Natural Help for Anxiety

Natural Help for Anxiety

Dealing with Anxiety 
Anxiety is a part of normal human existence. Everyone has been tense before a big test or performing in front of a crowd. It’s hard wired into our system to protect us through the “fight or flight” reflex. For some people these experiences are isolated, but for others anxiety is a constant and domineering force that controls and impairs their whole being.

A fast-paced modern lifestyle can be difficult for both adults and children. Trying activities such as work deadlines, job interviews, school competitions and public interactions don’t make it any easier either.

It’s not uncommon to find oneself a little overwhelmed at the thought of a particular upcoming event or situation. Sometimes demands may be so great that it is difficult to slow down and take a deep breath, causing us to worry about everything.

The natural way
1. A lot can be done to support a healthy ability to relax and slow down. One way of doing this is to keep your mind producing its own natural feel good chemicals by eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grain foods, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine and exercising regularly.

2. Practicing relaxation techniques, meditation or even taking time for a regular walk on the beach can all help to reduce stress levels and facilitate a feeling of calm - helping us to wind down and relax.

3. Natural remedies can also help to support the nervous system and to keep nerves settled and soothed - to enable us to cope more easily with the everyday stresses of our modern existence. In fact, natural remedies have been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years to support the healthy functioning of the brain and nervous system.

4. In more recent times, research has confirmed this traditional wisdom. There are now many published clinical studies demonstrating the ability of a range of herbs to support the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system and maintain a healthy equilibrium - which will assist with staying calm under pressure.

5. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter manufactured and found in the brain. Along with other neurotransmitters, serotonin helps to support emotional wellness and sleep patterns as well as energy levels, sex drive and appetite. Serotonin also promotes healthy concentration, a positive mental attitude, memory and mental alertness.

6. While your feelings are not all about brain chemicals, the delicate balance between neurotransmitters and other hormones can play a big part in maintaining emotional stability, wellness and a positive outlook. Lifestyle, stress management and maintaining healthy relationships all contribute to happiness.

7. However, when there are challenges to face, a solid foundation of emotional health, balanced brain chemistry and a healthy self esteem will make all the difference to how we are able to cope or have the emotional strength to make changes necessary to improve our lives.  

8. A lot can be done to naturally maintain emotional health and a healthy positive mental attitude.

9. It is a good idea to keep your natural feel-good chemicals flowing by eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grain foods, ensuring plenty of fresh air, adequate sleep, moderate sunshine and regular exercise. Many healthy foods (e.g. bananas, turkey and carbohydrates) contain nutritional precursors of serotonin and this makes them natural ‘mood foods’ to maintain healthy serotonin levels!

10. Also, never underestimate the power of a few stolen minutes during the workday (or school day) to rejuvenate the spirit and relax the mind - meditation, yoga or listening to a calming CD can all promote relaxation. Smoking, recreational drugs and alcohol can all depress the nervous system and affect the balance of neurotransmitters like serotonin - so try to cut back or avoid these habits for the sake of your emotional as well as your physical health.

11. Participate in social and community activities.  Social interaction and a sense of giving to your community enhance self-esteem and reduce stress.

12. Take care of yourself. Get regular exercise, eat nourishing food, and maintain a healthy weight.

13. Participate in activities you enjoy. Have you always wanted to learn a new language? Take up ballroom dancing? Mentor a child? Now is the time! (And activities like these will also help your brain.)

14. Stay focused on positive things and avoid negative self talk such as “I can’t do that” or “I’m too old.” When your self talk is negative, you will feel more stress. Instead of thinking what you can’t do, remember what you can do.

15. Connect with the people who are most meaningful to you. People with friends tend to be happier than those without. Stable social relations help you adjust to changes such retiring, moving, and losing loved ones.

16. Remember stressful events that you successfully coped with in the past and repeat what worked before.

17. Focus on addressing your problems instead of feeling helpless about them. Think of them as “challenges” or “tests” rather than as insurmountable obstacles.

18. Learn and use relaxation techniques and meditation.

19. If you are a caregiver, make use of support and education groups, as well as respite care, which provides time off for caregivers.

20. Medication may be needed in severe cases, which would require consultation with your doctor. Also, symptoms may begin to diminish on their own with age.

6 Tips for Finding a Weight-Loss Program

If your health care provider has advised you to lose weight, research your options before settling on a weight-loss program. Good ones should encourage healthy behaviors and should include:

• Healthy eating plans that reduce calories but do not forbid specific foods or food groups.
• Tips to increase moderate-intensity physical activity.
• Tips on healthy behavior changes that keep your cultural needs in mind.
• Slow and steady weight loss. Depending on your starting weight, experts recommend losing weight at a rate of half a pound to two pounds per week. (Weight loss may be faster at the start of a program.)
• Medical care, if you are planning to lose weight by following a special diet, such as a very-low-calorie diet.
• A plan to keep the weight off after you have lost it.

Source http://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/weight-management/tips/finding-a-weight-loss-program.aspx

Tips to stay fit and healthy

Tips to stay fit and healthy

Dieting alone does not have a long lasting effect on weight reduction, unless complemented with regular physical exercise.  Besides, exercise has a lot of other benefits.

Exercise can help promote our physical and mental well-being. Regular exercise can improve heart and lung functions, reduce the risk of heart and related diseases, and control weight. It also improves muscle strength and suppleness, as well as joint and muscle flexibility. By exercising regularly, we feel better, work better and cope better with the stresses in life. To stay healthy and fit, cultivate habits and behaviours that will enhance your health and reduce the risk of illness.

Regular exercise may help to improve your outlook. People who exercise regularly have a
lower chance of getting depressed than those who don’t exercise. They also sleep better and feel more rested. As a result, you may feel better about yourself.


Exercise
Exercise for 30 minutes a day, three to five times a week.

Take part in some kind of sport.

Do active work at home like work in your garden or yard or clean the house.

Take a brisk walk, jog or swim.

Smoking 
Do not start smoking, or stop smoking.

Alcohol and drugs
Drink alcohol moderately, or stop drinking.

Do not take drugs.

Practise safe sex
Abstain from sex; delay starting to have sex; do not rush into sex with each partner.
Be faithful to one partner.
Use condoms to protect yourself during sex.

Eating 
Eat balanced meals.
Eat a variety of all food groups (starch, protein, fat, dairy products).
Eat at least two portions of vegetables and fruit a day.
Reduce fat in the diet.
Take less sugar and salt.
Drink at least eight glasses of water every day.

Sleep
Sleep seven to eight hours a night.

Can it! Soda studies cite stronger link to obesity

As Americans debate what is most to blame for the nation's obesity epidemic, researchers say they have the strongest evidence yet that sugary drinks play a leading role and that eliminating them would, more than any other single step, make a huge difference.
Three studies published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine represent the most rigorous effort yet to see if there is a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and expanding U.S. waistlines.
"I know of no other category of food whose elimination can produce weight loss in such a short period of time," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital, who led one of the studies. "The most effective single target for an intervention aimed at reducing obesity is sugary beverages."
Previous research on the subject has been mixed, and beverage makers fiercely contest the idea that a single source of daily calories can bear so much responsibility.
"We know, and science supports, that obesity is not uniquely caused by any single food or beverage," said the American Beverage Association (ABA) in a statement. "Studies and opinion pieces that focus solely on sugar-sweetened beverages, or any other single source of calories, do nothing meaningful to help address this serious issue."
The NEJM studies, as well as an editorial and opinion pieces on the topic of sugary drinks and obesity, land as concern about obesity and its impact on public health is rising.
A report released this week projected that at least 44 percent of U.S. adults could be obese by 2030, compared to 35.7 percent today, bringing an extra $66 billion a year in obesity-related medical costs.
Last week, New York City adopted a regulation banning the sale of sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces at restaurants and other outlets regulated by the city health department.
Sugary drinks are in the crosshairs because from 1977 to 2002 the number of calories Americans consumed from them doubled, government data show, making them the largest single source of calories in the diet. Adult obesity rates, 15 percent in the late 1970s, more than doubled in that period. The ABA points out, however, that consumption has since fallen, yet obesity rates keep rising.
Although most observational studies find that people who drink sugary beverages are more likely to be obese than people who do not, no cause-and-effect has been proved. People who drink sugary beverages, especially children, also watch more TV and eat more calorie-dense fast food, raising the possibility that liquid sugar is not the main culprit.
A 2008 analysis of 12 studies, led by a scientist who went on to work for the ABA, concluded that the association between sugary drinks and body-mass index (BMI) "was near zero."
Studies in which children cut their intake of sugary drinks found modest benefits, but "they were considered unconvincing," said Martijn Katan of VU University in Amsterdam: "Most had a small number of subjects and followed them for only a short time." He and his colleagues aimed to do better.
BUILDING A BETTER STUDY
For DRINK (Double-Blind Randomized Intervention in Kids), they gave 641 children aged about 5 to 12 and with a healthy BMI of just under 17 one 8-ounce (250 milliliter) noncarbonated drink per day, sweetened artificially or with sugar. The sugar-free drinks were specially formulated to look and taste like sugary ones so the kids would not know which they had.
About a quarter of the kids stopped drinking the beverages. Among those who stuck it out for 18 months, the sugar-free kids gained less body fat, 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) less weight, and 0.36 units less BMI than the sugary-drink kids, the researchers report in the NEJM.
Why? There is good evidence that liquid sugar does not produce a feeling of fullness that other calories do. "When children substituted a sugar-free drink, their bodies did not sense the absence of calories, and they did not replace them with other food or drinks," said Katan.
DRINK doesn't answer whether switching to zero-calorie drinks would help obese kids. But another study in the same issue of NEJM suggests it might.
Researchers at Boston Children's had zero-calorie drinks delivered to 110 obese 15-year-olds who had BMIs of about 30 (where obesity starts), counseled them not to drink sugary beverages and offered other support.
After a year the teens had cut their intake of sugary drinks from almost two a day to zero and their daily calorie intake by 454. They had gained an average of 3.5 pounds (1.6 kilograms). By comparison, 114 teens who continued to consume sugar-sweetened beverages gained 7.7 pounds (3.5 kg) on average and ten times the BMI units: 0.63 compared to 0.06.
Once the deliveries stopped the two groups diverged less. After two years, teens who had received the no-cal drink deliveries had gained 9.5 pounds (4.3 kg) and 0.71 unit of BMI, compared to the control group's 11.2 pounds (5.5 kg) and 1.0 unit of BMI.
"It isn't surprising that after the intervention stopped, old behaviors crept back," said Ludwig of the New Balance Center. An "obesogenic" environment that promotes calorie-laden foods "overwhelms individuals' ability to maintain behavioral change" such as avoiding sugary drinks.
Hispanic teens benefited the most: Those receiving no-cal deliveries gained 14 fewer pounds after one year and almost 20 fewer pounds after two. That raised the possibility that genetic factors influence the effect of sugary drinks.
To investigate gene-environment-obesity links, scientists at Harvard School of Public Health looked at 33,097 people from long-term ongoing health studies, such as the Nurses' Health Study, identifying how many sugary drinks they consume and whether they have any of 32 genes linked to obesity.
The effect of genes on the likelihood of becoming obese was twice as large among people who drank one or more sugary drinks per day as among those who had less than one a month, the scientists report in the NEJM. In other words, belting back soda and sugary tea may turbocharge the genetic risk of obesity.
Conversely, eating a healthy diet devoid of sugary drinks keeps fat genes inactive. People with "fat genes" can be thinner if they avoid sugary drinks and other high-calorie foods.

15 health tips for the new year

Year after year we make resolutions to exercise regularly, eat well, and give up smoking and other bad habits. Following such basic rules can cut heart disease risk by 80 percent, diabetes risk by 90 percent and cancer risk by 50 percent, according to the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study. But most of us fail to keep our promises to ourselves. Some American experts have given the following tips for practical ways to get – and stay – healthy.

1 .Wear a pedometer. New research suggests that routinely wearing a pedometer encourages people to walk about an extra mile each day, lose weight, and lower their blood pressure. Aim for at least 30 minutes of brisk walking and a total of 10,000 steps per day.

2. Don’t forget strength training, involving both the upper and lower body. Too many people neglect resistance exercise, particularly women for whom it’s crucial for preventing muscle and bone loss with age. Lift weights for at least 20 minutes, two- to three-times per week.

3. Don’t pop too many vitamins. Enthusiasm for vitamin pills is high, but evidence for their benefits is low. Try to get vitamins from foods and consider a multivitamin for insurance. Any woman thinking about getting pregnant should make sure to take a folic acid supplement. Women should get at least 1,000 mgs of calcium per day (1,200 mgs/day if you’re past menopause) from food and/or supplements. Everyone should also get 800 international units of Vitamin D per day.

4. Eat at least two fish meals per week. The evidence is strong that the oils in darker types of fish, such as salmon, tuna, mackerel and herring, are beneficial for the heart and brain and may even lower risk of cancer.

5. Talk to your doctor about taking aspirin for heart protection but don’t assume that it’s right for you. A recent clinical trial suggested that healthy women younger than age 65 don’t get heart protection from aspirin. Women who are the best candidates for long-term aspirin are age 65 or older or have a history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes. And be aware that aspirin has some serious risks, including gastrointestinal bleeding.

6. Drink water. No matter where you are, water should always be the first thing you reach for when you’re thirsty. Water truly is essential.

7. Sleep eight hours a night. A number of recent studies have confirmed that you really do need at least eight hours a night. Among the many benefits: Adequate sleep makes you feel better, decreases risk for cardiovascular disease, boosts memory and reduces the likelihood of being in a car accident.

8. Keep sugar and caffeine – the “legal evils” – to a minimum. It’s hard to believe, but decreasing sugar actually increases people’s energy, by minimising the highs and lows that sweet foods triggers. Different people react differently to caffeine, but most of us are probably overstimulated already – adding a stimulant just adds to things like road rage.

9. Consider acupuncture and massage as valid therapies for chronic problems, such as back pain and neuropathy. Seeing a good massage therapist for neck strain may work better than taking extra strength Tylenol and/or Advil regularly.

10. If you smoke, quit. There is nothing good about it. If you’re having trouble quitting, start smoking less today – smoke only half a cigarette, and skip as many of your usual smokes as you can – and get help right away. Get some guidance about why it is you smoke to figure out how best to stop doing it. Smoking cessation groups can be extremely helpful and supportive, and medications like a nicotine patch can help decrease the cravings. Acupuncture may also be useful.

11. Don’t focus on dieting. Focus on eating. If you’re hungry, you’re more likely to overeat, especially in the evening. Instead, of sacrificing all day and gorging later, it’s better to eat enough during the day to avoid hunger pangs and uncontrolled eating at night. Eat every four hours or so, and make sure to eat a “second lunch” – think of it as another meal rather than a snack – in the mid-afternoon to keep your energy up and make you less hungry in the evening.

12. Budget your food as you do your money. A rough guideline for daily caloric intake: Multiply your ideal body weight by ten (ie, 1,200 calories if you want to weigh 120 pounds) and then add another 600 calories if you’re moderately active, a few hundred more if you’re very active. Divide those calories out across the day to keep yourself well fed.

13. Eat three different foods at every meal. Don’t eat a scoop of tuna for lunch – eat tuna on a roll with a salad.

14. Eating won’t solve emotional problems. Many people eat to make themselves feel better when they’re upset. It works in the short run; certain foods can temporarily boost mood. But in the long run, you’ll have the same emotional problems – plus the extra weight.

15. Don’t drink too many calories. It’s easy to drink calories without noticing: that latte may have nearly as many calories as a cheeseburger. It’s okay to have one as an occasional treat, but consider it a meal, not a drink.

Source  http://www.newsday.co.tt/features/0,133519.html

Pistachio Facts

Pistachio Facts

Pistachios -have been know to be “royalty”. Pistachios are happy and are called “the smiling nut” or “the happy nut” in some cultures. Most people love cracking and eating Pistachios, are intrigued by their color and may say it is their favorite nut. BUT, Pistachios aren’t really nuts! Pistachios are actually “seeds” of red or yellow plum-like fruits. However, everyone calls them nuts because they look like a nut.

So much goodness packed into something so small! Bite into this tasty nut and treat yourself to a highly satisfying, body loving snack. Indulgence with intelligence.

Nutrient dense 
1. Carotenoids
2. ONLY nut that contain significant amounts of the lutein and zeaxanthin, which has been associated with a reduced risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is the most common cause of irreversible blindness in Americans over 65.
3. Highest fiber content (3 g/oz.). Provide 12% of Daily Value which puts it on par with oatmeal.
4. Highest protein compared with other nuts (6 gram/oz).
5. Excellent sources of copper, manganese and vitamin B6.
6. Copper is a major component of many important proteins and enzymes in the proper  development of connective tissues, nerve coverings and skin pigment.  Is also important in heart health.
7. Manganese is important for bone formation and nutrients metabolism.
8. Vitamin B6 plays an important role in the immune system, red blood cell metabolism and hemoglobin productions, and nerve cell communication.
9. Good source of phosphorus, thiamin.

Heart health 
A. No trans fat.
B. Very rich in  phytosterols (plant sterols  that compete with dietary cholesterol for absorption in the body). Plant sterols occur naturally in a variety of foods such as fruits, vegetables, grain products, vegetable oils and nuts such as pistachios.
C. According to a study from Harran University, Turkey, groups who replaced 20% of their calorie intake with pistachios for three weeks showed a decrease in total cholesterol, the  total cholesterol to HDL ratio, and the LDL to HDL ratio.

Antioxidants 
Provides 464 mg GAE (Gallic Acid Equivalents) of Phenolic in 1 ounce of pistachio nuts, which ranked second after pecans among all nuts. Phenolic is believed to account for a major portion of the antioxidant capacity of many plants foods.

Weight control and maintenance 
A research from University of California, Los Angeles showed that patients who  substitute pistachio  nuts for food such as candy bars, dairy products, microwave popcorn, buttered popcorn, and potato chips  with pistachios accounting for 20% of  total calories for three weeks, did not gain body weight.
Significant amount of protein, healthy fat and dietary fiber in pistachios promote feeling of fullness and help people maintain their weight by keeping hunger at bay.

Fun FActs
In America, pistachios were once dyed red to disguise shell imperfections and make the nuts stand out in vending machines.
February 26th is recognized by pistachio lovers as World Pistachio Day; a day to honor the historical nut.
Historically, they were considered a rare delicacy and a favorite of the Queen of Sheba.