Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite eating days of the year. Thanksgiving dinner is now only a couple of days away in Canada and the Turkeys and Hams have already been bought and are waiting to be eaten. This thanksgiving maybe you can be more careful about your eating and well being and I hope that looking at these tip will keep you feeling better the day after as you get to go on your post Thanksgiving day shopping spree.

1. Decide what you are going to eat each day in the morning before you start. Think about 3 meals and 3 snacks. No one says you can’t have a snack, then dinner a while later and then desert a while after that.

2. Get some exercise right after you get out of bed. This will help you focus on your fitness and make you aware of how your body feels that day.
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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

What do you do for exercise? Do you bike or walk? Why not do that on the way or at least part of the way to work.

Walking or biking to work, even part way, is linked with fitness, but very few Americans do it, according to a study of more than 2,000 middle-aged city dwellers.

In what may be the first large U.S. study of health and commuting, the researchers found only about 17 percent of workers walked or bicycled any portion of their commute.

The new study is based on tests and questionnaires from 2,364 workers who were part of a larger federally funded study on heart disease risk. The participants lived in Chicago, Minneapolis, Birmingham, Ala., and Oakland, Calif. They were asked in 2005-2006 about their commuting habits in the past 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many types of baldness treatment advertised on the internet, and the good news is that some of them do work in slowing the progression of Male Pattern Baldness or even helping hair to grow back. But don’t go buying the first ‘miracle cream’ that you see. Here we take a look at some of the genuine treatments that are available.

The first of these methods, and the most drastic, is to transplant hair follicles that are still active, from another part of the head. This is a surgical procedure that works best for men whose remaining hair is thick and abundant, so they can afford to lose some of it. It does not create new hairs, but redistributes the hair more evenly over the head. However, the area of baldness will continue to grow, so once you begin transplant treatment, you must be prepared to repeat it.

Alternatives to straight one-for-one transplanting of hairs are currently under development and testing. If proven, these will allow multiplication of transplanted hairs so that several new follicles can be developed from one existing follicle. This could revolutionize baldness treatments because it would mean that in theory, nobody need ever go bald. Read the rest of this entry »

Some people consider that the myth of the Fountain of Youth has been around for as long as people have been growing old. There are traces of it in stories of pools or springs that heal sickness and disability or restore life to the dead, in almost all cultures.

However, the legend of the Fountain of Youth is a little different, in fact. Its waters are supposed to have restorative powers which keep us young and immortal or at least, young and healthy until our dying day.

Belief in the Fountain of Youth was widespread among the native people of the Caribbean islands at the time when the Spanish were discovering the American continents. The Arawak people of Cuba and Puerto Rico told the Spanish explorers that the fountain was believed to be in the land of Bimini to the north, approximately where the Bahamas are located. An Arawak tribal chief who had disappeared in search of it and never returned was said to be still enjoying his youth beside the fountain centuries later. Read the rest of this entry »

Swiss ball, stability ball, fitness ball, balance ball, fit ball, large and small exercise ball are all names for the same type of bouncy, colorful balls you see in practically every gym. They vary in size, are inflated with air but are puncture-resistant and are made of pliable soft PVC. They are used in exercise and training as well as rehabilitation and physical therapy. Originally known as the Swiss ball, these elastic balls were created in 1963 by an Italian plastics manufacturer called Aquilino Cosani.

The benefits of exercising with a fitness ball is that a great many more muscles are engaged because of the unstable nature of balancing your body weight on the ball. Doing a workout on a hard surface does not encourage the muscles to respond as much, especially the deeper core muscles.

The core muscles are predominantly the back and the abdominal muscles, and exercising these greatly assists in supporting the skeleton. Read the rest of this entry »

The average U.S. family and their employers paid an extra $1,017 in health care premiums last year to compensate for the uninsured, according to a study to be released Thursday by an advocacy group for health care consumers.

Families USA, which supports expanded health care coverage, found that about 37% of health care costs for people without insurance — or a total of $42.7 billion — went unpaid last year. That cost eventually was shifted to the insured through higher premiums, according to the group.

“I don’t think anybody has any idea about how much they are paying because of the need to cover the health care costs of the uninsured,” said Ron Pollack, the group’s executive director. “This is a hidden tax on all insurance premiums, whether it is paid by business for their work or by families when they purchase their own coverage.” Read the rest of this entry »

The nation’s epidemic of new H1N1 flu may have peaked except in New York, New Jersey and New England, a leading federal health expert said Tuesday.

“In the country as a whole, influenza is starting to decrease,” says Ann Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency has tallied 6,764 confirmed or probable cases and 10 deaths nationwide, Schuchat says, more than half of the global total of 12,954 cases reported Tuesday by the World Health Organization. Laboratory testing indicates that the new H1N1 virus — commonly referred to as swine flu— accounts for almost all of the flu virus now circulating nationwide.

Federal health officials haven’t dismissed the possibility that the worst is yet to come. Far from it, Schuchat says, noting that the horrific 1918 flu epidemic, which killed 20 million people in the United States alone, was preceded by a mild “herald” wave of cases in the spring, followed by devastating waves of illness in the fall. Read the rest of this entry »

I just found a reference to a report on Science Daily showing that obesity problems in North America can be directly attributed to overeating.

The study originated in Europe and included almost 2400 people as well as using stats on the amount of food grown as well as imported.

Here is a bit of a quote:

New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

As much as we like to point fingers at a host of different causes of obesity, it seems that eating more calories is the number one culprit. Read the rest of this entry »

I heard rumblings about the Swine Flu last week but nothing really to worry about. Yesterday everything changed. I think that weekends create a lot of backlog of news and yesterday all the news was about the flu. My wife is following everything to do with the swine flu and says that she is very thankful that we did not go to Mexico for Spring break (I couldn’t afford to take the whole family anyway). The CDC is reporting today that people should not be going to Mexico City, I am not sure about Mexico resorts but expect we will hear more about that today.

Apparently 40 people have the swine flu in the US and to date no one has died. All the dead I believe are in Mexico

This morning I have heard of some news reports that most of the flu dead in Mexico are between 20 and 50 years old, which if it is true is a staggering number. Most people will recover from a common flu within a couple of weeks but the people most in danger are the very young and very old not people between 20 to 50. Did you know that up to 250,000 people every year worldwide die from the flu? This is not to say that swine flu is not important but the flu itself is a huge health issue worldwide.

That stat aside, one of the big reasons that I have for staying in shape and being fit is to have a strong immune system and to be in top form and healthy all of the time. I may occasionally get sick but I miss most of the colds and flus going on around me. The CDC though has some good info on how to avoid the flu, especially the swine flu. And Med News Today tells us about the treatment of the swine flu.

So in looking around I found a few links to swine flu info and with all the hype right now I am hoping we get a grounding today on how bad this may be and how many people may be affected by it.

I am sure I will be writing more about this but in any case keep yourself safe and out of situations that could get you in contact with the swine flu and make sure that you stay clean and follow the above tips for avoidance.

Getting happy is very very important for no other reason than the happy person will do what is necessary and the unhappy person will instead dwell on failures and not bother raking those steps to get into better health.

(hint: Serotonin makes you happy)

More than 25 million people received treatment for depression last year and the American Psychological Association reports: more than half of Americans say they are stressed. It’s becoming a primary focus for doctors world-wide.

Here’s what you need to know, to protect you mind and your body.

These days, world-renowned speaker Deepak Chopra teaches that happiness is no longer just a mental quest, but a physical one. Chopra recently released his newest DVD “The Prescription for Happiness.” Doctors are on the same page. They now have solid evidence your happiness directly affects your health. Read the rest of this entry »