Encouraging Health

Sweet corn on the cob, tomatoes from the garden, steak seared on the grill.

Could there be a more perfect late summer meal? Yes, but only if you know the healthiest ways to indulge your barbecue habit. Good bet you’ve heard murmurs about grilled meat causing — yes — cancer, and you’ve either tried not to listen or guiltily thought, well, what doesn’t? But here’s the good news: There are a bunch of ways to virtually wipe out the risk. In fact, we’ve found eight of them!

The problem, by the way, is that grilling meat, chicken, and fish — especially if it’s charred or well-done — produces cancer-linked chemicals known as HCAs or HAAs. Animal fat dripping onto hot coals creates another worry: stuff called PAHs. But you don’t have to go flame-free. Just do one or more of the following, which actually tend to make grilled food taste even better.

Is it worth it? You bet: Besides eliminating the guilt, making healthful substitutions when cooking can make you healthier.

1. Soak it up. Marinating meat boosts flavor and tenderness while slashing production of cancer-causing HCAs by up to 90%, especially if the marinade has an olive oil base. Make your own, or use bottled Italian dressing zinged up with extra garlic.
2. Do kabobs. Small pieces of meat cook faster and produce fewer HCAs than caveman-size slabs do. Thread your protein of choice onto a skewer with lots of veggies (cherry tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini chunks, onions) and grill until just done.
3. Add a secret ingredient. Making burgers? Mix in 1 teaspoon of wheat bran per pound of ground meat. It keeps burgers juicy, stops HCAs in their tracks, and won’t even register on the carb meter.

4. Finish it fast. Precook meat on the stove or in the oven or microwave earlier in the day, and then finish on the grill for great flavor and those tempting stripes. Precooking also means people won’t have to wait around for ages while dinner cooks.

5. Foiled again. Cover the grate with punctured aluminum foil. No flames, no drips, no HCAs — and no grill clean up, either. Frequently flipping your meat of choice also helps curtail troublemakers.

6. Get skinny. To curtail dripping, trim fat from meat. Cook chicken with the skin on, and then toss the skin. You have nothing to lose but grease, calories, and carcinogens.

7. Have a glass of tea. How about some iced tea with your baby back ribs? Tea’s supercharged antioxidants help neutralize carcinogens.

8. Grill something besides the main course. Bored with broccoli? Sick of sliced fruit? Throw them on the grill. Fruits and veggies don’t produce carcinogens, and many, from pears to pineapple, take surprisingly well to the brazier.

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Getting older really gets a bad rap. It turns out you’ll have a lot to smile about.

That’s because you’ll actually be happier, despite gray hairs or wrinkles. A three-decades-long survey confirms it: Your odds of scoring well on a happiness scale increase about 5 percent every decade.

With Age Comes . . .
There’s one major advantage to getting older (at least for most of us!), and that’s maturity. Researchers suspect that it’s maturity that enriched people’s lives and boosted their happy factor in a recent study — even when faced with health concerns or lost relationships. Know what else helped ensure happiness in the study? Education.

Why Wait!

But you don’t have to wait until you’re gray to get happy. Put yourself on the love-your-life path today with some simple life changes:

Sweat it. Yep, working that body of yours turns the fretting volume waaay down.

Train yourself to think good thoughts. Your attitude affects your health.

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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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Study shows value of food diary in losing weight

Keeping a food diary — a detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories it packs — is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, Many studies have shown..
The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.

The findings buttressed earlier research that endorsed the value of food diaries in helping people lose weight. Companies including Weight Watchers International Inc use food diaries in their weight-loss programs.

“For those who are working on weight loss, just writing down everything you eat is a pretty powerful technique,” Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland said in a telephone interview.

“It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations,” said Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.

The study involved people from four U.S. cities: Portland, Oregon; Baltimore, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their average weight loss was about 13 pounds (6 kg). But those keeping food diaries six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds (8 kg) compared to 9 pounds (4 kg) for those not regularly keeping a food diary.

The average age of people in the study was 55.

What information should I include in a food diary?
Whether you are using your food diary to identify food allergy or intolerance or as a tool to help you lose weight and eat better, don’t change your eating habits for the first few days. Evaluating your current diet is the only way to recognize changes that should be made. Write down everything you eat. Be honest and thorough.

To find foods that may be causing allergic or digestive symptoms, record the following information:

all the foods that you eat (be specific about the food and any added toppings, such as cheese, mayonnaise, and sauces)
how much (portion sizes) of each food
the times of day when you eat
any symptoms you have after eating a food, such as allergy symptoms or digestive problems
the time symptoms started and how long they lasted.
When using your food diary to improve your diet and help you lose weight, include the following:

All the foods that you eat (be specific about the food and any added toppings, such as cheese, mayonnaise, and sauces)
How much (portion sizes) of each food
The times of day when you eat
Where you eat your food
Who you eat with
What you are doing while you eat, such as watching TV
Your thoughts and feelings at the time you were eating.

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It took only an instant for 58-year-old Gailanne Reeh to go from the picture of health to death’s door. By chance, her doctor noticed a lump under her arm during a routine exam. It turned out to be advanced breast cancer.

The surgeon, she recalled, “looked at me and said: ‘This is not a conversation I like to have. But I can’t do anything for you. You can’t be cured. You can’t be treated. All we can do is manage your cancer.’”

And so, like many others in that situation, Reeh, the vivacious owner of a staffing agency in Boston, was given bevacizumab, also known as Avastin, a drug that signifies both the hopes and dilemmas of modern medicine.

Looked at one way, Avastin, made by Genentech, is a wonder drug. Approved for patients with advanced lung, colon or breast cancer, it cuts off tumors’ blood supply, an idea that has tantalized science for decades. And despite its price, which can reach $100,000 a year, Avastin has become one of the most popular cancer drugs in the world, with sales last year of about $3.5 billion, $2.3 billion of that in the United States.

But there is another side to Avastin. Studies show the drug prolongs life by only a few months, if that. And some newer studies suggest the drug might be less effective against cancer than the Food and Drug Administration had understood when the agency approved its uses.

While many patients and their doctors say the drug can improve the quality of life — like a sense of well-being and an ability to carry out daily tasks without exhaustion or pain — such effects can be hard to document. Meanwhile, many patients with cancers other than those of the colon, lung or breast are taking the drug, even in cases where there is no compelling evidence that it can help.

Avastin also has serious, if infrequent, side effects, some of which can be lethal. And because it is almost always used with standard chemotherapy — it did not work as well when researchers tried it alone — patients on Avastin do not escape chemotherapy’s side effects.

“I still use Avastin routinely, but it’s sobering,” Dr. Leonard Saltz, a colon cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said. “It’s not a slam-dunk.”

Avastin raises troubling questions:

What does it mean to say an expensive drug works? Is slowing the growth of tumors enough if life is not significantly prolonged or improved? “I think of Avastin as a model that is showing us where the problem is,” said Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, an advocacy group.

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Your eyes work nonstop for you. They help you admire everything from movie trailers to Monet. Now it’s payback time.

Thank your eyes for all they do by following the three peeper-protecting steps below. Your eyes will feel like they’ve had a fancy spa treatment. Bonus: pricey creams and cucumber slices not required.

Stay well watered. Your tear ducts — those tiny tubes that keep your eyes moist and lubricated — need ample H2O to do their job. So help keep them hydrated by drinking plenty of water.

Get between the sheets. Adequate pillow time is key for reviving tired eyes. Your retinal membranes — like the rest of your body — need the night hours to recharge.

Quit the staring contests. With your computer, that is. Let the machine win. Too much screen time makes eyes tired and achy. Take at least one 10-minute break every 2 hours.

Breaking the 8-Glass Myth
Learn why you should flout standard water intake wisdom and assess your personal needs for fluids.

How do you know if you’re getting enough fluids? Some people rely on their thirst to gauge whether their bodies are properly hydrated. Others go by the conventional wisdom of “8×8″ and assume they are getting their fair share of liquids by following this guideline.

Using either rule will probably ensure that you are properly hydrated. However, neither system is the last word on water intake. You’ll need to listen to your own body to determine the level of fluid intake that is optimal for you. Learn more about the signs of dehydration from our medical encyclopedia.

When standard measures may fail
Keying in to times that you may need more water or signs that you are mildly dehydrated can help you avoid annoying symptoms of heavy fluid loss, such as feeling more tired. However, there’s little usefulness in getting more fluids than you need. It will result in nothing more than having to run to the bathroom frequently.

For most of us, drinking enough water is not a problem. Thirst is quite sufficient as a signal for us to get more. Sometimes, however, thirst mechanisms can be unreliable or impaired, especially in people over 65 who have medical conditions.

Use these 3 easy steps to check whether you may be
dehydrated.

1. Listen to your body.
These are some obvious physical signs of dehydration. If you’re a little dehydrated, your lips may be dry. Your mouth may feel a bit gummy or sticky.

2. Watch for other signs.
In addition to dry mouth and thirst, you may have difficulty concentrating on tasks. You may feel tired for no apparent reason. Your heart rate may be a bit elevated. Some people even report having headaches when they’ve been deprived of liquids. Don’t ignore any of these symptoms, especially when clustered together.

3. Check your fluid output.
A strong indication that you are dehydrated may be when your urine output is dark in color and has a strong odor. Some medications can influence urine color, so check with your doctor. Also, the color and/or scent of urine also may be affected by multivitamin supplements; by certain foods or beverages, such as beer or asparagus; or by certain nutrients, such as vitamin B2, also called riboflavin.

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What mineral helps heal your wounds and support your immune system and may even thwart cancer cells?Hint: Go to the end of the alphabet.

Yep, zinc — last in the alphabetical roll call of minerals, but a first-place contender when it comes to antiaging power — does a lot for your well-being. But it may not work alone . . .

The Live-Longer Combo
Zinc protects against cell-damaging, cancer-causing free radicals. But it could sure use a little help. Recent research confirmed as much. When low blood levels of zinc were paired with low blood levels of another mighty mineral — magnesium — bad things happened in a study of men aged 30 to 60. Death rates for the group increased dramatically. The reason? The synergistic effect of having too little of both free-radical-wrangling minerals may increase the toll on healthy cells exponentially.

Zinc Up Your Diet
You can get the zinc you need (12 milligrams a day) from crab, oysters, pork, poultry, beans, cashews, and yogurt. Or find a good multivitamin with less than 15 milligrams. Too much of the stuff could stop other important minerals from doing their jobs. For magnesium, seek out soybeans, cashews, tomato paste, salmon, and spinach and you’ll be well on your way to the RealAge recommended 400–500 milligrams per day.

Recipe
Zinc up tonight by making these mouthwatering Crab Quesadillas. They take only 30 minutes.

These quesadillas have an irresistibly creamy filling. They also make great appetizers. Make it a meal: Serve with your favorite salsa on top and a cup of black bean soup topped with chopped avocado.

Ingredients
1 cup shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese
2 ounces reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
4 scallions, chopped
1/2 medium red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped pickled jalapenos, (optional)
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice
8 ounces pasteurized crabmeat, drained if necessary
4 8-inch whole-wheat tortillas
2 teaspoons canola oil, divided

Directions
1. Combine Cheddar, cream cheese, scallions, bell pepper, cilantro, jalapenos (if using), orange zest and juice in a medium bowl. Gently stir in crab. Lay tortillas out on a work surface. Spread one-fourth of the filling on half of each tortilla. Fold tortillas in half, pressing gently to flatten.
2. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Place 2 quesadillas in the pan and cook, turning once, until golden on both sides, 3 to 4 minutes total. Transfer to a cutting board and tent with foil to keep warm. Repeat with the remaining 1 teaspoon oil and quesadillas. Cut each quesadilla into 4 wedges.

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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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When the afternoon blahs leave us slumped over our desks like an unwatered houseplant, most of us reach for a supersized vat of coffee and/or a calorie-packed sugar snack. There are much better options, whether you need a quick lift to keep you from nodding off in a meeting or something to keep you going for hours.

WATER: Sometimes what feels like fatigue is just dehydration (often made worse by too much coffee). Drink 8 ounces of water, take a quick walk around the block or the parking lot (fresh air is an energy booster, too), and then down another 8 ounces when you get back.

WATERMELON: Like cookies and candy, watermelon is high in sugar, which metabolizes quickly, which gives you a rush. But watermelon’s way healthier: Instead of guilt, you get fiber, a hit of vitamins A and C, plus all that fresh, juicy flavor for almost no calories (fewer than 50 a cup). To make your new zip last longer, eat it with some protein and a little fat — as in low-fat cottage cheese or a fistful of sunflower seeds.

BRAZIL NUTS: They’re off the charts in mood-lifting selenium and strong in fatigue-fighting magnesium. Just six of these nuts give you 4 grams of protein and some healthy plant fats, a combo that will keep you going far longer than you’d think.

A MEXICAN BAKED POTATO: Spuds are high on the glycemic index — that is, they give blood sugar a quick boost — which is bad for people with diabetes but good in moderate doses for other people in need of an energy surge. Heap on some salsa and top with a dollop of low-fat sour cream to enhance the effect. Spicy foods are stimulating, and hot peppers wake up more than your taste buds.

A FEW DRIED DATES: They were traditionally used in the Sahara to provide quick energy to camels. Like potatoes, dates are a high glycemic snack, but rich in minerals, too — especially potassium. Split the dates and fill with a tad of low-fat cream cheese to slow the sugar absorption.

PB&J ON WHOLE WHEAT: The all-American sandwich is also an all-around pick-me-up, thanks to its amazingly complete mix of carbs, good fats, protein, and whole-grain fiber. Just make it a one-slice fold-over to cut the calories down to about 200.

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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.