Encouraging Health

When your mind is in need of honing, head straight for the produce aisle. And give your brain a bowl of cherries.

This yummy summer fruit is chock-full of anthocyanins, potent compounds that may guard against brain-cell death, so you’ll stay tack sharp.

Neuron Armor
Cherry phenolics, particularly anthocyanins, appear to protect brain cells from neurodamaging oxidative stress — the kind seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Sour cherries may be particularly protective; it’s thought that they may have higher anthocyanin amounts than the sweet kind. But concentrations vary widely among different varieties. (Here’s another way cherries help you stay young.)

All in Your Head

No matter what your age, you can do plenty to keep your mind at peak performance. Start with these tips:

Give your synapses a good workout.

Test your brainpower.

Feed your mind.

Assess your risk.

Cheers for Cherries
Health-promoting compounds in cherries could one day help downplay diabetes.

Early research indicates that anthocyanins — compounds that give cherries their bright red hue — may help boost secretion of insulin, a hormone important for blood sugar control. Additional sources of anthocyanins include blueberries, raspberries, and other produce with red, blue, or purple hues.

More research is needed to confirm the link between anthocyanins in cherries and insulin secretion. In addition to potential implications for blood sugar control, anthocyanins also may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. If you have diabetes or insulin resistance, keeping your blood sugar under control is a top health concern. Proven methods of controlling blood sugar include eating low-glycemic index foods and exercising regularly. Some people also need to take insulin regularly. Follow your healthcare provider’s advice.

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Who wouldn’t want to feel more energized and have a smile on their face all day?

But short of popping some “happy pills,” it seems there’s no easy way. Until now. Enter yoga.

Yep, some simple yoga-style stretches and poses could do the trick. People who did them for 5 weeks reported a lift in their moods and more spring in their steps.

Positive Poses
A type of yoga that focuses on mood-boosting poses seemed to be particularly helpful in raising spirits in a recent study. In fact, people’s moods not only generally improved about halfway through 5 weeks of doing Iyengar yoga, but posers also felt a bit better after class, too. Talk about instant gratification.

More Ways to Smile
If yoga doesn’t fit into your feel-good plans, try one of these better-mental-place lifestyle changes:

Put on your walking shoes. You could start to feel better after just 30 minutes of hoofing it.

Think fish, nuts, and flaxseeds.

Indulge in a snooze. Skimping on sleep opens the door to blue moods.

Don’t lose that loving feeling. Uh, huh.

Finding Your Place on the Mat

You don’t have to jump up and down like you’re on a pogo stick to get fit. There are kinder, gentler ways to exercise, and these methods hail from the East.

Many recent studies have shown that certain exercises originating in Eastern cultures can offer just as many physical and psychological health benefits as the more vigorous exercises that often dominate Western workouts. Even better, these Eastern exercises tend to be easier on the body. For example, the gentle art of t’ai chi exercise not only can help build muscle, but it has been shown to help reduce arthritis symptoms and improve your balance.

Whether your goal is to reduce stress, make your muscles strong and flexible, or boost your weight loss efforts with extra calorie burning, according to recent research you can find what you’re looking for in Eastern-influenced exercise disciplines, such as yoga, t’ai chi, or Qigong.

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We’ve all seen those hard-as-rock pears at the supermarket, picked well before their prime. Well, here’s a reason you might want to pass on them.

Or at least let them ripen on your kitchen counter before you bite. A pear (or an apple) at its peak offers something extra — a special kind of antioxidant that only develops once it’s ripe.

Do It Ripe
We know fruits like apples and pears are chock-full of flavonoids. Now, research shows that when ripe, these fruits contain additional potent disease fighters: NCCs (short for nonfluorescent chlorophyll catabolites — say that three times). As fruit ripens, chlorophyll breaks down and forms NCCs. And it turns out NCCs pack quite the antioxidant wallop!

Fruit “To Do’s” for Your Health

Here are some other ways to get the most from your favorite fruits:

Give me some skin. The peel’s the place for antioxidants.

Opt for whole . . . especially when it comes to apples vs. apple juice.

Slice it yourself.

Shelf Life: How Long Does Fruit Stay Nutritious?

You’ve got a ripe banana and a juicy plum. Which one’s antioxidants will hold up best after a couple of days in your fruit bowl?

The answer: Eat the banana now. Turns out bananas may lose their antioxidant qualities quickly. Dark plums, on the other hand? They could actually get a tiny antioxidant boost with short storage. Here’s how other fruit holds up.

Time on My Side
The antioxidants in black grapes, apples, oranges, and tomatoes (yes, tomatoes are fruit!) also seem to hold up well during storage. But not so much when it comes to apricots and cherries.

Fun with Polyphenols
Researchers are busy finding the best way to measure the antioxidant power of individual pieces of fruit. Not an easy task, because the content can vary from piece to piece within the same variety of fruit, depending on the fruit’s genes, the environment in which it grew, when it was harvested, and how it was stored. But you don’t have to wait for the final results.

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Despite a likely travel slowdown, millions take to the roads for Fourth

High gas prices and the hassles of air travel may put a damper on many vacations this summer, but don’t expect the Fourth of July weekend to fizzle out. Despite the likelihood of a long-term travel slowdown, millions of Americans are taking to the roads and skies over the holiday.

According to AAA’s annual forecast, 40.45 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more over the Fourth. That represents a 1.3 percent drop from last year and the first decline in 10 years.

The decline, however, may be muted because the Fourth falls on a Friday this year, making this a true holiday weekend. Instead of travel getting split between the weekend before and after a midweek Fourth, much of it will be concentrated in a single extended weekend.

Hitting the road — just not as hard
According to AAA, more than 34.2 million Americans (almost 85 percent of the total) intend to travel by automobile, a 1.2 percent decrease from last year. That follows on the heels of the organization’s Memorial Day forecast, which predicted that the number of Americans traveling by car during that holiday would drop by nearly one percent.

Meanwhile, gas prices have climbed only higher since then. On Thursday, the average retail price for regular gas was $4.10 per gallon, according to AAA. That’s not only up 16 cents from Memorial Day, but $1.13 higher than this time last year. The federal Energy Information Administration projects the price will peak at $4.15 in August — which is not to suggest that people won’t travel, but rather, that they’ll modify their plans to counter rising costs.

What are your plans for this weekend and today?

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My longtime readers will know I blog on a Tablet PC, specifically, a HP TC1100 and it has stood me well. There are several tech/electronic websites I enjoy reading, one being Gotta Be Mobile.

What’s this got to do with Encouraging Health? It makes me happy to be able to share with you they are having a sort of “Christmas in July” giveaway! The Web Administrators, Rob Bushway and Warner Crocker, are very generous in sharing, not only their talent and time, but also in this giveaway.

Head on over to say hello and drop a comment or two in the forums and articles.

Walking shoes — check. Pedometer — got it. But do you have a goal?

No goal? Better set one. It doesn’t even matter if you hit the mark. People who put a target on their radar — like walking 10,000 steps a day — walk a whole lot more than people who don’t have a goal. Studies prove it.

The End Game
Walking 10,000 steps a day is an ideal physical activity goal, according to new guidelines.

And in a large review of the research, scientists discovered that people with this goal — or a personalized step plan — literally walked the extra mile, logging about 2,000 extra steps a day. Plus, when people tracked their progress with a pedometer, they lost weight and improved their blood pressure.

A Few More Motivators

In addition to your comfy shoes, your daily-steps goal, and your pedometer, here are a few more tools to help you keep on keeping on:

Some tunes

Your furry friend

A buddy

Contingency Plans
Of course, if you’re not an animal lover, having a pet you don’t like isn’t a boon to your stress-less plans. But not to worry. There are plenty of other ways to motivate yourself to walk more: 1. Make a walking date with a friend (It’s much harder to talk yourself out of it once you’ve committed to someone else.)
2. Find a virtual exercise buddy and report your walking activities to him or her each day.
3. Splurge on a virtual trainer. They’ve now got wristwatch-sized GPS devices that do everything from measuring speed, distance, calories burned, and heart rate to letting you know when your pace has slacked off.
4. Register for a charity walk.
5. Remind yourself of the benefits.

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Summertime can be good for your blood sugar. Just make sure you pack your picnic basket with whole-wheat buns, brown-rice salad, and an oat-berry crumble.

With whole-grain foods like these, it will be smooth sailing. Studies show that nutrient- and fiber-dense whole grains help keep blood sugar levels quite steady.

Insulin Action
Whole grains are chock-full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins (especially B and E), and minerals (magnesium, potassium, selenium, zinc, and — whew! — iron). All are great for your body in so many ways. But the real key here is fiber. It slows down digestion, keeping blood sugar on an even keel and insulin levels more stable. Vitamin E and magnesium might boost insulin sensitivity as well.

Good-for-Your-Blood-Sugar Plan
Along with aiming for six servings of whole grains daily, try these other tricks for keeping your blood sugar in a healthy range:

Be choosy about your carbs.

Invest in some comfy walking shoes.

Whittle your waist. First step: 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Belly Fat — And How to Make it Scram

1. All fat is not alike. Eat more calories than you burn and the extras get packed away in one of two places — long-term storage depots beneath the skin (subcutaneous fat) or short-term bins deep in the abdomen (visceral fat).

2. The fat you don’t see is the most dangerous. soft, superficial stuff that ripples your thighs and tummy may be a bikini spoiler, but if you can pinch it, it probably won’t kill you. However, if you have a solid “beer belly” . . . well, you’re likely headed for more trouble than a politician hooked up to a polygraph.

3. Stress makes you fat. Not only does stress lead you to eat Haagen-Dazs straight from the carton, but it also triggers the release of cortisol, a stress hormone.

4. The fat you eat affects the fat you get. When monkeys munched on trans-fat laced diets for 6 years, they developed more deep-belly fat than those who went trans-fat-free, even though both ate the same number of calories.

5. Blasting belly fat isn’t hard. If you’re not overweight but still have an oversized waist, the fastest way to shrink your omentum is by walking. Taking a brisk 30-minute walk each day will keep those fat cells from expanding.

6. Whole grains scare away belly fat. If you and a friend go on a diet but you eat whole grains (meaning brown rice, steel-cut oats, and whole-wheat pasta, not whole-grain Pop Tarts) and your friend eats processed grains (anything made with white/enriched grains and flours, cupcakes to noodles), you both might lose the same amount of weight, but you’ll shed more belly fat and lower your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of damaging inflammation. And your food will taste better, and you’ll feel full longer. AND you’ll have a flat stomach!

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Regular java fixes may cut chances of dying from heart disease

Long-term coffee drinking does not appear to increase a person’s risk of early death and may cut a person’s chances of dying from heart disease, according to a study published on Monday.

Previous studies have given a mixed picture of health effects from coffee, finding a variety of benefits and some drawbacks from the popular drink. The new study looked at people who drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.

Researchers led by Esther Lopez-Garcia of Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in Spain followed 84,214 U.S. women from 1980 to 2004 and 41,736 U.S. men from 1986 to 2004.

They found that regular coffee drinking — up to six cups a day — was not associated with increased deaths among the study’s middle-aged participants. In fact, the coffee drinkers, particularly the women, experienced a small decline in death rates from heart disease.

The study found no association between coffee consumption and cancer deaths.

There has been a debate among scientists about the health effects of drinking coffee, which typically contains the stimulant caffeine and a number of other important compounds.

The people who took part in the research completed questionnaires on how frequently they drank coffee, other diet habits, smoking and medical conditions. The researchers then studied the mortality risk over the period of the study among people with different coffee-drinking habits.

The study found that women who reported drinking two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease than women who did not drink coffee. The researchers saw a smaller decreased risk for men but it was not statistically significant.

Drinking decaffeinated coffee was associated with a small reduction in overall mortality risk, the researchers said.

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If you don’t know a pentapeptide from an antioxidant and, frankly, you don’t care — you just want your gator-dry legs to be soft and silky-smooth — look no farther than your kitchen. The answer lies in that bottle of safflower oil sitting on the shelf. This polyunsaturated oil, beloved by cardiologists for being good for your heart, is just as good for your skin, but from the outside in.

The oil, which is pressed from the seeds of spiky yellow safflowers, is a super moisturizer. “That’s because it’s very high in linoleic acid, a fatty acid that skin normally makes to keep its moisture level up and barrier function intact,” says New York City dermatologist Amy Wechsler, MD, RealAge’s skin expert. Because the body’s linoleic acid production gets sluggish with age, it helps to replace it from the outside.

“In theory, you could use olive oil, too, which is also high in linoleic acid. But you’d smell like a salad!” Wechsler says. Along with being odorless, safflower oil has the advantages of being colorless and cheap. And that’s not all. Safe enough for sensitive skin, it’s so gentle that it’s massaged into the skin of newborn babies at some hospitals.

Although this natural oil is one of Wechsler’s favorite treatments for dry lower legs (where flakiness can be especially persistent), you can use it body-wide — though not when you’re in a mad rush, as it takes time to soak in. “Smooth it on immediately after a bath or shower to seal in the moisture your skin has just absorbed. You can even apply it on your face, as long you don’t get it into your eyes; stop a bit below the lower lid.”

If you’re not sure about moisturizing with pure cooking oil, you can find safflower oil in moisturizers, lip balms, and scrubs. “Look for a product that lists it among the first three ingredients, which means it contains a high concentration of the oil,” says Dr. Wechsler.

Otherwise, just pour some safflower oil into a pretty little squeeze bottle and add it to your toiletries. No one will ever guess you cook with it, too. And your legs will look amazing!

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An excerpt from my article on the HPV Vaccines.

From the CDC, Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a common virus that is spread through sexual contact. HPV has virtually no symptoms, so people do not know they have it. There are approximately 40 types of genital HPV. Some types can cause cervical cancer in women and can also cause other kinds of cancer in both men and women. Other types can cause genital warts in both males and females. The HPV vaccine works by preventing the most common types of HPV that cause cervical cancer and genital warts. It is given as a 3-dose vaccine.

The HPV vaccine is routinely recommended for girls 11 and 12 years of age and is given in a series of three injections over a six-month period. The second and third doses should be given two and six months (respectively) after the first dose. The vaccine is also recommended for girls and women 13 through 26 years of age who did not receive it when they were younger. HPV vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines. Unfortunately, there haven’t been long-term studies on gay men who receive an HPV vaccination.

This past year, I’ve been following the HPV Vaccine trials and subsequent recommendation that young girls be vaccinated against the HPV virus. During this time, there have been side notes in the mainstream press about little known side effects. Whether or not the two companies of the vaccines, Merck and Glaxo Smith Kline, were aware of these side effects, they owe an explanation to the families of the girls and young womena n explanation. Are more studies needed? Should there be full disclosure of all, if any, possible side effects? Sure. Is it going to happen? Who knows.

The companies should be commended for finding a vaccine against a virus that kills women needlessly each year. Each parent must decide for themself to vaccinate their children.

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