All posts in Health and Fitness

Changing your eating habits and selecting particular foods for lower cholesterol is actually quite effective in actually lowering your cholesterol. But this is a big change. Changing your lifestyle in one fell swoop is most likely not going to be easy or successful.

The key to lifestyle change is to do it in a stepwise manner. Making intelligent choices and selecting different foods of the same type that are healthy is a very easy way to make an impact but without make a drastic change in your daily eating habits.

Now, if you are a big time snacker then change may not be as easy. Chips and french fries must no longer be apart of your day. Anything deep fried like donuts, or even cakes and store bought cookies are trouble. Products with partially hydrogenated oil (or trans-fats ) are especially troublesome.

However, even snack foods can be found that are not dangerous to your cholesterol levels. There are fruit bars for example that have neither sugar nor fat and are actually quite tasty and filling. I don’t find it terribly convenient to carry fresh fruit everywhere I go, but a prepackaged fruit bar is easy to travel with in your jacket pocket or briefcase.

There are foods that will actually help bring down your cholesterol levels, the bad stuff of LDL, to a less dangerous level. These foods are not necessarily a magic bullet, but can often reduced or eliminate the need for cholesterol lowering medications.

Take for example our smelly friend garlic. Garlic, is a very powerful cholesterol buster. It’s properties are well document, in fact a garlic supplement is considered a drug in Germany, it’s that powerful. Of course, a change like this you would want to discuss with your doctor first. Something that powerful could react with your cholesterol lower medications if you have any.

Walnuts and other nuts are a source of cholesterol busting goodness as well. You have to be careful because these sorts of nuts tend to be high calories. While the fat that is contained in them is the “good fat”, it’s still fat and therefore can still turn to fat deposits on your body. Eat in moderation as a substitute for your morning or afternoon snack. No more than a handful.

You’ve heard the old saying, “An Apple A Day Keeps the Doctor Away” – well in this it can help keep the heart surgeon away. Apples have a host of positive health benefits, not the least of which is contributing to good cholesterol health. Make sure to add a couple of these to your daily dietary requirements. They are nothing but good.

A lot of people face up to the fact that exercises are vital if you want to live a healthy life. But getting healthy and fit can be quite pricey e.g. gym membership fees. So what happens is those people end up avoiding exercise. If you are overweight and looking to lose weight then going to a gym or exercising in public can be quite daunting. There is good news for people who just want to workout at the comfort of their home. Sounds impossible? Below are some of the simple exercises that anyone can perform at home with no fancy, expensive equipment.

Squatting

This is perhaps the most basic exercise in the fitness movements. In just a single fell swoop you can work out your legs, the core and the rear making a very sleek toned physique. To perform the squat movements simply stand on your feet at least a shoulder width apart and also using your upper body straight and your toes slightly pointing out. Now, place your hands on your hips and set your eyes looking straight. Lower your behind, pretending to be sitting on a chair. Make sure your knees does not travel preceding your toes. Stand. And then repeat this move for 20 or more. To get it more intense, you could grab a book, a dictionary will do or you could even hold cans of beans.

Push Up

A push up is all about toning your upper body. Your shoulders, chest, back, core and arms will be toned also. Put your hands up in parallel with and a little bit broader than your shoulders. Keep your toes on the floor or the ground and your heels in the air, flex your feet. Maintaining your body position in a full upright position from your head to heels, force off the floor till your arms are fully broadened. Get down till your upper arms is straight to the floor, and then unbend your arms once again for more repetitions. Go for at least 10 to 20 a set, but whenever one is excessively hard, do press-ups on your knee joint till you get firmer. To get it harder, bring your hands nearer, get up one leg, or you can bring up your feet on the chair or steps.

The 1 Legged Workout

This workout works on all parts of your body. You will learn how to balance yourself. Stand up straight on your right leg, with your left leg lifted. Don’t allow your right leg to touch the floor whatsoever at any point in the workout. Flex over, place your hand on the floor, then pass it out to the press-up posture. Do one press-up. Pass your hands behind toward your feet, and then stand upright. Repeat 5 to 10 times. Change legs and repeat it on your left leg.

The allure of a green tea diet attracts many to give it a try with the hopes of sizing down without lifting a finger. Popular culture programs us to constantly strive for svelte figures and washboard abs, so we seek opportunities far and wide to lose weight and look our best. This awesome diet will bring about better results if the following recommendations and guidelines are contemplated before indulging.

Note that changing your daily nutritional habits will cause changes in your digestive system. You should realize beforehand that the possible side effects may include stomach cramps, diarrhea, or loose stools. Take the necessary precautions to lower any future potential discomfort by heeding warning labels and dosage recommendations.

People with high blood pressure and hypertension would be wise to seek the advice of a medical professional before investing time in this wonderful diet. The caffeine in green tea could raise heart rates to alarming levels, so its best to put your personal well-being first by checking with your doctor to see if it is okay to begin, and worry about a diet’s effectiveness later.

Thyroid problems arising from hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism. Green tea has a chemical (fluoride) which adversely affects the body’s thyroid gland. People with thyroid conditions should discuss this with their primary health care provider to make sure the safest course of use is taken.

Achieve at least one sweat session per day, three times per week. No act by itself will cause you to melt off the excess pounds, you will achieve quicker results if you combine with daily exercise. Even a spirited walk after lunch will help you raise your metabolism. This, along with your green tea, will together boost you to a higher rate of fat loss.

Hazards of green tea consumption when pregnant, breastfeeding, or nursing infants. Teas are not given to very young children, and should not be administered to minors, so why raise the unneeded risk when caring for your kids. There will be plenty of time for consuming when your baby is older. For now, understand it is best to sacrifice and abstain from partaking of any tea – for the sake of your child’s health.

Do not drink more than six cups of green tea per day. Moderation is usually the presiding rule when undergoing some form of nutritional program, and this is no exception. If at all possible, drink your six cups throughout the day, at reasonable intervals. Resist gulping down the daily quota in one fell swoop, your digestive system will be shocked at the sudden influx and eliminate the excess tea as fast as it can. You’ll probably make frequent visits to the bathroom, so to avoid this, sip a cup here and there. A gradual introduction is best and will avoid those perplexed looks from fellow office mates.

Diabetes is often called a family disease because if affects more than just the diabetes patient. If impacts the immediate family and the relationships of close friends as well.

Being diagnosed with diabetes can be a difficult thing to handle. In one fell swoop, it affects you for possibly the rest of your life. You can no longer eat your normal foods with abandon, you constantly have to test your blood sugar level, you possibly have to take medicine, and, in the worse cases, you can end up losing limbs or doing major damage to body organs.

So having diabetes is no picnic. But it’s difficult for the family, friends, and other loved ones as well.

One of the first and most important changes required is a change in the patient’s diet. Suddenly there are whole categories of foods that are “off the table.” The patient has to learn a great deal and become familiar with procedures for planning healthy meals. He has to learn how to look at a fast food or restaurant menu and decide which foods are OK to order. And at home, if the family cook doesn’t want to continuously be responsible for cooking two sets of meals, entire menu plans may change – forcing the others in the family to adjust to the diabetic’s nutritional needs.

Another potential change that affects the entire family is the additional medical attention that the person with diabetes will need. Depending on the severity of the illness, the family’s income situation may be impacted drastically. The family as a whole may be forced to buy cheaper foods, clothes, and other items. And if the diabetic is a child, he will probably need more attention than the other children, possibly leading to the other children feeling jealous because they are now receiving less attention.

Living with diabetes is especially difficult for teens to handle. The teen years are already difficult enough. And what teenager wants to stand out as being different from the rest? They want to be with their friends, eat what their friends eat, drink what their friends drink, and so on. And now they discover that they risk doing damage to their body and health, if they try to emulate their friend’s eating habits. For a teenager, this can very easily lead to feelings of being isolated and different. And teens don’t like to be different from each other.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right attitude, the illness can in fact strengthen relationships. This is a chance to treat the disease as a learning experience for the family by helping the family to learn and practice better dietary habits. As the entire family begins to eat healthier meals, not only is the chance of other members developing diabetes decreased, their overall health is increased as well.

This can also be used as an opportunity to strengthen friendships and discover who your real friends are. Diabetes is nothing to be ashamed about and a teenager shouldn’t hide it from his or her friends. If a “friend” is willing to drop you because you are “afraid” to drink or eat the things that the in crowd is doing, then they are not truly your friend. Good friends are worth their weight in gold, and a good friend will understand and stick by you regardless of your illness.

The first step into Lyme is a doozy – finding the right doctor and treatment protocol for you, your budget, your insurance, your geographical location, and your particular body with Lyme.

Starting out, find the best, most qualified Lyme doctor using natural treatments you can find. No matter what state he or she is in and how hard it is to get there. What matters to start with is that they are conquering Lyme the best way possible and having success doing it. There are a dozens of LLMDs now, but not all of them use enough variety of treatment to tailor the protocol to each individual. There is a handful of doctors using outside the box treatments and no antibiotics and having great success. You can’t be choosy based on where they are – just on how they are doing.

I would then find a local doctor of natural bent that could support this long distance treatment and that you could use for quick short term checkups. Building this team is crucial. Absolutely crucial. Both these doctors need to understand detoxification and how Lyme works. If they don’t know about neurotoxins and ammonia damage and Post Lyme Syndrome and avoiding herxing then RUN FOR THE DOOR.

Interview different doctors and have them lay out their protocol recommendation for you or your loved one. Compare and contrast their protocols then go back and ask questions about the discrepancies to fully understand where they are coming from. Be sure about their comprehension of the human body and the Lyme. Ask them for testimonials and success rate. When you are in the lobby of each doctor’s office (every time) make friends.

I introduce myself to everyone who comes into the lobby of my doctor and I talk to them, really talk to them. You don’t know me so you don’t know how hard this is for me because I’m not a “love talking to strangers” kind of person. It is critical for you to know the success rate and treatment protocol of other patients and if they are feeling better. Later, I realized I must keep up the “talking to everybody phenomenon” because the newbies, like I was, need to hear about success and that they picked the right place. It is incredibly encouraging to hear from patients “this place is healing me”. We are on this journey to encourage one another.

The husband of a friend of mine has some horrible form of cancer that I cannot pronounce and she said the other patients in the traditional cancer program where they are is depressing. No one in the program is getting better and she sees death everywhere they go and every time they are there. SCARY! I would run for the hills. Every program is not for everyone, but the wellness numbers should safely be in the 80% and 90% to be sure the doctors know what they are doing.

The bad news I have to break to you before we even get into this fight, is that you will not find cooperation from your health insurance carrier in the battle. Finding even a traditional MD that insurance will cover all the treatments and services is rare. It sucks, but I have to be honest with you so you are not caught off balance and surprised. Almost all of us are paying cash or going in debt to get through this thing. To the insurance company’s defense (I have no idea why I’m defending their position) most of these treatments against Lyme are ground breaking and have only been used for a few years. Anything that new, insurance companies are scared to death over providing funding for.

Just accept this fact and be delightfully surprised if yours will pay anything: Insurance will not cover this. Insurance will not cover most of these treatments. Insurance is built around traditional medicine and unless you find an M.D. who can code things in a gray area, your insurance is going to buck. If it’s not a pill and it’s not administered in a hospital- then good luck.

I’ll take a step back at this point and apologize for my abruptness. I am a rip-off-the-bandaid-in-one-fell-swoop kind of girl, so I tend to be direct and to the point. When you are as sick as most of you are, you don’t have time to beat around the bush either. So I’m shooting straight. The good news is that the world changes rapidly and responds to consumer demand. So, as the demand for good Lyme care is increasing and the treatments are becoming more well known, then who knows what can happen.

Just as there are certain foods that you should be sure to stock up on, so too are there foods that you should avoid as though they would give you the plague if you were to breathe in their general area if you were pregnant. Of course, this list changes from year to year so take most of these recommendations with a grain of salt!

If you’re unsure whether a food is safe for you to eat, or if you have heard mixed reports or have a concern based on your individual circumstances, consult your OB/GYN. Since they are regularly required to take continuing education classes and receive frequent updates from the research fields they would be the most qualified to provide you with information pertaining specifically to your pregnancy.

Alcohol is first on the list of No-No’s for Mommies to Be, and with good reason. The amount of alcohol that is safe to consume in a day while pregnant has yet to be determined, and the incidence of known cases of birth defects due to alcohol consumption is on the rise. According to the March of Dimes “alcohol is the most common known cause of damage to developing babies in the United States and is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation.”

On a more personal note, alcohol can also aggravate many of the common side effects of pregnancy such as nausea and heartburn. It also takes up space in your stomach that could be filled with more healthy things, like water or juice. If you can forsake alcohol completely during your pregnancy, that would be the best choice for you and your baby. Does that mean that a sip of your glass when you toast your cousin’s wedding is going to leave your baby scarred for life? No, probably not. Use your good sense. While a sip or two of wine every now and then probably won’t hurt your growing angel, a shot or two of tequila might not be as forgiving. Pregnancy is only nine months long. Your baby lasts a lifetime.

The other scare when it comes to pregnancy eating has come from an unexpected source-fish. Long lauded as the best source of protein for pregnant women, it was recently discovered that fish was also high in mercury, a condition caused by the dumping of waste into the water. Mercury can cause irreparable damage to a fetus’s developing nervous system. The debate as to whether specific fish can be considered safe or not is still ongoing, but pregnant women are currently being encouraged to avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, bluefish, tuna steak, striped bass, freshwater fish and canned tuna.

While highly processed foods may not cause permanent damage to your unborn baby they usually contain enough preservatives to qualify them as highly suspicious. Remember, anything that claims to be sugar free yet tastes sweet has some form of sugar substitute in it. The question is, what are they substituting? Labels such as “fat free” and “caffeine free” should also be approached with caution. Take the high road here and attempt to buy whole, natural foods as often as possible. Look at the list of ingredients on the label. The longer it is, the less likely it is to be healthy for your baby.

If you have a hard time getting started in the morning without your cup of Joe, now’s going to be the time to learn. Caffeine impedes iron absorption, contributing to anemia in pregnant women who don’t have enough to spare, robs the body of precious calcium and aggravates heartburn all in one fell swoop. It also transfers to your baby through your breast milk, which means that if you like to drink coffee and you’re planning on breastfeeding you can expect a lot of late nights.

Although you could switch to decaf, for the dedicated coffee drinker this is about the equivalent of taking a perfectly good cup of coffee and filling it 2/3 full of water. As a placebo it’s a poor substitute. Instead, try a cup of hot chocolate or apple cider in the morning. (Heating apple juice and adding a little cinnamon works too.) The hot beverage will hit a few of the “wake up” buttons that coffee triggers, and while you’ll probably feel the lack of caffeine for the first week or two you should find that getting through the day gets easier-and hey, pregnant women are supposed to nap regularly anyway!

Unpasteurized cheeses, soft or fresh cheeses such as Brie, deli meats, hot dogs, undercooked eggs, fish, rare to medium well meats and unpasteurized juices are also being added at various intervals to the “no-no” list that OB/GYNs are handing out to their patients in an attempt to stop the spread of pathogens such as E.coli, Salmonella and Listeria, all of which are often present in undercooked or uncooked meats.

Listeria, the leading cause of meningitis in children less than one year old, has the ability to cross the placenta and infect the baby. It can also cause miscarriage. Salmonella has been associated with stillbirth. Even if fetal death doesn’t occur, dehydration from the diarrhea and vomiting that accompany Salmonella infection is a serious risk. A severe infection with E. coli can cause dehydration as well as potentially triggering premature labor or miscarriage.