Spray-On Tan

Not the stuff that makes you turn orange and smell funny (though that's probably what you should use). There a Men's Health article that discusses new research that suggests that an aerosol sunscreen is more effective than cream that has been thoroughly rubbed in and absorbed by the skin.

"Scientists suspect that when sunscreen is applied to the point where it disappears, it sticks into crevices and sweat glands."

Fooled by Fatty Foods

When it was less frequent that people ate out, the nutritional information of restaurant foods was less critical. The Cheesecake Factory considers its guests to be indulging themselves with a heavy meal at their establishment. But with obesity rates at startling levels, there is more pressure on restaurants to provide the data that are found on packaged foods.

WebMD has an article about a recent University of Arkansas study published in the American Journal of Public Health:

"Without nutritional information, diners in this study underestimated the calorie content of common menu items by an average of 600 calories. A diner who ate 600 extra calories at a restaurant each week would add more than 30,000 extra calories and could gain nine extra pounds per year."

"Cheese fries with ranch dressing, was deemed 'extremely unhealthful,' with 3,010 calories and 217 grams of fat." - that sounds really good. I'm sure you can get away with that one once in a while, c'mon...

Pulling Your Weight

A majority of adults in the US believes that people with unhealthy lifestyles should pay more for healthcare. Are you a healthy adult?

"Researchers defined individuals with healthy lifestyles as those who do not smoke and who exercise on a regular basis and control their weight."

This comes from a Wall Street Journal/Harris Poll, but you can view a brief synopsis here. If you are a WSJ subscriber, the full article can be read here.

XL-Rays

Now that's a clever title, if I do say so myself.

This is troubling:

"More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate, radiologists reported on Tuesday."

It's only .15% of cases in the US, but that number is double what it was 15 years ago.

From Reuters.

Keep it Fresh

I'm trying to keep the titles interesting/clever. It's getting difficult.

I just read an article in the Miami Herald about a UM program that seeks to improve academic performance through fitness and healthy eating at Miami Edison High School (that's where I play 7-v-7 soccer!). One of the tips from Arlette Perry, head of Exercise and Sports Sciences at the U, is to keep to the outer edges of the supermarket when food-shopping. That is where the healthy, perishable foods are.

My good friend Barry, whose wife is a nutrition professor at Tufts School of Nutrition, once told me that they would eat all the junk that everyone else did if they bought it. It's a good point. If you don't have chips and cake and soda in the house, then you won't eat those things. It's a simple, yet effective, nutrition habit. Think about it...

A Place for Weight Loss

A new (free) networking site, in the mold of MySpace and Friendster, has been created to help people with their fitness, diet, and weight loss goals:

sparkpeople.com

It may prove to be competition for pay sites like Weight Watchers. It only takes a few minutes to set up and there are loads of resources available, such as meal planners, exercise programs, etc. One can set up a group with office colleagues and have a weight loss challenge. Check it out.

Men's Health

WebMD lists the top 5 health concerns for men, and some suggestions on how to reduce one's risk for each, including heart disease, stroke, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and depression.

HA ha Ha HA ha Ah ah Ha HA!!!!!!!!

What are you laughing at? This one's kind of obvious, but the Mayo Clinic recommends laughing for your health's sake. Full article here. Telling jokes is very satisfying, as well. Making others laugh makes you feel great, too. Here's a selection from the article:

The benefits of a belly laugh

Laughter's benefits on your health are no joke. A sense of humor can't cure all ailments, but data are mounting about the things that laughter can do.

Short-term benefits
A good laugh has great short-term effects. When you start to laugh, it doesn't just lighten your load mentally, it actually induces physical changes in your body, beginning with your face. Laughter can:

• Stimulate your organs. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain.
• Activate your stress response. A rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response and increases your heart rate and blood pressure. The result? A good, relaxed feeling.
• Soothe tension and tummy aches. Laughter can also ease digestion and stimulate circulation, which helps reduce some of the physical symptoms of stress.

Long-term effects
Laughter isn't only good for a quick pick-me-up, though. It's also good for you over the long haul. Laughter may:

• Improve your immune system. Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can impact your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. In contrast, positive thoughts actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more serious illnesses. In fact, in one study, people with cancer who watched a humorous video showed less stress and an increase in a particular cell activity that's beneficial in fighting diseases such as HIV and cancer.
• Relieve pain. Research increasingly shows that laughter may ease pain by causing the body to produce its own natural painkillers.
• Increase personal satisfaction. Laughter can also make difficult situations a little bit easier. One study of nurses who work in emergency rooms found that nurses who use humor in dealing with their patients and co-workers experience greater job satisfaction and feelings of personal accomplishment than do those who remain dour during their shifts.

Hit the Gym

According to the CDC, only 20% of US adults engage in strength training, the recommended frequency of which is at least twice per week. Read the Reuters Health article here.

The good news is that, from 1998-2004, the rate increased by 2%, mostly due to the increased participation of women.

Food Deserts

And I'm not writing that incorrectly. "Dessert" has 2 esses because you always want more of it.

Chicago's Health Commissioner, Dr. Terry Mason, has presented a study that shows that residents of "Food Deserts," often poor, urban areas where there are few grocery stores but many fast-food restaurants, suffer much worse health problems than their more wealthy counterparts. Wealth=Health, once again.

"Mason's comments were in response to a new study that concludes that residents of such areas in the city are more likely to die prematurely from diabetes, cancer and heart disease, as well as suffer from obesity and hypertension."

Chicago Tribune Article


Here's a list of "diet" foods to avoid that most people would consider very healthy (think rice cakes). From zonediet.com

Take Responsibility For What You Put In Your Body

"10 Weight-loss Myths That Can Ruin Your Diet"

From Webster:

Diet
1 a : food and drink regularly provided or consumed b : habitual nourishment c : the kind and amount of food prescribed for a person or animal for a special reason d : a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight diet>

Notice that the last of those definitions is the one to which most people would think I was referring. The mind-set you have to get yourself into is that of the very first definition. Diet is regular; habitual. The suggestions in the above MSNBC Health & Fitness article are meant to influence your diet lifestyle, and are not a short-term regimen to look good for the summer.

Helpful hint: A family tradition of ours is to order one dessert after dinner out at a restaurant. We ask for a spoon or fork for everyone at the table and each person has a bite or two. A taste of a very rich dessert is a nice way to end a meal without feeling stuffed.

This is a GREAT website that shows nutritional information for many, many restaurants:

http://www.dietfacts.com/fastfood.asp

I was planning on showing the nutritional info for a slice of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake, but this is the company's official statement:

"Thank you for your interest in The Cheesecake Factory. Because we change our recipes and menu often, we do not currently have nutrition information for our menu selections.

Sincerely,
Guest Services for The Cheesecake Factory Restaurants, Inc."

This is what I found after a little research:

Main Menu Item (Per Slice)

Low Carb Cheesecake (made w/Splenda) (420 cal/38 g fat/12 g fiber/35 g carb) Original Cheesecake (640 cal/45 g fat/54 g carb)
White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle (910 cal/61 g fat/81 g carb)
Vanilla Bean Cheesecake (870 cal/62 g fat/69 g carb) Dulce de Leche Caramel Cheesecake (1010 cal/71 g fat/84 g carb)
Keylime Cheesecake (710 cal/49 g fat/64 g carb)
Brownie Sundae Cheesecake (960 cal/62 g fat/96 g carb)
Fresh Banana Cream Cheesecake (860 cal/61 g fat/70 g carb)

The most decadent cheesecakes would account for almost half of the recommended calories one should consume in a day in just one slice. The USDA recommended total daily fat intake is 65 grams! You could spend half your calories, and more than an entire day's fat allowance on ONE SLICE of Dulce de Leche Cheesecake. I hope this requires no more explanation.

Whealth Watcher$ Preview

We'll get into renting vs. owning at a later date. For now, consider the following rent calculators:

http://www.dod.mil/mapsite/simpafrd.html

http://www.bostonapartments.com/rentcalculator.htm

Most experts advise that you spend no more than 30% of your gross (pretax) monthly income on rent. Let's say you've graduated from college and are hired at $30,000 for your first year. That means that you should spend no more than $750/month on rent (the Department of Defense suggests spending no more than $700/month at that income level). The less you spend on rent, however, the more you can save, and the more money you will have available for clothing, entertainment, or travel. As your income rises, maintaining the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed will allow you greater freedom and financial security.

Health = Wealth

"Evidences show that a person's death risk is inversely proportionate to his socioeconomic status."

A study by the Universities of Toronto and Oxford concludes the following:
"Across two continents, we find that smoking-related diseases account for well over half of the big difference in death rates between rich and poor," says study co-author Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Oxford."

"This means widespread cessation of smoking would do more than anything else to narrow the inequalities in health between rich and poor."

Full Article

Broken-hearted (literally)

From the country that brought you the most hilarious Mohammed cartoons ever, comes an interesting study. Danish researchers have found that those who live alone are at twice the risk of heart disease. It is no shock that single, unemployed men don't take such good care of themselves.

"The lowest risks included cohabiting with a partner, a high level of education, and being in work. Women divorcees also enjoyed a lower risk of [acute coronary] syndrome."


From Life Style Extra.

Snip Snip

"Last year, Dr. Bertran Auvert of the French National Research Agency INSERM and colleagues at WHO found that circumcised men in South Africa were 65 percent less likely to become infected with the deadly and incurable virus."

If you're reading this, you're probably not to keen on entertaining the idea of circumcision. This is rather startling news, though, concerning the risks of HIV infection. Read here for the complete article.

Happiness

Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-Cybernetics, and a pioneer in the self-help genre, had this to say:

"Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have no goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal."

[the quote comes from Nightingale-Conant's Motivational Quote a Day, to which there is a link on the right hand side of this blog]

Everyone gets down, now and then, so get up off the couch, go for a walk, paint something, visit your grandmother, write down some goals you have, or check a book out of the library.

In other news, money doesn't buy happiness, not even "stacks" of it. ThirdAge.com has an article about a recent Stony Brook University study.

A Couple of Interesting Posts

From irishhealth.com (seriously) comes a warning for those with an "Irish complexion" on the dangers of tanning bed use, especially those under the age of 16. I had no idea kids that young went to tanning salons.

Johns Hopkins ranked number one among US hospitals. Link

Help With Those Costly Prescriptions

You may be eligible for assistance from the PPA in paying for your prescription drugs, whether you are insured or not.

"The Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA) [is] a national program sponsored by America's pharmaceutical research companies to help patients in need access prescription medicines."

https://www.pparx.org/