How You Can Control Your Destiny with Lifestyle Changes

Healthy Diet Change

What scientists are beginning to recognize is that much of the illness in these years is due to lifestyle – a factor that can be changed through individual initiative and taking control.

In fact, researchers believe that 80% of deaths in mid-adulthood are related to the relatively small number of lifestyle habits, especially your diet and healthy eating

Heart disease, including heart attacks and strokes – which together are the leading cause of death and disability for men 40 to 45 – can largely be prevented by dealing with stress, changing your diet and eating for good health, stopping smoking, getting reasonable exercise, and treating hypertension.

Cancer, the second leading cause of death, can be prevented in the long run by stopping smoking, making diet and health changes, and avoiding exposure to occupational or environmental chemicals. 

Finally, cirrhosis, alcoholism and a majority of accidents can be avoided by controlling the use of alcohol.

From the standpoint of both individual health and national health, it is amazing to consider that in perhaps three out of four cases, death and disability in middle age can be avoided through limited number of behavioral changes that admittedly take effort and willpower, but are not impossible to achieve.

None of these changes is dependent on new advances in medical technology, development of new drugs, surgical techniques, or the building of expensive medical facilities. 

Improvement is basically a matter of lifestyle changes and/or environmental changes. To make the changes we have to change our attitude and the way we look at the world. 

Belief in our power to change is essential. We, not doctors, are largely responsible for creating our own state of health and well-being.

Your Thoughts? Leave  Your Comments Below?

Stay Healthy. Here are your 20 Common Everyday Super Foods

Here are the 20 Common Everyday Super Foods you must incorporate in your diet regularly and the reasons why. 

I've been a committed vegetarian for over 52 years, so you will not see any flesh foods listed here. 

  1. Bananas

      Filled with fiber and potassium  and may even help with a hangover

  2. Brown Rice

     The whole grain version is full of fiber and may cut the risk of diabetes.

  3. Grapes

      High in antioxidants, which may help reduce cholesterol 

  4. Oatmeal

      High in fiber, low in fat, and may even help lower cholesterol                      

  5. Tomatoes
      Contains exceptional amounts of the antioxidant lycopene that remains in the              flesh of the tomatoes even after cooking and canning. Choose the ones with no            sodium added.

  6. Sweet Potatoes

      High levels of vitamin A, contains beta-carotene (which may help prevent cancer and protect you from the sun) and also helps keep your skin silky smooth 

  7. Spinach

      Nutrient dense with vitamin A, K, and calcium

  8. Black Beans

 Packs a ton of fiber and has a solid amount of calcium, fiber, potassium, and folic   acid

  9. Eggs

      When in need of protein, eggs are quick and delicious

10. Pinto Beans

      Full of protein and fiber 

11. Lentils

More protein per pound than beef. Lentils are a filling food with antioxidants (and quite tasty, too).

12. Low-fat milk.

One-calcium filled glass can help keep teeth strong and even help keep off those excess pounds.  

13. Low-fat Yogurt

      Filled with protein and calcium

14. Low-fat Cottage Cheese        

      Surprisingly high in protein, and tastes great in both sweet and savory  dishes.

15. Whole Grain Pasta

      Full of fiber, antioxidants, and protein, and may help lower risk of heart disease.

16. Apples

      Get this super food for a serving of vitamin C and cancer fighting antioxidants.

17. Onions

      Onions pack a surprising nutritious punch, including a hefty dose of  antioxidants. 

18. Oranges

      Oranges aren't just about their vitamin C, it is also filled with fiber, and                          potassium.

19. Coffee
      This morning pick-up contains antioxidants to help protect the heart, and is a              great pre-workout fuel to help increase endurance.

20. Tea

      Go for the green tea if you're looking to maximize your antioxidant intake.   

The varying health benefits of tea are plenty, ranging from their antioxidant powers to helping maintain a healthy weight.    

These are feel good foods that are great for the body and even better for your budget. 

What do you think of these foods? Leave your comments below.

    

Who’s at Risk for Stroke?

My mother had a stroke in the early 80s but miraculously recovered after being in a coma for 10 days. I use the term miraculously because the doctors said that she likely would not recover and that we should get prepared for her death.
However, my brother and I prayed everyday for her recovery and she recovered. Not only  did she recover, but she didn't show any after affects of having a stroke and lived for about 10 more years before dying of natural causes. I was very fortunate to get her to the emergency room in time.

Frequency of Strokes in the U.S.
Of the approximately 795,000 strokes that occur in the United States each year, about 610,000 are first strokes, and 185,000 are recurrent attacks.

Although the incidence of strokes has declined significantly since the 1960s, the strokes that do happen are just as severe. In fact, strokes  are a leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States.

Risks of Having a Stroke
The odds of having a stroke more than double every 10 years after age 55. More than two-thirds of strokes involve people over 65. If you have a stroke, the risk of dying from it also increases with age. 88% of deaths from strokes are in people 65 and older.

Women have about 55,000 more strokes than men each year, and women make up about 60% of stroke deaths. Race is another risk factor. African Americans, for example, are almost twice as likely to suffer a stroke as are whites.

Warning Signs of Having a Stroke
Everyone should learn the following warning signs of stroke. If you experience any of these symptoms, immediately dial 911 or go to an emergency room:

• weakness in an arm, hand, or leg
• numbness on one side of the body
• sudden dimness or loss of vision, particularly in one eye
• sudden difficulty speaking
• inability to understand what someone is saying
• dizziness or loss of balance
• sudden, lasting, excruciating headache.

Do you have any thoughts on this subject. Leave your comments below.

12 Steps for Managing Stress

We all experience it at one time or another; this condition is called stress.  

It is perhaps the number one cause of most health problems today including ulcers, coronary heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, lung problems, accidental injuries, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. 

Anti-anxiety drugs and ulcer medications are among the best selling prescription drugs in the United States. 

Nevertheless, stress is the process of living. The process of living is the process of having stress imposed on you and reacting to it without allowing it to cause any of the above health problems. 

Now let’s explore the 12 steps for managing stress in your life in a healthy and effective manner.

1. Talk about the problems you are experiencing with friends, loved ones, or a professional. Keeping everything bottled up will only create more problems later on.

2. Exercise. Exercise relieves tension and produces a calming effect.

3. Take a bath. A warm bath can be very relaxing and soothing.

4. Music can be calming. Listen to some soft jazz or instrumental music. Ocean or nature sounds also are a good way to release stress.

5. Healthy meals can become an important factor in limiting your stress.  Try to eat three meals a day (no heavy meals), and make an effort to avoid too much caffeine and sugar.

6. Sleep deprivation can cause stress. Six to seven hours sleep can often make all the difference.

7. Coping with stress can be challenging.  Every day you seem to be pulled in every direction, trying to accommodate others.  

The first priority is to take care of yourself. You are the thread which holds your family together. If you are stressed, you won’t be much good to anyone

8. Give yourself a break every now and then.  Buy a new outfit; go to a movie; do something you’ve always wanted to do.  Your family can take care of themselves for one day.  

Alone time is just as important to you as it is for everyone else.  Think of yourself as a gas tank; eventually you will run out of fuel.

9. Laughter is a wonderful release. Releasing tension through laughter is one the best cure-all method for dealing with stress-related issues.

10. Avoid stressful situations whenever possible.  If you are a working parent, it’s probably not the job but the people who are causing you the most stress.  Take everything in stride.

11. If you can’t finish a task, don’t worry about it.  If dinner doesn’t turn out as you expected, improvise or pick up something.

12. Life is too short; and stress can reduce it further.  Nothing is more important than your health or state of mind.


How well are you handling stress? Do you think these steps can be helpful?

Leave your comments below. 

Learn the 7 Ways for Healthy Aging

The aging population in the US is growing larger. The aging are living longer. While it is worthwhile to live to a ripe old age, it is even more gratifying if you are aging in a healthy way. 

Often this time of the year many of my posts deal with the Annual Election Period (AEP) when you have the opportunity to choose or replace your health care plan under Medicare. However, what you habitually do everyday has a significant bearing on healthy aging as opposed to being old and sickly.

In my view, there are 7 lifestyle habits that should be acquired if you don't have them already.

1. Get a good night's sleep every night. 
It can be as little as six hours. But, it should be one in which the lights are turned off with the full intention of sleeping and feeling relaxed in the morning,
2. Acquire and maintain a few friends
You need people with whom you can share good conversation, enjoy going to events, dinner, etc. and giving each other mutual support.
3. Keep the mind active. 
Find a mental activity that is absorbing and gratifying. It can be learning a new skill, regularly surfing the internet for new learning experiences and so on.
4. Get daily exercise. 
If you can't join a YMCA or a health club, get an exercise bike and some weights and work out for at least 3 to 5 minutes a day and walk regularly.
5. Eat a balanced diet. 
It is not necessary to eat three meals a day. Two meals will suffice. However, if you do choose to eat three meals, make them light and nutritious.
6. Control your thinking. 
Your mind can easily drift into a pattern of thinking that can make you sad and depressed if you are not careful. Think constructive thoughts - thoughts that are optimistic and forward looking.
7. Go to doctors less frequently unless you have an illness that needs to be monitored. 
Most doctors are trained to prescribe medications for any type of illnesses, real or imagined, and tests can sometimes give you false positives. Study and get to know your own body. Recognize symptoms that can be the precursors to a real illness. Then, when you go to the doctor, tell him specifically what your concerns are. Try not to get addicted to any type of medication.

Acquiring and maintaining these habits will be a great help in assuring a long and healthy life. If you don't already have a lifestyle based on these habits, reread this, and begin integrating these habits into your life. 

Remember any specific action repeated daily and consistently for at least 21 days will become a habit. Do this and acquire good habits.

Don't Neglect Your Bones

Osteoporosis makes your bones weak and more likely to break. Your bone health may be at risk. By 2020 half of all Americans over 50 will have weak bones unless we make changes to our diet and lifestyle. People who have weak bones are at higher risk for fractures. 

Your Bones Need to Stay Strong
 Americans are living longer, and this means that our bones need to stay strong so we can be active and enjoy life. Thirty years ago, little was known about bone disease. Even many doctors believed that weak and broken bones were just a part of old age and could not be avoided. Today we know that this is not true.

Strong bones begin in childhood. With good habits and medical attention when needed, we can have strong bones throughout our lives.

Weak Bones Can Be Deadly
Broken bones are very painful at any age. Each year 1.5 million older people in this country suffer fractures because their bones have become weak. For older people, weak bones can be deadly. If you are elderly, a broken hip makes you up to four times more likely to die within three months. 

If you survive, the injury often causes your health to spiral downward. One in five people with a hip fracture ends up in a nursing home within a year. Many others become isolated, depressed, or frightened to leave home because they fear they will fall.

Anyone can develop osteoporosis, but it is common in older women. As many as half of all women and a quarter of men older than fifty will break a bone due to osteoporosis or low bone density.

Risk Factors for Weak Bones
According to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the risk factors include:

1. Getting older
2. Being small and thin
3. Having a family history of osteoporosis
4. Taking certain medicines
5. Being a white or Asian woman

You can improve your bone health by getting enough calcium, vitamin D, and physical activity. If you have osteoporosis or another bone disease, your doctor can detect and treat it. This can help prevent painful fractures. If you break a bone after the age of so, this could be the first sign of weak bones.

Osteoporosis is a silent disease. You might not know you have it until you break a bone.

What You Need to Know About Strokes

A stroke occurs when arteries that supply the brain with blood becomes blocked , preventing blood flow. I had first hand experience with this situation when my  mother had a stroke. After being in a coma for nearly ten days she recovered completely and lived ten more years without any after effect.  The doctors and I agreed, it was a miracle.

Of the approximately 795,000 strokes that occur in the United States each year, about 610,000 are first strokes, and 185,000 are recurrent attacks. Although the incidence of stroke has declined significantly since the 1960s, the strokes that do happen are just as severe. In fact, stroke is a leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States.

The odds of having a stroke more than double every 10 years after age 55. More than two-thirds of strokes involve people over 65. If you have a stroke, the risk of dying from it also increases with age: 88% of deaths from stroke are in people 65 and older.Women have about 55,000 more strokes than men each year, and women make up about 60% of stroke deaths. Race is another risk factor. African Americans, for example, are almost twice as likely to suffer a stroke as are whites.

Although you can’t change your age, gender, or race, you can take steps to reduce other risk factors for stroke, especially ischemic stroke. The most common risk factors for both ischemic stroke and TIAs are high blood pressure (hypertension), diabetes, unhealthy cholesterol levels, obesity, and cigarette smoking. All of these factors affect the health of your blood vessels—increasing the risk not only of stroke, but also of heart disease. That’s why medications and other steps you take to reduce the risk of an ischemic stroke will also benefit your heart.

Some types of hemorrhagic stroke are more likely to occur in people with chronic high blood pressure.. But other types of hemorrhagic stroke seemingly strike out of the blue. Although abnormal blood vessel conditions such as an aneurysm (a bubble in the blood vessel wall that could rupture) or an arteriovenous malformation (an abnormal tangle of blood vessels) increase the risk, these conditions may only be discovered inadvertently while you are undergoing testing for something else—or may not be discovered until a stroke occurs.

Here are the warning signs and symptoms of stroke:

• weakness in an arm, hand, or leg
• numbness on one side of the body
• sudden dimness or loss of vision, particularly in one eye
• sudden difficulty speaking
• inability to understand what someone is saying
• dizziness or loss of balance
• sudden, lasting, excruciating headache.

If you or a loved one experience any of these symptoms, immediately dial 911 or go or get that person to an emergency room immediately.



Have you had an experience like this? Leave you comments below.

The Benefits to the Body of Specific Types of Physical Activities

Aerobic Exercising

If several of your close blood relatives have had heart at­tacks before the age of sixty, you're likely to have one too unless you eliminate all the other possible risk factors. 

Don't have a fatalistic view about heart disease because so many of your close relatives died young from heart attacks. 

Chances are your ill-fated parents or siblings smoked, were overweight, were diabetic with poor sugar control, had el­evated cholesterol levels, and rarely exercised. Genes are only part of the story. 

Regardless of your genetic vulnera­bility, correcting any obvious abnormalities will improve your outlook considerably.

Regular exercise, that's sufficiently rigorous, protects the coronary arteries. However, you've got to pay attention to the other risk factors as well. Dr. William Castelli, the di­rector of the Framingham Heart Study, estimates that half the doctors running in the Boston Marathon have abnormal cholesterol levels—and don't know it!

You're most likely to stay with your exercise program if you enjoy it. Few people will continue for very long with a regimen that they find boring. Brisk walking for thirty minutes a day or vigorous gardening are enough. If you prefer, you may also run, jog, dance, bike, or swim, pro­vided your doctor has cleared you to do so. Walking briskly for about three miles (you can pick any other form of ex­ercise) was found to reduce the risk of a heart attack by 64 percent in male Harvard alumni. (Graduates of Princeton, Yale, and Cornell can probably expect the same good re­sults.)

Aerobic exercises such as walking or running (as opposed to stretching and weight-lifting) exert their beneficial effect in several ways:
a. They lower your resting heart rate and blood pressure, thus easing the burden on your heart.
b. They reduce cholesterol and triglycerides, raise the good HDL and lower the bad LDL.
b. They drop the blood sugar in diabetic.
c. They help prevent osteoporosis.
c. They decrease the proportion of body fat.
e. And, they reduce stress and improve mood.
All in all, exercise is a good prescription against heart attack.

Finally, besides improving your physical health and increasing your longevity, exercise can have short-term and long-term psychological benefits. Physical activity can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression and improve mood and well-being.