When people think of medical advice to fight off disease, they usually think of medicine. The problem with this mindset is two-fold. One, medication is usually only administered in response to an disease, and very rarely active in providing preemptive benefit, and two, the negative side effects of most medications should put them at the bottom of our medical care choices and not first.

Most disease is due to incorrect diet, lifestyle choices, or heredity. There is no pill to cure family history. Lifestyle choices are still controlled by the individual, though medication might help in the behavior modification process. Diet, though often aided with herbal or even pharmaceutical supplementation, can never be replaced by these alone. Eating the right foods is the simplest way to fight off disease, aid in healing the body when sickness is present, and is absent of the negative side effects and health risks involved with non culinary intervention. The foods we choose to put into our bodies should be the first suspect for modification, though is usually only discussed as an afterthought or secondary issue.

Many of what ails the body is a direct result of which nutrients we have deprived it. Knowing which foods to eat in order to boost the body?s ability to fight heart disease, high blood pressure, bone weakness and wasting, and even cancer is probably the smartest thing a person could do if they wish to remain healthy and to avoid dependency on drug or other methods of controlling diseases that a healthy might have helped you avoid. I have listed the top ten foods that will do just that. They are all low carb, high nutrient, widely available foods that can help you live a longer and healthier life.

Acai berry- High in antioxidants and vitamin C and A, Acai berries are known as one of the most nutritious foods on Earth. Found in both whole fruit and juice form, Acai berry can cut your risk for heart disease as well as improving the cleansing properties of the body, such maintaining superior colon health.

Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage are also high antioxidant veggies, contributing to the fight on cancer and boosting immunity.

Oranges and other citrus fruits such as grapefruit contain not only vitamin C but have also been shown to aid in blood clotting and immunity.

Garlic is a pungent herb that has excellent health beneficial properties. Garlic has shown promise in the reduction of harmful LDL cholesterol levels as well as an excellent home remedy to prevent high blood pressure. It has a long history of herbal medical use as well as being delicious.

Eat nuts instead of simple carbohydrates or fatty meats such as chicken. The Omega 3 fatty acids in nuts are carried into the blood stream and converted to energy much more efficiently than processed breads and pasta, and contains enough protein to act as a meat replacement.

Oats and oatmeal are praise for the ability to lower cholesterol and are a great source of grain in a diabetic diet due to the time released method of affecting blood sugar levels.

Salmon is a natural anti-coagulant as well as a superb source of Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 fatty acids are shown to help prevent heart disease while providing the body with the much needed supply of fat that it needs without the adverse effects of other fats.

One of the best foods to consume in the war against eye disease is Popeye?s favorite, Spinach. The nutrient leutin has the positive effect of lowering the possibilities of cataracts and other eyesight loss causes.

The antioxidant lycopene, contained in tomatoes protects your body from free radicals and the cell damage that they cause. Though labels on catsup bottles might claim it is an excellent source of lycopene, it is also a severely high source of sodium. Fresh tomatoes are a much better way to get lycopene in your system.

There is one meat that makes the ranks as one of the healthiest foods, turkey. Compared to most meats, turkey is low in fat and calories, but still rich in protein, and in some studies was shown to beneficial as a cancer avoiding super food.

As you can see from the foods mentioned above, there is no need to go hungry, and plenty of healthy choices are available right in your local supermarket that can help lead the way to a longer and healthier life with a lowered chance of future disease.

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By angie5 on April 26th, 2010

Categories: Diet/Nutrition
Tags: calories, Candy Bars, Chips, Concentration, Consumption, Convenience, Desk, Easy Access, Fast Food Restaurants, Food Food, Fries, Heaven, protein, Resolve, Saturated Fat, Several Inches, Soda, Vegetables, Watching Tv, weight gain

By Katherine Hobson

EPA Guidance: The Environmental Protection Agency is recommending that U.S. schools ditch certain electrical components of light fixtures that may leak PCBs and cause health harm over time, the WSJ reports. The problems are most likely to be found in schools built before 1979, and fixing them could carry a high cost ? an estimated $1 billion for New York City schools, the paper says.

Where?s the Beef Nutritional Info?: Sharp-eyed and nutritionally conscious shoppers know that meat, unlike other foods in the grocery store, doesn?t bear the standardized nutrition labels that other foods have. As the Los Angeles Times reports, that will change starting Jan. 1, 2012 now that the USDA has announced plans to require labels on 40 popular cuts of poultry, pork, beef and lamb. Thanks to a tip from NPR?s Shots Blog, we can point you to the USDA?s ?ground beef calculator? to tide you burger-lovers over until then.

3-D Warning: Nintendo is warning that the 3-D capability of its new 3DS hand-held game machine shouldn?t be used by kids younger than 6, whose eye development may be harmed by extended exposure to the images, the WSJ reports. Nintendo says those younger kids should use the player in 2-D mode and that older users should take breaks from 3-D games every half-hour. The WSJ?s Digits blog wrote recently about the vision problems that prevent some people from experiencing 3-D in all its glory.

First Donor: The donor in the first successful organ transplant has died, the Associated Press reports. Ronald Lee Herrick, who died in Maine at age 79, donated a kidney to his ailing twin brother in 1954. Herrick?s brother lived another eight years and the lead surgeon who performed the transplant later won the Nobel Prize.

Image: iStockphoto

By angie5 on July 13th, 2010

Categories: Diet/Nutrition
Tags: Best Way To Lose Weight, Binging, Diabetes, Diet Plan, Diet To Lose Weight, Diet Work, Dietary Choices, Easiest Thing, Finding The Right Diet, Health Complications, healthy diet, Heart Disease, Kidney Disease, Lifelong Battle, Low Calorie Diets, Matter What Type, New Fad Diets, Nutrients, Weight Loss Diets, Well Balanced Diet

By angie5 on May 7th, 2010

Categories: belly fat, body fat
Tags: Body Composition, body fat, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Dress Size, Fat Body, Good Health, Health Issues, Heart Disease, High Cholesterol, Horizon, Insight, lean body mass, Measurement, Serious Health, Vigorous Workout, Worko, Workout Routine

By Katherine Hobson

No one disagrees that sleep deprivation hurts physicians? performance. The question is what to do about it.

Two very different approaches to one specific issue, what to do about an elective surgery when the surgeon scheduled to operate is short on sleep, are featured in the current New England Journal of Medicine.

A Perspective piece argues that the consequences of sleep deprivation are so dire ? the authors cite a previous study showing an 83% increase in complications in patients whose daytime elective surgeries are performed by surgeons with less than a 6-hour sleep opportunity between procedures the previous night ? that self-regulation is not sufficient. Instead, ?we recommend that institutions implement policies to minimize the likelihood of sleep deprivation before a clinician performs elective surgery and to facilitate priority rescheduling of elective procedures when a clinician is sleep-deprived,? they write. For example, elective procedures wouldn?t be scheduled for the day after a physician is due to be on all-night call.

And the authors suggest that patients be ?empowered to inquire about the amount of sleep their clinicians have had the night before such procedures.?

?We think patients should be informed and given the choice to reschedule or to proceed,? says Michael Nurok, an anesthesiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery and one of the piece?s authors. (The others are Charles Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham & Women?s Hospital, and Lisa Soleymani Lehmann, director of that hospital?s Center for Bioethics.) And, Nurok tells the Health Blog, it?s fine to proceed ?if [patients] understand that there?s an increased risk of problems.?

No way, say three representatives of the American College of Surgeons, whose letter to the editor responding to the piece appears in the same issue of the NEJM. The solution is to train surgeons ?to understand how fatigue degrades their mental and physical capabilities. They should learn to use this knowledge to determine whether they should disclose their condition to patients, whether operations should be rescheduled and whether they should seek assistance,? they write.

Czeisler tells the Health Blog, however, that ?people are woefully inadequate at assessing the effects of sleep loss.?

We asked two of the surgeons who authored the letter, L.D. Britt, president of the ACS and David Hoyt, the group?s executive director, about that. (The other author is Carlos Pellegrini, chair of the ACS.)

Boyd says surgeons are smart and professional enough to learn to ?have a conversation with yourself? when they are short on sleep and assess their preparedness for surgery. Or, they can consult other members of the surgical team for guidance, he says.

?No one wants an exhausted surgeon to operate,? says Britt. But he says there?s no clear-cut way to define fatigue, and that ?mandatory disclosure? based on some arbitrary threshold isn?t appropriate. If doctors are supposed to disclose their sleep patterns, what about other things that might affect performance, such as financial worries or a fight with a spouse?

The surgeons also write that in the case of a ?relatively simple? procedure such as an elective colostomy, ?many surgeons could successfully complete it with or without a good night?s sleep.?

?If you know you?re going to do a 30- or 45-minute procedure, it?s like driving home,? says Hoyt. ?It?s a judgment call.?

Czeisler says that routine, highly-overlearned tasks ? like a routine surgery or car trip home from work ? are the ones that are most susceptible to the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. ?People are so confident in their ability to perform that they are ignoring the weight of the world?s literature on this topic,? he says.

What do you think?

Further reading:

Image: iStockphoto

By Katherine Hobson

EPA Guidance: The Environmental Protection Agency is recommending that U.S. schools ditch certain electrical components of light fixtures that may leak PCBs and cause health harm over time, the WSJ reports. The problems are most likely to be found in schools built before 1979, and fixing them could carry a high cost ? an estimated $1 billion for New York City schools, the paper says.

Where?s the Beef Nutritional Info?: Sharp-eyed and nutritionally conscious shoppers know that meat, unlike other foods in the grocery store, doesn?t bear the standardized nutrition labels that other foods have. As the Los Angeles Times reports, that will change starting Jan. 1, 2012 now that the USDA has announced plans to require labels on 40 popular cuts of poultry, pork, beef and lamb. Thanks to a tip from NPR?s Shots Blog, we can point you to the USDA?s ?ground beef calculator? to tide you burger-lovers over until then.

3-D Warning: Nintendo is warning that the 3-D capability of its new 3DS hand-held game machine shouldn?t be used by kids younger than 6, whose eye development may be harmed by extended exposure to the images, the WSJ reports. Nintendo says those younger kids should use the player in 2-D mode and that older users should take breaks from 3-D games every half-hour. The WSJ?s Digits blog wrote recently about the vision problems that prevent some people from experiencing 3-D in all its glory.

First Donor: The donor in the first successful organ transplant has died, the Associated Press reports. Ronald Lee Herrick, who died in Maine at age 79, donated a kidney to his ailing twin brother in 1954. Herrick?s brother lived another eight years and the lead surgeon who performed the transplant later won the Nobel Prize.

Image: iStockphoto

By angie5 on May 7th, 2010

Categories: belly fat, body fat
Tags: Body Composition, body fat, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Dress Size, Fat Body, Good Health, Health Issues, Heart Disease, High Cholesterol, Horizon, Insight, lean body mass, Measurement, Serious Health, Vigorous Workout, Worko, Workout Routine

By Katherine Hobson

No one disagrees that sleep deprivation hurts physicians? performance. The question is what to do about it.

Two very different approaches to one specific issue, what to do about an elective surgery when the surgeon scheduled to operate is short on sleep, are featured in the current New England Journal of Medicine.

A Perspective piece argues that the consequences of sleep deprivation are so dire ? the authors cite a previous study showing an 83% increase in complications in patients whose daytime elective surgeries are performed by surgeons with less than a 6-hour sleep opportunity between procedures the previous night ? that self-regulation is not sufficient. Instead, ?we recommend that institutions implement policies to minimize the likelihood of sleep deprivation before a clinician performs elective surgery and to facilitate priority rescheduling of elective procedures when a clinician is sleep-deprived,? they write. For example, elective procedures wouldn?t be scheduled for the day after a physician is due to be on all-night call.

And the authors suggest that patients be ?empowered to inquire about the amount of sleep their clinicians have had the night before such procedures.?

?We think patients should be informed and given the choice to reschedule or to proceed,? says Michael Nurok, an anesthesiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery and one of the piece?s authors. (The others are Charles Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham & Women?s Hospital, and Lisa Soleymani Lehmann, director of that hospital?s Center for Bioethics.) And, Nurok tells the Health Blog, it?s fine to proceed ?if [patients] understand that there?s an increased risk of problems.?

No way, say three representatives of the American College of Surgeons, whose letter to the editor responding to the piece appears in the same issue of the NEJM. The solution is to train surgeons ?to understand how fatigue degrades their mental and physical capabilities. They should learn to use this knowledge to determine whether they should disclose their condition to patients, whether operations should be rescheduled and whether they should seek assistance,? they write.

Czeisler tells the Health Blog, however, that ?people are woefully inadequate at assessing the effects of sleep loss.?

We asked two of the surgeons who authored the letter, L.D. Britt, president of the ACS and David Hoyt, the group?s executive director, about that. (The other author is Carlos Pellegrini, chair of the ACS.)

Boyd says surgeons are smart and professional enough to learn to ?have a conversation with yourself? when they are short on sleep and assess their preparedness for surgery. Or, they can consult other members of the surgical team for guidance, he says.

?No one wants an exhausted surgeon to operate,? says Britt. But he says there?s no clear-cut way to define fatigue, and that ?mandatory disclosure? based on some arbitrary threshold isn?t appropriate. If doctors are supposed to disclose their sleep patterns, what about other things that might affect performance, such as financial worries or a fight with a spouse?

The surgeons also write that in the case of a ?relatively simple? procedure such as an elective colostomy, ?many surgeons could successfully complete it with or without a good night?s sleep.?

?If you know you?re going to do a 30- or 45-minute procedure, it?s like driving home,? says Hoyt. ?It?s a judgment call.?

Czeisler says that routine, highly-overlearned tasks ? like a routine surgery or car trip home from work ? are the ones that are most susceptible to the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. ?People are so confident in their ability to perform that they are ignoring the weight of the world?s literature on this topic,? he says.

What do you think?

Further reading:

Image: iStockphoto

By angie5 on May 6th, 2010

Categories: Exercises, Fat Blasting Boot Camp, circuits, workouts
Tags: boot camp, Chick, Chicks, Fitness And Health, Limited Time, meal plans, Mother Day, Mother S Day, Oo, recipes, Special Offer, Video Demonstrations, workout, workouts