Encouraging Health

There’s a bit of news over on www.RealAge.com that states Blueberries have the same heart-healthy benefits as Wine!

So, for those that are unable to enjoy a glass of wine can pop a handful of tasty & nutritious Blueberries.

blueberries, heart, wine

blueberries, heart, wine

Found this bit of news that Tai Chi can help ease symptoms for those who suffer from shingles.

The study appears in the April issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and was led by Dr. Michael Irwin of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Shingles is a painful skin rash that can pop up in people who have had chickenpox. The chickenpox virus can remain dormant in the body and resurface as shingles years later. It usually starts with pain and itching on the skin that later turns into an irritating rash.

An estimated 1 million Americans are afflicted with shingles every year and it commonly occurs in people 50 years old and older.

It seems that Tai Chi boosts the body’s immune response against shingles.

Western medicine is slowly turning to Eastern ways ofrelaxation that seems to here hidden side benefits; such as Tai Chi for shingles and yoga for cardio and circulatory health. Today’s era is over-stressing’ themselves into major health issues. Eastern Philosophy is not new but Western medicines acceptance of it-is.

Have you taken up Tail Chi or Yoga? If so, what health benefits have you noticed?

Tai Chi, yoga, stress, shingles,immune

Tai Chi, yoga, stress, shingles, immune

It appears that eating a Mediterranean Diet has more health benefits than lower cholesterol and lower fat.

The article shows health benefits for kids. Kids who ate more local fresh fruit head fewer bouts with sniffles, colds and allergies.

One way to get kids to eat fresh fruits more is to pre-cut them! Also, serve them with a low-fat flavored yogurt or low-fat caramel ice cream topping.

A spoonful of sugar, you know, as the song goes.

Article

Mediterranean diet, Health, fresh fruit, Kids, snuffles, colds, allergies

Mediterranean diet, Health, fresh fruit, Kids, snuffles, colds, allergies

There’s an article I wrote for www.Edgeboston.com’s Health and Fitness section about the HPV Vaccine. Currently it is being used to help prevent cervical cancer in women. The controversy there is health professionals want to vaccinate teenage and younger women and girls. Another little known use is to help vaccinate men against anal cancer.

Article

cervical cancer, anal cancer, health, HPV, Vaccine

cervical cancer, anal cancer, health, HPV, Vaccine

Elizabeth Edwards received some good news finally! She has a type of cancer that is more likely to be controlled by anti-estrogen drugs.

Although her Dr’s are unable to give her an expected life expectancy longer than five glare, she remains optimistic about her future. She states in an interview with the associated Press,

“I’m going to fight exactly as hard if they tell me that I’ve got 15 years or if I’ve got 30 years. I’m still going to fight to get rid of this — if they tell me I’ve got 15 minutes I’m still going to fight. It doesn’t matter what the prognosis is. So it’s not an important piece of information to me.”

As we all know, she has the most aggressive form of canter (there is no Cure, just treatment). The Dr’s did have good news, however. She has two key hormonal receptors, estrogen and progesterone. Still, she vows to fight the good fight.

Article

Elizabeth Edwards, Cancer, estrogen, Progesterone, anti-estrogen

Elizabeth Edwards, Cancer, estrogen, Progesterone, anti-estrogen

javascript:cnnPlayListVideo(’/video/health/2007/03/31/levs.rc.cancer.cnn’,'0′)

Recently we’ve all seen well-known public personalities come forward with cancer, such as Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards, Press Secretary Tony Snow, and in the past, former Mayor Rudy Guiliani and Rep. John McCain.

Cancer has touch many people and families; my own family has been touched, my maternal grandfather had skin, colon and another (form) of cancer toward the end of his life. The above video describes cancer, how one gets it and the myths, as well.

Early detection is important, and one of the only ways to determine if you have cancer, is regular health check-ups, for both men and women. If either gender is above 40, women get your breast exams, men get your prostrate exams. There are new and exciting detection techniques for both genders that are less invasive.

Let me know how cancer has touched your or your family/friends lives.

Article

Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow, John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, Cancer

Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow, John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, Cancer

When I learned I had to start eating better, I headed to my favorite bookstores and right to the sales aisles. There, I found low-fat, healthy cookbooks. Since I knew that vegetarianism was low-cholesterol, low-fat, low-sugar & low-sodium, I began looking for them.

Vegetables are great for weight loss, and there are better ways to prepare them than steaming lumps of goo. After a time, I began feeling comfortable around such vegetables as Eggplant, Spaghetti Squash, Turnips, Parsnips, Kale, Beets (fresh) and Leeks. I then made many recipes from those cookbooks for family and friends. And received compliments.

Cooking healthy is not a time-consuming endeavor. All it takes is a dedicated mind and patience.

Here are the low-fat and vegetarian cookbooks I use:

The Vegetarian little big Book, McRae Books
Healthy Eating, Starfire Publishing
Super cookery: Low fat & Salads, Parragon Publishing
The Little Guides: Vegetarian, Fog City Press
Vegetarian, Hermes House
Sensational Vegetable Recipes, Bay Books

Your health well thank you.

vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarianism, cookbooks, low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol

vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarianism, cookbooks, low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol

The official definition from www.diabetes.org.

Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune disorder-a problem with the body’s immune system. In a healthy body, specialized cells (called beta cells) in the pancreas make insulin. Insulin is a hormone that allows the body to use energy from food. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system mistakes beta cells for invaders and attacks them. When enough beta cells are destroyed, symptoms of diabetes appear.

In type 2 diabetes, the beta cells still produce insulin. However, either the cells do not respond properly to the insulin or the insulin produced naturally is not enough to meet the needs of the body. So insulin is usually still present in a person with type 2 diabetes, but it does not work as well as it should. Some people with type 2 can keep it under control by losing weight, changing their diet, and increasing their exercise. Others take one or more medications, including insulin.

Symptoms of Diabetes:

Frequent urination
Excessive thirst
Extreme hunger
Unusual weight loss
Increased fatigue
Irritability
Blurry vision

I was diagnosed a few years ago and am currently on pills to control my blood sugar. I also try to control my blood sugar through diet and exercise. I know, diet and exercise, the bane of many’s existance.

Just visit www.diabetes.org for more information

diabetes, blood sugar, diagnosed, symptoms of diabetes, vegetarian

diabetes, blood sugar, diagnosed, symptoms of diabetes, vegetarian

My name is Brick, and I’ve inherited the Encouraging Health blog! I’m excited about sharing new and different ways to helping make everyone healthier.

To start off, here is where you can get your [tag]FREE[tag], personalized health and meal plan guide from the [tag]Department of Agriculture[tag].

www.mypyramid.gov

This gives you your personalized pyramid plan that shows how much fruits, vegetables, pasta/grains, etc, you should be eating per day, based on your personal habits.

Free, personalized plan, fruits, vegetables

Learning disabilities come in all shapes, sizes and degrees. In fact the diagnosis ADHD, which we hear bandied about in teachers’ lounges and conference rooms in our public schools is a new term, only coined with the last forty years. Doctors had observed and recorded the symptoms as early as 1902, but drugs for treating it were not in widespread use until the 1960s.

We do not know why some childre have a much harder time in the classroom than others do, or why we should see so much of this syndrome at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century. Does it have anything to do with the mercury that is used as a preservative in the childhood inoculations? The best we can officially say at this time is that we do not know. However, we do know that mercury is a well documented poisonous substance.

i have jsut got off the phone with a young woman who was telling me of the problems she had going to school in the early 1960s. the rules and regulations in the first grade, which all the children have difficulty conforming to on one level or another, were for her sheer torture. She could not sit still. If she looked out the window, she would forget that she was in a classroom. Many of us had problems with day-dreaming when we were children, but most of us knew where we were at the time. This woman did not. She failed at learning the rudiments of reading that year. When I asked if her mother tried to teach her at home, she said that she does not remember, and that large portions of her memory from that time are blank, as her mind was not processing information to be able to remember it.

She did say that if she had permitted the doctors to medicate her to the extent they would have liked, she would be dead from the side-effects of the antidepressants that had been prescribed for her. She became severely allergic to antidepressants almost as soon as she first started to take them.

When this woman was in her twenties, she was prescribed amphetamines to help her stay awake to her surroundings. These same drugs are often used to help people lose weight. This woman discovered that for her they had exactly the opposite effect. They did not help her with her mental problems, and when she stopped taking them, she gained a tremendous amount of weight, which she has not been able to lose since.

She described to me how difficult it can be to maintain the concentration necessary to do what, for most of us, are simple tasks, such as preparing a meal or reading a book. There have been many times when she has had to put special concentration into putting one foot in front of the other in order to walk where she wanted to go. Crossing a busy street has often been a dangerous project. She described how, if you are mildly dizzy, you can walk and run, but you don[’t feel secure doing those things. She feels dizzy that way all the time.

In 1964, when this lady was a little girl, she was diagnosed as being mentally retarded. She most definitely is not, in the usual sense of that word, as she is able to express herself intellingently and well. Later she was diagnosed with what is known as a Central Auditory Procesing Disorder, as she did not understand voice tones and conversations were impossible to maintain, as she was so easily distracted. When I asked her how this affected her emotionally, she said that when something is with you all your life, you don’t realize that things could be different.

Music therapy helped increase her ability to concentrate. What chiropractors call their Neurological Organization Technique helped, but it is not available where she is living at this time. She would like to tgry a program known as Durr Achievement that started in England and has successfully helped many people with problems similar to hers, but is not certain whether she will be able to get the funding for it. She would like to try, because even though she is forty-four years old, and has two college degreees, she has not been able to hold a job. Her explanation is that getting started in the morning and going to sleep at night are too hard. If most of us said that, it would sound as though we were making fun of ourselves, but for this lady, and many others like her, these things are very difficult.

She has never been married, and she has no children of her own. However, she does have a niece and nephew who live a few hundred miles away, whom she loves dearly and she is hoping that the family will move closer so that she can be with those children more often.

In generations past, people like this woman may have been known as eccentrics, and left to potter through life as best they could. Now, research is being done, Ways and methods to teach people with such disabilities how to function in this increasingly complex society of ours are being worked out. We still have much to learn about what keeps our nervous systoms working optimally, but we are making progress.