Health And Fitness Article

A large study has found that some of the most popular pain pills are associated with a higher risk of heart-related deaths.

Researchers investigated the health records of more than a million healthy people over the age of 10.  They found some pain medications were linked to more heart-related deaths than others.

According to ABC News:

Australia's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jim Bishop, has announced that after considering the results of a comprehensive study regarding the safety of seasonal flu vaccine, he has advised the suspension of season flu vaccination for healthy children under the age of five years.

The investigation found no compelling biological, epidemiological or clinical factors which might explain the observed rates of fever with convulsions among very young children.

According to Medical News Today:

Bright light therapy can have significant effects on sleep disturbances associated with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Bright light therapy was also shown to produce a moderate improvement in PTSD symptoms and depression.

A study looked 16 soldiers with combat-related PTSD.  Eight of the soldiers received 10,000 lux of bright light therapy for 30 minutes each day. The other eight participants were assigned to a placebo group and received sham treatment with an inactivated negative ion generator.

According to Eurekalert:

People with chronic insomnia have an elevated risk of death. Research indicates that the adjusted hazard ratio for all-cause mortality was three times higher in people with chronic insomnia.

The risk of death was elevated for all subtypes of insomnia. The risk of death was highest in individuals with chronic early-awakening insomnia or chronic sleep-maintenance insomnia associated with difficulty getting back to sleep.

According to Science Daily:

On Monday February 26, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) held a press conference that put the spotlight upon several chain restaurants which offer single-course menu items each loaded with 2,000 calories or more. In their March issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter, the article titled X-treme Eating: Increasingly Indulgent Menus Entice Diners to Pig Out detailed the caloric and fat content of these dishes. Many contained over a day’s requirement of calories and more than two days worth of fat. CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson is pushing for city, state, and federal laws requiring nutrition information on chain restaurant menus.

In response to this report, Philadelphia City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown (pictured at left) proposed a measure requiring chain restaurants that operate within the city to provide nutrition information for their menu items. Required information includes caloric content, fat, carbohydrate and sodium. The proposition has been praised by CSPI as well as by Sara Solomon of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education. “Knowledge, if not power, is at least progress,” stated Solomon, in regards to fighting the obesity epidemic.

Says Councilwoman Brown, “Consumers want to know.” And by all indications, she’s absolutely right. Customers who were interviewed on the street by Philly’s ABC news affiliate WPVI seemed to whole-heartedly support her new proposal. As they exited chain restaurants, they were asked if knowing the caloric content of the dishes would affect how they order. One young woman from Ridley Park said, ” If I knew what was in [the food items], and the calorie intake, would I change my mind? Absolutely.”

A WPVI reporter placed calls to members of the Philadelphia’s restaurant industry. He received no response. (I imagine that the restauranteurs are all busy getting in contact with the NRA — no, not the gun people… The NationalRestaurant Association — to learn what their collective answer should be. I also imagine that their answer will have much more to do with the well-being of their restaurants’ profits than with the health and well-being of their customers.)

What do you think? Would you support a menu labelling proposal if your city representative suggested it?

For a few years, my kids had almost the same breakfast every morning – cheerios in soy milk, occasionally with a piece of fruit on the side. We didn’t do dairy and I didn’t want them to have sugar, so this seemed the best option to me at the time. They loved this breakfast.

Awhile back, I was looking for a healthier option to this breakfast. I was reading some things about soy that concerned me, especially since my kids were having it every single day – and I was also looking for ways to increase their fruit and veggie intake.

So here are 2 ideas I eventually came up with and now they’re staples that my kids beg for in the morning! They haven’t asked for either cheerios or soy milk in quite awhile.

Idea 1: 
Fruit smoothie – blend a few ripe bananas with water, add another fruit – strawberry, mango, date… the possibility is endless. A plain banana based smoothie is actually more delicious than one would think. You don’t *have* to add yogurt or soy or dairy or protein powders in there! It’s good all by itself. (I would argue, that it’s BETTER all by itself). :)

Idea 2: 
Banana milk and fruit cereal bowl. Blend 2-3 bananas with enough water to make a milk-like consistency, pour into a bowl of diced fruit pieces and little berries. You can add a few nuts too if you want, but fruit alone digests better in your stomach. It looks VERY attractive because the banana milk is light yellow and the fruit pieces are very colorful! My kids’ favorite fruits to go in their cereal are the berries – blueberries, raspberries, blackberries.

Lots of women want to get pregnant fast. They rely heavily on knowing their ovulation period through charting their period, knowing their daily basal body temperature, testing with ovulation predictor kits and so on, but they often forget one of the most basic factors for getting pregnant. That is, having a healthy diet.

Diet is known by many as cutting food intake to remain thin, but it’s a common misconception. A healthy diet is taking the right foods in the right amounts. Having a healthy diet to increase fertility can have a positive impact on women who want to be fertile.

It’s not healthy being obese or underweight, especially if you want to get pregnant. It can have a profound effect in your reproductive health.

Most obese and undernourished women experience irregular menstrual cycles, which can affect a woman’s ovulation. A woman who does not ovulate regularly will have difficulty in getting pregnant because they can’t track when their most fertile days are.

So it is important to have a healthy diet if you want to get pregnant easily. It’s helpful to cut out smoking, drinking and taking prohibited drugs entirely. You also need to have enough nutrients, vitamins and minerals in your body. Exercising regularly also helps. Doing these things should increase your fertility.

Meals composed of whole grains like brown rice, whole wheat, oats and other carbohydrate rich foods are essential to include in your healthy diet. These foods can give you a ton of energy and other important vitamins such as B and E which are needed to induce better cell production, hormonal balance and promote healthy eggs and sperm as well.

Another essential food for your diet to increase fertility are dairy products, specifically the full-fat variety. These foods are rich in calcium which helps to develop your nervous system, your bones and your healthy blood.

Compared to low fat products, these products can boost a woman’s fertility by eating the right amount of it daily. Also don’t forget to include fish such as salmon, mackerel and sardines in your diet. These fishes are full of omega 3 and omega 6 which are usually known as good fats that can improve your blood flow in the reprodcutive system as well as boost the quality and speed of sperm.

Eating lean red meat can also aid in enhancing your fertility by preventing anemia, ovulation problems and lack of red blood cells.

Eating green leafy vegetables supplies your body with folic acid. This nutrient is essential to create healthy sperm and can defend the ovaries to avoid having neural tube defects during the early term of pregnancy. It also has iron and vitamin C, two items that enhance the quality of sperm and keep you healthy.

Eating the foods mentioned above in the right amounts is a very healthy diet to increase fertility and can also boost your wellness. Don’t forget to avoid having vices like smoking and drinking. Having a healthy lifestyle can help you with your conception goal.

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This has been a guest post by pregnancy coach Amy King. You can visit her web site by clicking one of the links in the article above.

Have you noticed how when people who are overweight lose a bunch of weight in a short time period, they seem to have flaps of loose skin leftover that seems to sag and stay on forever?

I’m not really overweight but I did have twins in 2001. I’m very petite (4′11″, started out probably around 100 lbs at the beginning of the pregnancy) so I got extreeeeeeemely stretched out by the end. Afterwards, even though I lost the 70 lbs I gained, I still had this huge fold of skin on my tummy that has never gone away in 6 years.

At least, I really thought it was mostly skin. Everybody said so.

Now that I’m cleaning up my diet and working out more, I’ve been wondering if this flap of “skin” would always be there. Almost everybody I talked to about it said yes, unless I had surgery (which is not an option for me).

How depressing.

And then, a few days ago I came across this article:

It made so much sense to me, and it gave me hope. The guy really sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Basically, the gist of the article is that skin is thinner than paper. So all that “loose skin” is really not just skin but a layer of fat. And fat CAN be gotten rid of with proper diet and exercise! And the skin will adjust. So, read it and tell me what you guys think. It sure gave me hope for my “twin skin” problem!

Oh, and if anyone out there (Ryan? Anybody?) has tips on what specific exercises to do to work on the tummy fat, please give me suggestions. I’ve been doing lots of crunches and cardio and need more ideas.