Doctors long ago discovered that a positive mental attitude can actually trigger healing changes in the human body.
You can promote healing and general health by repeating affirmations quietly to yourself several times throughout the day.
The Key to Anti-Aging?
Well, that’s certainly an eye-catching title.
Recently in the journal Internal Medicine World Report, researchers reported progress on a very specific family of enzymes called sirtuins, which significantly extend life in such primitive organisms as yeast, worms, and flies. They believe that sirtuins may be able to control such age-related disorders as obesity and type 2 diabetes in humans.
Eat Food as Nouns, Not Adjectives
As we enter the peak growing season in North America, it’s a perfect time to renew your efforts to eat a fresh, plant-based diet of mostly vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and nuts. If you can eat locally grown produce, so much the better.
Q&A: Muscle Strength and Your Immune System
Click here for the original post. Q: When we strengthen our muscles, is our immune system strengthened too? A: The answer has to do with what else you’re doing for your immune system. If you’re building your muscles with regular exercise, you likely rehydrate well with pure water, eat a healthful diet, sleep well, have […]
Metabolic Syndrome
You may have heard about metabolic syndrome, but may not remember the details.
To keep it simple, metabolic syndrome is a list of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. If you can trim away the risk factors and stave off these two common conditions, you can potentially add years to your life.
A Modest Medical Proposal
Here’s an idea that will probably cause some of my physician colleagues to get their knickers in a twist: it may not be a bad idea to find a good chiropractor to act as your primary care physician.
A Natural Bladder Product
Among the many TV drug commercials I dislike is the one with the woman squirming miserably as she’s trapped in traffic because she desperately needs to pee.
Not that I don’t empathize; we men have our own urinary miseries. It’s just that the drug they’re pushing lists drowsiness, dry mouth, and blurred vision among its side effects. You have to wonder if, after taking her new medicine, she’s going to be fit for driving.
Diets
Regular readers know I’m not a big fan of diets. In a recent Journal of the American Medical Association article, researchers from Stanford University Medical School worked with about 300 overweight women, ages 27-50, who hadn’t gone through menopause to see what diet worked best. They divided the women into four groups, according to diet.
Q&A: Red Meat
Q: My fiance eats red meat once a week, and I feel it’s terrible for his body. Am I right that our bodies aren’t made to eat it that often, that it doesn’t break it down?
Organic Milk
Click here for the original post. Personally, if it weren’t for cheese pizza, I’m for dropping dairy from our lives altogether. Cow’s milk is for nourishing calves, period. We’ve been sold an amazing bill of goods from the National Dairy Council, variations of (remember this?) “you’ll never outgrow your need for milk.” I clearly recall […]
Low Dosage Aspirin: Does Taking One Daily Help Anything?
Since someone, either in my office or by e-mail, asks me this question at least once a week, this might be a good opportunity to put the matter to rest.
Or maybe not.
Physicians, especially cardiologists, have been recommending daily aspirin to their patients for decades. The theory rested on the phenomenon that aspirin ever so slightly interfered with blood clot formation, and that small blood clots were responsible for heart attacks and strokes. You didn’t need to take much: a low-dose aspirin (81 mg–formerly called baby aspirin) would do just fine.
Cancer Prevention Clip ‘n Save
This month’s issue of the International Journal of Cancer published a report from the Leicester Royal Infirmary in which researchers actually tracked the cancer prevention benefits of certain foods. They were interested in a specific group I’ve mentioned in these Health Tips several times: polyphenols, like those found in green tea.
Obesity by Infection
Here’s a topic I suspect you’ll be reading more about during the next year. For some overweight people (though certainly not all), the villain is not overeating, or even eating the wrong foods, but rather certain bacteria or viruses in the intestines that change the way food is absorbed.
Don’t Forget Your Selenium
And, in point of fact, if you do forget your selenium, you might start forgetting other things as well.
That’s what some epidemiologists from Indiana University recently reported. They selected a fairly obscure village of 2,000 people in China where the people had lived their entire lives and eaten largely the same food. After analyzing hair and fingernail samples for selenium levels, the researchers ran psychological tests on intellectual function.
Q&A: Sleep and Your Immune System
Q: How important is sleep to the immune system? I heard a Navajo medicine woman say that sleep was the key to a good immune system–more important even than nutrition. Is this true in your opinion?
Fast Food Favorites: Spinach
What kind of fast food could I ever recommend? The kind that will make your hair shine and your complexion glow.
You can make easy and enormously healthful choices every day that will make a real difference in the way you feel and look. Yes, your appearance, mood, and stamina are directly tied to the nutrients you take in.
Zzzzz: You’re Getting Sleepy and Your Heart is Happy
Here’s a health tip you may have suspected all along. There’s now “official” medical justification for that most pleasant of human activities: your afternoon nap.
Aromatherapy and Menstrual Cramps
Here’s a thoughtful gift for you, your daughter, or anyone who dreads her period because of cramps.
Q&A: Supplements for Recovering Alcoholic
Q: I have a friend who is a recovering alcoholic. She’s gone through detox and is doing well managing her disease, but she wants to know if there are supplements (like milk thistle?) to support the liver that she should take to help her body recover and stay healthy.
Breaking the Fast with Breakfast
Breakfast breaks the fasting period our bodies undergo while we’re sleeping. You can quickly see why breakfast is essential: your body has just gone through hours with no nutrients. When you awake and begin your day, you need fuel.