Calorie Counting

New York City's Board of Health is pushing for restaurants with 15 or more locations to display the caloric content of menu items. The reason is that most people have no idea how many calories are in many of the things they regularly eat.

Restaurants associations, of course, don't want people to eat less. They don't want people to be dissuaded from eating rich, salty, mmm rich and salty, where was I? Oh yeah, restaurants and their associations would rather people be kept in the dark and continue to eat regularly meals that they should have only once in a while. I've mentioned Cheesecake Factory as a prime offender, where single menu items often contain an entire day's worth of calories and even more fat, and whose management refuses to list nutritional information for the food it serves.

"'Most people underestimate calorie content by a lot,' said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, adding that he considered the rules a potent weapon in the crusade against rising obesity rates. 'Even dietitians get a lot of it wrong.'"

Ten Commandments of Personal Finance

I thought this was a concise list of some basic rules to follow.

1. Create a Savings Plan
2. Do Not Spend More Than You Make
3. Do Not Try to Keep up with the Joneses
4. Limit the Amount of Debt on Your Credit Card Bills
5. Pay Monthly Bills on Time
6. Avoid Get Rich Quick Schemes
7. Protect Yourself Against Risk
8. Teach Your Children to Handle Money Wisely
9. Plan for Retirement
10. Legally Protect Yourself and Your Family

Check out the entire article here.

Whealth

"If you have not consciously made the decision to be rich, excellent, and healthy, then you have unconsciously made the decision to be poor, mediocre, and unhealthy."

-Wallace D. Wattles, self-help author

One of the things I like about HSAs and high deductible health plans is that they make consumers more conscious of health care issues and spending.

There's Some Good News and There's Some Bad News

Well, the good news is that I had a delicious sandwich for lunch. The bad news is that there was bacon on that sandwich, and if someday that contributes to my having a heart attack, I'm not too encouraged by the trends in emergency room care.

Emergency room waiting times are up to an average 30 minutes! And up to 25% of heart attack patients wait 50 minutes or more. Less than 20% of visitors to emergency rooms are thought to be in need of immediate care, by the way. Wow, people sure are stupid!

It turns out that ERs are closing as usage is rising. There just isn't room for patients. Resources and time are used moving patients around when they are needed treating sick people.

Dr. Art Kellermann, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, uses the analogy of an airport having planes parked all over the runway, but it's more like airports having planes parked all over their runways as airports are shutting down across the country.

So, if you think about how terrible it is to fly now, just remember that it'll be like that if you need emergency care, but it's like an airport where people go and clog up the lines and have keys and change in their pockets when they go through the metal detector and they sit in the seats at the terminal and they stand in the way as you try to board the plane, and they even fly sometimes, even if they weren't really going anywhere. Plus people who are flying to Hawaii pay the same as those flying to the next state over. AND you're pants are open in the back so everyone can see your butt.

Read the depressing article in Forbes, if you really want to.

Cold Fighting Techniques

Some of these are obvious, but I think worth the read:

1.) Soap and Water
2.) Probiotics
3.) Exercise
4.) Fruits and Veggies
5.) Avoid Germs
6.) Vitamin C
7.) Echinacea
8.) Green Tea
9.) Zinc
10.) Sleep

Read the whole article here.

14 Years! 14. Years!

This is not very surprising, but maybe if people keep hearing this stuff they'll make some changes-

"People with four healthy lifestyle behaviors -- not smoking, physical activity, moderate alcohol consumption, and eating five servings of fruit or vegetables a day -- live an average of 14 years longer than people with none of those behaviors, a new British study contends."

Read the entire article in U.S. News & World Report.

Lose Weight by Eating More

Gotta love those Top Ten Lists. My brother forwarded me this one from Men's Health about how to lose weight (fat) and increase muscle mass. A diet of protein and vegetables is a pretty easy way to avoid the junk that this list points out. Barry's rule has been sabotaged in my own house by gifts of cookies and boxes of candy. If you don't have it in your house, you don't eat it. There are lots of other interesting lists on the left hand side of the page you can check out if you want to spend even more time on the Internet than you already do.

The Pursuit of Happiness

No big surprise here. If you're happy, you're healthy. There's a lot of talk these days about inflammation being a cause of many ailments. Being unhappy can lead to that. Here's some news from a study of 3,000 people in Britain.

"In the study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who reported more positive emotions had lower blood levels of two proteins that indicate widespread inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is believed to contribute to a range of ills over time, including heart disease and cancer."

Part of effective preventive medicine is addressing people's happiness.

"We need to help people to recognize the things that make them feel good and truly satisfied with their lives, so that they spend more time doing these things."

Old Lame Song

I guess "Auld Lang Syne" means something like "times gone by" in old Scottish. Here are the lyrics you'll never remember -

Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And days of Auld Lang Syne

I decided, for the first time (I think), to write down some 2008 resolutions. I like to challenge and improve myself throughout the year, but why not take yet another opportunity to do just that?

Writing things down is a great way to focus on them and make sure that they happen. I have made it a habit of mine to write down movies I would like to see, music I should buy, places I want to visit around Miami (where I now live), restaurants that have been recommended to me by others, etc.

So, make a list on your Blackberry, or write down some goals on a piece of paper and stick it in your wallet. You might be surprised how much it helps to look at those goals. I'm really hoping "Be more PUNCTUAL" will help me. I know what you're thinking, "more" punctual doesn't make sense. You're either punctual or you're late. Hey, people, I'm trying. Let's work our way up to full-blown punctual.

Cah-lee-faw-ni-a

Those Left Coasters might be annoying sometimes with their preachiness and ballot initiatives, but they do tend to be ahead of the curve, especially on health issues.

Now, from the people who brought you smoking bans... the Sugar Tax. San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsom, is proposing a tax on sugary sodas and warning labels for highly caffeinated drinks (like Red Bull, which is now banned in France and about whose contribution to high blood pressure I have written on this blog).

"Newsom says obesity accounts for tens of millions of dollars in city health care costs. He cites a recent San Francisco Health Department survey that found nearly a quarter of the city's 5th, 7th and 9th graders were overweight and that high sugar drinks make up a tenth of a kid's daily calorie count."

Good Eats

I came across a reference to this article on mental_floss.com. Great website. The Men's Health's article outlines foods that affect your mood. The one of which I took note most was the fact that sushi and other fish are great mood boosters. It got me thinking that I always feel great when I eat sushi or other fish. I have been trying to work more seafood into my diet. Of course, it's easier when you live in a warm climate and don't have to worry about stinking up the house...

MQOTD

I like this. I'm a big proponent of taking pride in every little thing, though this often renders one an anal perfectionist.

"The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams."
— Og Mandino: Author, The Greatest Salesman in the World.

Forget the Spoonful of Sugar AND the Medicine

Honey has now been proven to be better for a kid's cough than cough medicine. Dr. Ian Paul, of Penn State, was prompted to perform the study after finding in an earlier one that a placebo was just as effective as traditional cough medicines containing dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine.

Since it's cheaper and has no side-effects, it'd be pretty silly not to buy honey instead of cough syrup. You don't want people to say you're silly, do you? I know I don't.


From ABC News.com -

"The researchers enrolled 105 children, between ages 2 and 18, in their randomized, partially double-blind study. On the first night of the study, the children received no treatment. Parents then answered questions about their children's sleep and cough, as well as the quality of their own sleep. The second night, the children were given either honey-flavored cough syrup or honey -- or nothing at all. Parents then reanswered the questions in the survey.

Parents whose children received the honey rated their kids' sleep and symptoms as better -- and their own sleep as improved as well.

Healing Powers of Honey

Paul says that the type of honey plays a role in the treatment.

'Darker honeys have more antioxidants than lighter honeys, and we wanted the best chance to see improvements,' he says, noting that lighter honeys would probably also benefit kids. 'At least locally [buckwheat honey] is available. I can get it here at the local supermarket.'

Honey is also generally less expensive than over-the-counter medications, he says, and bring none of the side effects like dizziness or sleepiness."

Stand Up!

This might explain why bus drivers have such big butts.

"Scientists have found intriguing evidence that one major reason so many people are overweight these days may be as close as the seat of their pants. Literally. According to the researchers, most of us sit too much."

Scientists Say Just Standing Up May Be as Important as Exercise

He's No Christian Bale

Bale is, of course, the very fit star of "American Psycho". And he's Welsh. That's where this dude is from.

I knew this was coming, but I am very surprised to see it already -

"New Zealand Bars British Man's 'Fat' Wife"

I'm not sure why "fat" is in quotation marks there. Would they prefer to be referred to, as in the body of the article, as "morbidly obese"?

Shop Around

Newt.org has a clip of a little anecdote delivered by Newt Gingrich, in case you were thinking of some other Newt. He discusses the kind of market efficiency that is potentially attained by employing HSAs with the example of an expensive sleep apnea machine.

It's Retirement Tips from Britney, Bitch

Sorry. That's like the line from her new song. I couldn't help myself.

The Yahoo Finance page has a great article about how important it is to save for retirement. Well, it turns out Britney Spears spends over $700,000 a month, yet she doesn't save a portion of her income.

The article points out that "the overwhelming majority of American 20-somethings aren't saving anything for retirement, either. Research from Vanguard shows that two-thirds of all 25-year-olds who have access to a 401(k) plan aren't contributing." That is really bad.

Consider this -

"Assuming she could scrape by on 70% to 80% of her pre-retirement income in retirement - or about $590,000 a month in today's dollars - Ms. Spears would have to accumulate a nest egg of just over $300 million by age 65."

"Sound daunting? Nah. All she has to do is keep working and put away 8% or so of her monthly $737,000 income until she retires and she'll hit that goal."

Now, translate into normal recent college graduates' incomes -

"A 25-yr old making $30,000 a year, for instance, and putting away the same 8% of his pay into a 401(k) plan annually for the rest of his career is virtually guaranteed a comfortable retirement by time he hits his 60s."

Read the entire article here.

Delicate Genius Alert!

Dr. Scott Haig, an orthopedic surgeon in New York, has written a piece in Time about patients who Google. I have wondered how the abundance of health information on line has impacted the communication between doctor and patient, and here is an inside look. The phenomenon seems to irritate him quite a bit.

Frankly, the doctor comes off as a pompous jerk. He berates the patient for being selfish, but I think most normal people out there can sympathize with a person who is sick or injured. This doctor seems to prefer when patients don't ask too many questions, but on the other hand, ridicules "non-compliant Bozos who won't read anything longer than a headline. They don't want to know what's wrong with them, they don't know what medicines they're taking, they don't even seem to care what kind of operation you're planning to do on them. 'Just get me better, doc,' is all they say."

George Costanza would definitely throw his hands up about this delicate genius.

Red Bull Gives You Vings! (and high blood pressure)

And increased risk of heart disease, if you drink 2 or more energy drinks per day. I'm sure there are some of you out there...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/88066.php

More Cheddar, Anyone?

Well, the Green Mountain State has done it again. Vermont not only has the best schools, but also the healthiest residents, based on criteria developed by the United Health Foundation and the American Public Health Association for its ranking of the 50 states. Half of the top ten are in New England.

Those criteria include, but are not limited to, obesity rates, access to health care, cancer incidence, child poverty, smoking, and heart disease. Southern states, not surprisingly, are the fattest, stupidest, and most likely to smoke. Well shoot, that right thurr is a big surprahs.

Read the article in Forbes right here.