March 20, 2024 / 5:14Healthy Living: Simple steps to a better life
Healthy Living: Simple steps to a better life
Colin McDougall
When you watch TV or read magazines you get the impression that most people spend their days as lean, mean exercise fanatics who compete in triathlons, eat tofu, and drink a gallon of rain water a day.
If you dont fit this profile, you are not alone. Consider:
The writing is on the wall poor diet and physical inactivity is about as dangerous as smoking.
So, why dont we exercise and eat right?
For most of us, the answer is: time. Exercise and diet take time away from our work, our families, our lives.
Some of us have tried to fit exercise into our daily routines before and maybe even stuck with a program for a while, but finally saw too little gain for the effort and time it took.
Heres the good news: a healthy lifestyle wont consume you like it might have years ago. The science of healthy living has come a long way in recent years. Consider:
Realistic health improvement for real people
We all know we should take better care of ourselves, but modern lifestyles with hectic work schedules, commuting, and family and social responsibilities make it difficult for us to live a healthy life.
But you can begin to live a healthier life. You can start slowly and work in more healthy practices. Interestingly, even small changes can lead to big improvements over time. Begin modestly by making a commitment to starting to do something and to stay with it. As you proceed, remember to be proud of your accomplishmentsyou will be doing more than 70 percent of the population!
The doctor will see you now
Before embarking on a fitness program and making dietary changes, talk with your doctor about your plans. If you have prior health conditions, especially cardiovascular disease, your doctor may want you to avoid certain exercises. If you are on certain medications, your doctor may give you valuable information on avoiding drug interactions with certain foods such as grapefruit and with some herbal supplements.
A special word to smokers
If you smoke, you know you need to quit. Modern research links smoking to a vast array of cancers, as well as heart and cardiovascular disease. According to the American Cancer Society, smoking alone causes one-third of all cancer deaths.
The bottom lineif you are a smoker, stopping represents the single best health action you can take. Talk with your doctorthere are new treatments available.
Some basic health objectives
It can be hard to know where to start when you want to improve your health.
Here are three baseline objectives for a healthier lifestyle:
Lose weight / Eat a more balanced diet
Qualified health professionals agree the keys to losing weight are to eat less, eat a more balanced diet, and to increase your exercise level. In general, reducing your intake of protein and eating more fruits and vegetables is a good start. Try and reduce your intake of saturated fats common in fried foods. Your heart will thank you.
Here are some tips:
Eat a diet that contains lots of:
Ensure you are getting an adequate supply of:
Reduce your consumption of:
Other Tips:
Consider diet supplements for weight loss and health
Despite our best efforts, it is hard to eat a balanced diet everyday. Consider taking one or more of the excellent vitamins and supplements available, but check with your doctor first before taking them.
Today, you can get the latest high quality vitamins and dietary supplements at low prices and without leaving your home by ordering over the Internet. Here is an excellent example of a vitamins site.
Avoid fad diets
Use common sense and follow the advice of government health authorities, university nutritionists and other well-accredited health care experts. Reliable nutrition advice is available free by contacting your local health department and talking with a nutritionist.
Be wary of the latest Fad Diets put forward by authors. Healthy eating is not rocket scienceyou need to eat a balanced diet that includes the four food groups:
This is well documented by decades of research. Sure, the fad diets may help you lose weight temporarily but at worst you could seriously damage your health and at best, you will likely gain the weight back if the diet is not sensible and sustainable.
Get more exercise
The second key to losing weight is to add more physical exercise into your lifestyle.
Exercise takes some effort and time, so it is fair to ask why you should bother. The key reasons include the following:
Research continues to show that any exercise is better than none. For example, regular walking or gardening may be beneficial in reducing your risk of heart disease.
Exercise
At a minimum you should strive for at least three 20-minute bouts of continuous aerobic (activity requiring oxygen) rhythmic exercise each week.
Other exercise levels will depend on your physical condition and goals. Consider a session or two with a certified personal trainer to accurately assess your current physical condition and plan an exercise regimen.
Easy ways for non-athletes to add exercise to their daily lives:
Consider creating a home gym
More and more people are purchasing exercise equipment to use at home. The advantages include:
Here are some tips in selecting equipment:
Determine what goals you want to pursuestrength training, aerobic training or cardiovascular training before you look at equipment.
Buy sturdy, quality equipment from known manufacturers.
Purchase equipment that will meet your needs now and as you improve
Buy from a reputable retailer, who has a large selection, low prices, and stands behind their products. For an excellent example for home gyms (click here) and other fitness equipment.
Reduce Stress
The good news is that by eating a healthier diet and exercising more frequently, you will have already taken two of the most important steps to helping your body fight stress.
Obviously sources of stress are a personal matter. Be alert to chronic stress you have trouble managing. This can sometimes lead to more serious conditions for both men and women, such as depression. If you feel you are having trouble coping, it is best to talk with your doctor.
If on the other hand, you have the everyday level of stress most of us face, you may want to try these stress-reducing tips:
How can I get started on a healthier lifestyle?
If you are not living as healthy a life as you want right now, you may be wondering how you will find the time and the resources to make changes.
The good news is you dont have to make all the changes at once, but do resolve to make some improvements. Time is always an issue, but time taken to improve your health will yield big improvements in many other areas of your life.
There has never been a better time to start, because thanks to the Internet you can purchase quality heath care products and equipment, quickly and efficiently and save money too! Heres a link to get you started with weight loss programs and healthy living.
About the Author
Colin McDougall is a successful freelance writer providing valuable advice for people seeking weight loss programs and vitamins. Visit http://www.weight-loss-and-nutritional-supplements.com and http://www.vitamins-source.com for more articles. He also offers other health and exercise related sites such as http://www.a1-hockey-equipment.com and http://www.paint-ball-gun-reviews.com. His numerous articles offer several healthy living tips.
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February 6, 2024 / 12:20Why Child Bearing Is Healthy
Why Child Bearing Is Healthy
Dr. Randy Wysong
From a purely biological perspective, bearing children can be considered the most important reason for a womans existence. For that matter, the same could be said about men, since both sexes are, in effect, disposable packages of genetic material. We die, but our genes continue on immortally.
With increasing population pressure and modern independent lifestyles (unlike the family farm where children were almost a necessity), procreation has become an option that is increasingly declined or at least significantly restricted. But with these choices women take themselves out of a natural biological role. Additionally, treating the breast as an ornament rather than a feeding organ by opting for synthetic formulas also removes women from a natural biological function.
When these choices are coupled with the use of contraceptive hormones, hormone replacement therapy, an increasing load of estrogenic pollutants in the environment and food, and a diet that has veered significantly from its natural design, the formula for hormonal pandemonium, metabolic dysfunction, and disease is in place. The result is early menses in children, infertility, abnormal and erratic menstrual cycles, cervical dysplasia, fibroids, endometrial cancer, breast cancer, premenstrual syndrome, dramatic mood swings and depression, osteoporosis, and other symptoms of abnormal menopause: hot flashes, psychological problems, decreased libido, and thinning of the vaginal wall.
This is a difficult problem with no easy solution. If women would have as many children as they are capable of, nurse them for years as they are designed to, eat natural foods, and live in a more pristine environment, most of these modern health problems would disappear.
If money flowed out of our tap we would not have economic problems either, right?
The desire to limit families may soon not even be an option. We either curtail population growth or we will saw through the branch we all sit on. Population is the engine that ultimately drives all environmental woes. We live on a finite planet with finite resources, but we have an infinite ability to breed. We either live within the limits of Earths sustainable resources or we will destroy ourselves. Having children may be a natural and healthy process, but can be a deadly game for sustainable life on Earth.
So we have a conundrum. Women need to fulfill their biological reproductive role to achieve metabolic balance and health, but if they do so unlimited, the health of life on Earth is jeopardized.
In an attempt to solve this dilemma, women have turned to the quick fix of pharmaceutical synthetic hormones. Hormones that control conception, hormones that control abnormal menstrual cycles, and hormones that fix menopause. It is an overly simplistic solution to a complex problem.
The saying, Dont mess with Mother Nature is particularly applicable when dosing the body with hormones. Since the 1940s when estrogen therapy became popular, hundreds of thousands of women have succumbed to cancer. For example, a woman is nearly 13 times more likely to get endometrial cancer, and at nearly a 30% increased risk of breast cancer when she takes estrogen. Recently, researchers have identified the two top preventable breast cancer risks: oral birth control pills and estrogen replacement therapy.
For those who justify the use of estrogen for the benefits of decreased risk of osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, consider that proper exercise, diet and lifestyle choices can have the same beneficial effect without the potential consequence of cancer.
How have women specifically put themselves outside of their natural context to make themselves more susceptible to cancers?
The average mom gives birth to about two infants. Although this is an intelligent number from the standpoint of population control, it is unnatural in that by not continuing to have pregnancies and to nurse (which stops ovulations) she will ovulate an incredible 438 times during her lifetime.
On the other hand, a woman in the primitive natural setting who may not even know what causes pregnancy or how to prevent it even if they wanted to, would have started menstruating and ovulating at age twelve and would have delivered nine babies and breast-fed them over the course of her reproductive career. Breast-feeding can continue for children in a totally natural setting for up to five or more years of age. The combination of pregnancy along with breast-feeding in the premodern setting would have decreased the number of ovulations that a primitive mother would have had to about nine.
This means that today women cycle through their menstrual periods an abnormal number of times, subjecting their bodies to surges of estrogen 50 times greater than our primitive ancestors living in a natural setting.
Many cancers of women are sensitive to high levels of female hormones.
For example, breast cancer is sensitive to estrogen. In dogs, simply removing the ovaries can often prevent or halt the progress of mammary cancer. Tamoxifen in humans is used to block estrogen activity within the mammary glands and thus is believed to exert its protective effect in this way. (This pharmaceutical agent can, however, increase the risk of uterine cancer to about the same degree that the risk of breast cancer is reduced!)
The resting periods of lower estrogen levels that women experienced in the premodern setting served a protective effect to spare organs and tissues from cancer. Women who nurse for a total period of time of even as little as two years are known to have a decreased incidence of mammary cancer.
This excess ovulation hypothesis is the likely explanation for the tragic phenomenon of modern female cancers. When humans decide to flout and repudiate nature by interfering with natural biological design, disease will always be the consequence.
If the problem is a departure from nature, then the solution is a return to it. Here are some options:
1.Refer to the Wysong Optimal Health Program for guidelines on life choices that can enhance overall health and thus hormonal health (http://www.wysong.net/PDFs/ohp.pdf).
2.Emphasize fresh raw foods in the diet and avoid processed foods as much as possible.
3.Eliminate hydrogenated oils and refined sugars. Hydrogenated oils displace healthful dietary fats and have been shown to be carcinogenic, and sugars can stimulate a rise in estrogens.
4.Try to use organic foods as much as possible and avoid synthetic materials in cosmetics, at home and in the workplace to help reduce exposure to environmental estrogens.
5.Do not attempt low fat or low cholesterol fad diets that often create dependence upon processed carbohydrates and seriously reduce important natural dietary fats and essential fatty acids.
6.Increase the consumption of natural vegetable foods containing phytoestrogens which tend to counteract estrogens.
7.Avoid hormone medications if at all possible.
8.Explore natural birth control measures.
9.Nurse your babies for as long as you can.
Modern life presents many choices, freedoms and rights. Tinkering with child bearing, however, is a choice that is not without consequences. Women need to be aware and take the steps necessary to make sure the choices they make do not also bring with them the increased risk of serious modern diseases.
Reference:
Zeneca Pharaceuticals. Tamoxifen Patient Insert. Zeneca, Inc. Wilmington, DE. 1998.
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living entitled Thinking Matters: 1-Living Life… As If Thinking Matters; 2-The Big Questions…As If Thinking Matters, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net.
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December 15, 2023 / 6:31Atkins Diet Basics
The Atkins diet is not a new phenomenon. The diet first appeared in the late 1970s and has grown popularity in recent years in response to the low-fat diet craze. As dieters had trouble with low-fat plans, they searched for a new solution and Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution book found a new audience.
A lot of people have jumped on the Atkins bandwagon and there has been a lot of hype as a result. But what are the basic principles of the Atkins diet?
The Atkins diet is based on a theory of why we get fat. According to Dr. Atkins, the over-consumption of carbohydrates and simple sugars leads to weight gain. The way your body processes the carbohydrates you eat have more to do with your waistline than the amount of fat or calories that you consume. In his book, Atkins outlines a phenomenon called insulin resistance. He theorizes that many overweight people have cells that do not work correctly.
When you eat excess carbohydrates and sugar, your body notices that sugar levels are elevated. Insulin is released from the pancreas in order to store sugar as glycogen in the liver and muscle cells for extra energy later on. However, your body can only store so much glycogen at once. As soon as your body reaches its limit for glycogen storage, the excess carbohydrates are stored as fat. This happens to everyone who eats too many carbohydrates.
However, insulin resistant individuals have an even harder time of using and storing excess carbohydrates. The more insulin that your body is exposed to, the more resistant it becomes. Overtime, the pancreas releases more insulin and cells become insulin resistant. The cells are trying to protect themselves from the toxic effects of high insulin. They create less glycogen and more fat.
As a result, insulin resistant individuals gain extra weight. The carbohydrates get converted into fat instead of energy. Other side effects include fatigue, brain fog (the inability to focus, poor memory, loss of creativity), low blood sugar (which can leads to hypoglycemia), intestinal bloating, sleepiness, depression and increased blood sugar. There is much more than weight at stake when you are insulin resistant.
The remedy for people who are insulin resistant is a diet restricted in carbohydrates. The crux of the Atkins diet is a limitation of carbohydrates in all of its forms. The foods restricted on the Atkins plan include simple sugars (like cookies, sodas and sweets) and complex carbohydrates (like bread, rice and grains). Even carbohydrates that are considered healthy, such as oatmeal, brown rice and whole wheat bread, are restricted on the program.
The diet has you restrict your carbohydrate intake to less than 40 grams a day. This will put your body in a state of ketosis. While in ketosis, your body will burn fat as fuel. According to Dr. Atkins research, the ketosis state will also affect insulin production and it will prevent more fat from being formed. Your body will begin using your stored fat as an efficient form of fuel, and youll lose weight.
Another benefit of the Atkins plan is that ketosis will end your cravings for carbohydrates. If youve been living on a carb-heavy diet, you may have found that you simply cannot get enough carbohydrates. With carbohydrate restriction and ketosis comes a reduction in carbohydrate cravings. People who have been on the Atkins diet for some time report that they do not crave carbohydrates as they once did.
Although the initial phases of the Atkins diet are rather strict, the program teaches you to restore balance to your diet in the long run. People who use the diet slowly reintroduce minimal amounts of carbohydrate into their eating until they find a comfortable balance between their health and carbohydrate use.
The basic principles of the Atkins diet have been adapted to many other low-carb diet plans. However, Atkins popularity still remains strong as one of the most effective low-carbohydrate solutions for those who are insulin resistant.
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December 8, 2023 / 4:38Pros and cons of the Atkins diet
The Atkins diet is one of the most popular low carbohydrate diets on the market today. Its popularity has sparked dozens of look-a-like diets who center on the same principles of high-protein, low-carbohydrate eating. There are a lot of fish in the sea when it comes to choosing a low-carbohydrate plan.
Studies have shown that low-carbohydrate eating has many benefits. There have been scientific results that low-carbohydrate diets like Atkins do create significant weight loss without having to restrict calories. People who use the Atkins diet have also reported this. There are studies that show that low-carb eating improves triclycerides, reduces blood glucose for diabetics and pre-diabetics and increases good cholesterol (HDL). Low-carbohydrate dieting has been scientifically proven to improve insulin sensitivity, decrease blood pressure and lower blood insulin levels. When compared with low-fat diets, low-carb dieters lose less muscle mass.
Although not scientifically proven, there are many common benefits reported by Atkins dieters and other low-carb dieters. These include an increase in energy, a reduced craving for sweets, better concentration, improved mood and an lessening of depression type symptoms.
However, there are also some benefits that are specific to the Atkins diet. If you have been a low fat dieter in previous years, youll enjoy eating all of those forbidden foods that you once had to go without. Steak, butter and cream are a regular part of Atkins dieters meals. There is a certain pleasure that goes along with eating foods that were once off limits. Atkins dieters are encouraged to eat their full of rich meats, cheeses and fats and oils.
Atkins is also simple to use, compared with some other low-carb diets on the market. There are some basic food carbohydrate counts that youll need to learn, but after that, you are free to eat from the acceptable food lists.
Dr. Atkins also emphasized finding your own personal carbohydrate level. Different people have different levels of carbohydrate tolerance. While some gain weight on just 90 carbohydrate grams a day, others can live comfortably at 120 carbohydrate grams. During the ongoing weight loss phase and pre-maintenance phase of the diet, you will learn your personal carbohydrate count that will help determine your carbohydrate goal for life.
The popularity of Atkins is a double-edged sword for dieters. There is a lot of information available on the diet, which makes it easy to find resources and support. There have been many, many Atkins books written and there are endless amounts of websites that offer tips and group support. However, everyone has heard of Atkins and probably has an opinion on it. There are some big misconceptions out there about the nature of the diet, and youll no doubt have to defend your new way of eating from time to time.
There are some other minimal downsides to using the Atkins program. You do need to count carbohydrates in everything you eat to make sure that you are staying within your personal carbohydrate range. There is also the issue of Induction, the most hotly debate aspect of the plan. Induction can be difficult to get through if youve had a diet that centers on carbs and sugar. Also, many people try Induction and mistakenly believe that this is the way that the whole diet is going to be. They end up quitting before they get into the actual Atkins plan.
Sometimes, although it is not common, people will experience a carb crash on the 3rd to 5th day of the diet. This reaction is a result of their body finally experiencing ketosis, or running on fat instead of carbohydrates. The effects are transient, but many people have sworn off low-carb diets entirely because of this happenstance.
Overall, with the minor drawbacks considered, Atkins is one of the most popular low-carb diets for a reason. It works. Thousands of people have had success with the Atkins approach to the low-carb way of living.
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