this health crisis with their ridiculous proposals for health care reform. This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, for Truth Publishing.

Reposting from naturalnews[dot]com

Healthy lifestyle reduces women's stroke risk

2009-02-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

Women who are non-smokers, exercise regularly, have a healthy diet, including moderate alcohol consumption, and otherwise live a healthy lifestyle may have a reduced risk of stroke, according to a report in the July 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

About 700,000 strokes occur each year in the United States, approximately one-fourth of which are fatal and an additional one-fourth of which leave patients permanently disabled, according to background information in the article. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, the more common type, in which a blocked artery causes a lack of blood flow to the brain; and hemorrhagic, which occurs when a ruptured blood vessel causes blood to leak into the brain. Several individual risk factors, including smoking, exercise and body mass index (BMI), have been linked to stroke. However, in contrast to studies assessing risk for heart disease and diabetes, researchers have not previously examined how the combination of these behaviors may contribute to stroke.

Tobias Kurth, M.D., Sc.D., Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues studied the association between healthy lifestyles and stroke risk in 37,636 women age 45 years or older. At the beginning of the study, in 1993, the women answered questions about their smoking habits, alcohol consumption, diet, exercise routine and body mass index. From their responses, the researchers gave each woman a health index score that ranged from zero to 20, with a higher score indicating a healthier lifestyle. Healthy behavior was defined as never smoking, consuming four to 10.5 alcoholic drinks per week, exercising four or more times per week, having a body mass index of less than 22 and maintaining a healthy diet. This included consuming high levels of cereal fiber, folate and omega-3 fatty acids, a high ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated fat and low levels of trans fat and glycemic load.

During an average of 10 years of follow-up, 450 women had strokes; 356 were ischemic, 90 were hemorrhagic and four were undefined. The 4.7 percent of women with 17 to 20 health index points had a significantly lower risk of stroke overall and of ischemic stroke specifically than women with zero to four health index points. This association remained significant even when the researchers considered some of the common consequences of unhealthy lifestyles, including high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.

"In this large prospective cohort of apparently healthy women, a healthy lifestyle was associated with a substantial and statistically significant reduction in the risk of total and ischemic stroke with no apparent benefit in the incidence of hemorrhagic stroke," the authors conclude. "Our findings show the importance of healthy behaviors in the prevention of total and ischemic stroke." (Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:1403-1409. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org.)

What is a Healthy Lifestyle ?

2009-02-25T18:14:00.000-08:00

What is a Healthy Lifestyle?

According to a study by Michigan State University, a healthy lifestyle is defined by four basic criteria:

Not smoking
Holding weight down
Eating right
Exercising

Of the 153,000 respondents, only 3% participated in all four of what are termed healthy lifestyle characteristics.

“We have millions of people now going through adult life leading unhealthy lifestyles and a medical system that can treat illnesses and keep you alive longer than ever before,” said Mathew Reeves, a Michigan State University epidemiologist. “If we don’t turn this around, the costs to society are going to be crippling.”

What can be done to help people change?

Everyone talks about achieving it, but most people have plenty of excuses as to why they can’t, won’t, or don’t want to change their current status. The most common excuse people make for not trying to have a healthy lifestyle is “a lack of time.” Have you ever said to yourself, “Oh, I’m tired, I don’t have time to exercise?” or “I don’t feel like cooking dinner tonight; let’s just get some fast food.”

Yes Dorothy, excuses are real and they are contagious.

Time and health always seem to be at odds with each other. We have time to work, time to commute, time for our business associates, but very little time to spend on ourselves, people we love, or even random people who deserve our attention.

What can you do in 10 minutes or less?

More than you think. In a brief 10 minute window you can release tension, prevent future frustrations, get your blood flowing, etc. In fact, here are 50 things you can do. With time out as an excuse, what are you going to begin doing differently tomorrow? I don't care what it is, the point is, just do something!

Here are some ideas. If you have other thoughts, leave them in the comments!

1. Brush your teeth

2. Do 15 sit-ups

3. Read the health news headlines of the day

4. Straighten your posture

5. Eat an apple

6. Stand up and stretch

7. Send a friendly email to a friend

8. Resist the impulse purchase of a candy bar

9. Post an inspirational quote on Twitter

10. Do 10 lunges

11. Drink a glass of water

12. Smile

13. Put a package of oatmeal in your pocket or purse for a healthy breakfast or snack

14. Throw a bottle of water in there as well

15. Plug your cell phone into the charger

16. Pay a bill online

17. Ask to have your salad dressing on the side

18. Start a dollar jar to be added to once per day

19. Open a window

20. Say thank you to someone who deserves it

21. Take a deep breath

22. Put on your seat belt

23. Wake up 10 minutes earlier

24. Post a comment on a blog

25. Turn off the lights when you’re the last one out

26. Put on your make-up (this usually pertains to the ladies, but hey, whatever makes you happy)

27. Share a healthy recipe

28. Give your mother a call

29. Wash your hands

30. Put on hand lotion

31. Check your blood pressure

32. Jog in place for 9 minutes

33. Throw away that pen that doesn’t work

34. Take a canvas tote bag to the grocery store

35. Ask a friend to join you for a healthy dinner

36. Put down the remote control and get up to change the TV channel

37. Hug your kids

38. Replace your next cup of coffee with a cup of tea

39. Lay out your clothes for the next day

40. Put your car keys in the same place everyday

41. Take a 10 minute break

42. Suck on a breath mint

43. Add a little pepper to your salad

44. Load the dishwasher

45. Play FreeRice for 5 minutes

46. Take a quick walk

47. Prepare your coffee maker the night before

48. Skip your late evening grocery store run

49. While watching TV, do 5 push-ups during the commercial

50. Read this list over again and count how many things pertain to you

These things take no time at all but they all could ensure a positive day and a healthier lifestyle. How many of these do you or can you do in a day? What other things can you add to the list?

Whatever you choose to do, make your day healthier and happier. If you can, do the same for someone else too, because, after all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle!

Healthy Eating

2009-02-25T17:28:00.001-08:00

The following recommendations are for non-pregnant women.

Milk Group - 2-3 servings

milk, yogurt, low-fat cheese

Protein - 2-4 servings

fish, chicken, turkey, beans, nuts, eggs

Vegetables - 3-5 servings

Fruit Group - 2-4 servings

At least one should be citrus

Bread, Cereal, Rice & Pasta
6-11 servings:

Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.

Limit excessive salt intake. Spices can spice up your food. Use caffeine in moderation.
Use fats, sugars, and oils in moderation

Know What You Eat

2009-02-25T17:23:00.000-08:00

There are so many things that we don’t know about what we eat, and most of these things are easily revealed in ingredient labels.

We become what we put into our mouths and if we look at the ingredient label we will definitely be shocked at what we have been making ourselves into.

There are food items containing ingredients that have very complex names that sound like they should not be on your plate but on some chemist’s scientific journal. Other products don’t necessarily contain what they initially claim to have on the front cover.

Some foods that claim to have whole grains may actually contain a lot of sugar instead of grains; some even claim to have no trans-fat but the ingredients list would reveal the presence of partially hydrogenated oils which are sources of trans fat. Some of these ingredients in your food will actually make you go blue!

Reading the ingredients list is a good measure to keep us aware of what food products actually contain. Here, there is a rule of thumb - the ingredients are listed according to the amounts present in the food product, hence, the first two or three ingredients are those that compose the bulk of the food item. The ingredients at the end part of the list are present in very negligible amounts.

There are a few things to notice when checking out the ingredients list:

Look for the word ‘whole’ like in ‘whole grains’.

Products claiming to contain this ingredient should have a good helping of this component in the product, so the word ‘whole’ referring to wheat, oats, rye, or other grains should either be the first or second item on the ingredients list of breakfast cereals, crackers, pasta, and bread. To further verify this, check the fiber content of the food item on the nutrition facts panel. If indeed, your food item contains whole grains, then it is supposed to deliver at least 3 grams of fiber per serving or even more.

Be wary of hidden sugars like fructose, sucrose, or dextrose.

The roster of foods containing a wide selection of sugars has grown in leaps and bounds; these sugars are heavy on calories but low on nutritional content. All ingredients with the ‘ose’ at the end are sugars. The same goes for honey and corn sweeteners. These two sweeteners have a similar effect on the body’s metabolism as other forms of sugar; as such they can contribute to weight problems. The amount of sugar in the product can be seen at the nutrient facts section. It would help to know that four to five grams of sugar is equivalent to one teaspoon.

Products that contain partially hydrogenated oils are sources of the dreaded trans-fat.

This kind of fat damages your arteries more than saturated fat. The ‘trans-fat free’ claim actually allows up to half a gram of trans fat per serving, so, it would be wise to check on the partially hydrogenated oils content instead. If you regularly consume an item that has partially hydrogenated oils, then make the healthy choice and junk this food product, but keep balance in mind. Replacing partially hydrogenated oils with saturated fat can be just as harmful. Healthy alternatives would include tub margarines, canola, corn, safflower, soybean, and sunflower oils which contain liquid vegetable oil and no more than two grams of saturated fat per tablespoon.

Look out for the dreadful artificials.

Artificial sweeteners like sucralose, saccharin, aspartame and acesulfame can actually help you cut down on your calorie intake, but be warned, because you should take these only in moderation or pose serious health risks to yourself. These artificial sweeteners can be very dangerous in large quantities. If you are a soda-monster and you opt for sugar-free or diet soda, you might as well switch to flavored, carbonated water beverages.

Foods with sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate can be cancerous.

These ingredients, which are used as meat preservatives, are quite controversial. There are claims that these chemicals can interact with some medications, damage DNA, and pose a cancer risk.

Beware of the bad colors.

Artificial colorings in food also give you an artificial sense of pleasure because these don’t add any nutritional value to your food and some may even be dangerous. Food colorings like Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 40, Red 3, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, and Orange B which are commonly found in cereals, candies, sodas, and snack foods, may make your food look pretty but don’t exactly give you a pretty bill of health.

Bad boy flavor enhancer.

The flavor enhancer, Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) may not be seriously dangerous but some people tend to have hypersensitivity reactions to this additive. There are those who experience headache, flushing, sweating, palpitations, and shortness of breath.

Healthy Life Style

2009-02-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

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Basically this web contains informations about health and guides to become healthy people. Guides that describes how to maintain personal health, so the body is always become healthy and in good condition. Hopefully the articles in this web can be helpful for you to find the solution of living healthy.

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