~ My-Wellness-Coach ~

How NOT to get Swine Flu

Because there is no vaccine for swine flu, the best protection you can have is to avoid being contaminated in the first place. 

The flu is contagious one day before symptoms appear and up to five days afterward.  Droplets from the mouth and nose spread influenza, so when an infected person sneezes, coughs, or touches any surface, the virus is spread.

In addition, viruses can live on a cold surface for three days. 

Follow these guidelines to reduce your risk of infection:

Wash Your Hands Frequently.

• If you are unsure about how long is "long enough," wash your hands for the length of time it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice. 
• Make sure to wash your hand before eating, after sneezing or coughing, after shaking someone's hand, and after touching anything at all that could possibly be contaminated. 
• To get maximum benefit from hand-washing, use hot water, soap, and a follow-up hand sanitizer such as Purell.

Avoid Touching Anything that could be Contaminated.

• Be somewhat obsessive about not touching contaminated surfaces. 
• Try not to touch things that are frequently used by others such as doorknobs, handrails, "community" keypads or pens.
• Consider wearing gloves when pushing a shopping cart, or using a paper towel to open the door of a public restroom after you have washed your hands.
• Try to avoid shaking hands with others, or kissing them on the cheeks.
• Carry a hand sanitizer with you.
• Most of all, train yourself not to touch your nose, mouth or eyes.

Avoid "Droplets."

• Avoid crowds, if possible, and stay away from people who are coughing or obviously sick.
• Try to fly less frequently, as one sick person on an airplane can infect all passengers.

Buy a "N95 certified" Flu Mask or a "NanoMask."

• In case the Swine Flu epidemic hits your neighborhood, be prepared.

Please send the following url to the people you care about!!

http://www.my-wellness-coach.com/2009/04/how-not-to-get-swine-flu.html

Counting Calories is the First Step

If you want to lose some weight, I know one sure-fire method. 

First thing in the morning, every morning--stand in front of a mirror and jog in place for one hour.  I guarantee you'll lose weight--probably a lot of weight.

Yeah, I know, not too many people can do this--and it would be terribly boring if you could. 

Fortunately, there's a million better ways to lose weight.  And then again, it all boils to one central truth.  The only real way to really lose weight is to consistently burn off more calories during the day than you consume.

If you want to keep if off though, it's best to lose weight gradually over a long period of time.  Starving yourself on some stupid diet or jogging in place for an hour every morning might result in tremendous short term results.  But sooner or later you'll go back to your old habits--and subsequently back to your old fat self.

The people I know who have successfully lost weight and maintained their new weight have one thing in common.  They count calories.

Counting calories is the only way to really know if you are making progress and it has an added benefit.  When you count calories you learn a tremendous amount of good things about the foods you eat, and about the exercises you do or don't do.

You suddenly have a consciousness that keeps you from over-indulging and keeps you jogging, or swimming, or whatever. 

When it comes to counting calories there are a number of good, free calorie trackers you can use on your computer or smart phone. 

One of the best, non-commercial services is caloriecount from About.com, the url is  http://caloriecount.about.com  Once you set up your account, which is a bit time consuming but worth it, you can keep track of the calories you consume daily through the food log and also keep track of the calories you burn through the activity log.  There is also a nifty nutrition report which will tell you what percentage of the food you eat is fat, carbohydrates, or protein.  

What I like best about the About.com site are the online support groups you can join, and the associated blogs and information sites.  It's really a complete program.

I also like the simple calorie counter widget from LabPixies which I have added to my iGoogle health page.  Totally intuitive and easy to use...you can find it at http://www.labpixies.com  It also works on personalized Yahoo pages and there is a really cool toolbar you can download to add to your browser.  All for free.

One of the best commercial services is FitDay, http://www.fitday.com which several of my friends use.  It has all the features of the About.com site and for some people it is more user friendly.  However, unless you purchase the "premium" service for $64.95 a year, you find yourself bombarded with messages to buy things. 

There are also several iPhone apps for this.

Whichever one you might choose, I think that just by counting calories you'll soon find yourself on a workable path to reduce or maintain body weight.  The details about what you eat or how you exercise will follow. 

Counting calories is the first step.

Why Diabetes IS a Laughing Matter

If you have diabetes or if you have reason to worry about getting it, and who doesn’t, then you’d be wise to start laughing your arse off.

A recently concluded yearlong study divided a group of 20 high-risk diabetic patients into two groups.  Both groups received the same medications for diabetes--and for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. 

One of the groups, however, got a supplemental dose of laughter.  They were asked to spend 30 minutes every day watching a funny video of their choice. 

The results, as described by the researchers, were “surprising and significant.”  And I would add, more far reaching than what I could have imagined.

Just the mere anticipation of watching a funny video had the following positive effects among the “laughing” group as compared to the “non-laughing” group (a.k.a, the “control” group):

• 27% increase in beta-endorphin hormones that elevates mood.

• 87% increase in human growth hormone (HGH), which among other things improves immunity.

• 39% decrease in cortisol, a stress hormone that is detrimental to the immune system.

• 70% decrease in epinephrine and a 38% decrease in dopac, both of which have effects similar to cortisol.

After just two months, the laughter group continued to show lower levels of stress hormones, and plus lower inflammation levels.  In addition, they also had higher HDL (good cholesterol) levels. 

At the end of the year, those lucky laughing folks saw a 26% increase in HDL and a whopping 66% decrease in C-reactive proteins which is a blood marker indication of inflammation. Thus, their risk of dying from heart disease, which is common among diabetics, was greatly reduced as compared to the control group. 

The fact that laughter is good medicine if nothing new, of course.  The late, great Norman Cousins popularized this concept back in the 70’s with his best-selling book, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. 

However, new scientific evidence that backs this up and provide specifics always serves as a good reminder.  So, start laughing.   

To read more about the study, click here.

10 Tricks for Eating Less

Our fast-food, food everywhere consumer society wants us to pig-out as much as possible.

We are constantly bombarded with TV, radio, billboard, newspaper, and magazine advertisements depicting slim happy people eating mostly bad food or drinking sodas and beer. You can't drive down a major street in any city without seeing dozens of fast food restaurants. Many popular restaurants serve gigantic portions of food and everywhere food has been super-sized.

The first step to eating less is to say no to the industrial food complex that is trying to fatten you up for the kill. Just say no to MacDonald's and every other fast food restaurant.  Say no to canned food and pre-packaged meals, no to soda pop and "sports" drinks, no to trans-fat and no to high fructose corn syrup and you'll consume fewer calories and extend your life.

The next step is to practice these 10 little tricks for eating less:

1. Learn that you are full before you stop eating. Left over from more primitive days, we all have a human survival gene called the "thrifty gene" which encourages us to keep on eating even when we are full. Stop eating before those last few bites of mash potatoes, wait and the desire to eat will go away.

2. Cut back on fat. Fat has 9 calories per gram as compared to 4 calories per gram for carbohydrates and protein. You can eat the same amount of food while automatically cutting back on calories.

4. When you eat out, order two appetizers instead of one appetizer and a main dish, or simply order the main dish and no appetizers or share an appetizer. Skip the desert or if you must, share it. If you aren't too embarrassed, ask for a "doggy bag" before you start eating, and put a portion of your meal into the bag ahead of time. Don't eat the roll or bread and butter before the meal begins. If the waiter asks you if you want bread,stand up, throw your arms in the air, and yell, "Hell no!" (just kidding).

5. Have a light soup before your main meal, or better yet, have soup as the main meal. Soup makes you feel full on fewer calories.

6. Drink a large glass of water before you eat. You'll be less hungry.

7. For heaven's sake, slow down. Enjoy every single bite, chew it, and savor it. To slow things down even more, set your fork down between bites. Twenty minutes after your first bite of food there will be sugar in your blood stream; you'll feel full regardless of how much you've eaten.

8. Don't ever let yourself get extremely hungry. Another primitive instinct is to overeat when we are really hungry. Don't skip meals and learn to eat healthy, low calories snacks between meals.

9. Eat by Yourself! After 30 years of overeating and obesity research, psychologists at the University of Toronto have concluded that regardless of how hungry, social clues can dictate how much you eat--usually too much. In groups as small as two people, you will tend to eat 30% to 50% more than if you were alone. So eat alone or be more aware of how much you are eating when you are with others.

10. Notice when the flavor is gone and stop eating. You'll be amazed that after a bite or two of ice cream you really can't taste it anymore. Your taste buds are numb but your stomach is on autopilot. Stop eating for a moment, your desire will go numb as well. 

Warming Up is Not so Hard to Do

My observation is that too many of us don’t warm-up before we exercise. At the pool where I swim I see this all the time: a middle-aged person jumps or dives into the water and immediately starts vigorous lap swimming.

And I see it at the gym where I work out: someone walks in and sits at the lat pull-down machine and starts jerking a much too heavy weight up-and-down, thereby risking a serious shoulder injury.

Same thing at the tennis court: an elderly couple strolls out onto the court and without so much as doing a single stretch they starts banging the ball back and forth from the baseline(my elbow hurts just thinking about this.) And I could go on.

Why is this? Are most people in too big a hurry to warm-up or are they too lazy or just plan ignorant of the importance of warming up?

Warming-up prevents injuries and it makes for a better workout. It lubricates your joints, warms the connective tissues, activates your nervous system and charges up your circulatory system. You should always do some simple stretches before you do any type of exercise. And you should always start out slowly and increase your speed over time.

Riding an exercise bike or running on a treadmill will get your heart pumping and cause you to sweat but it won’t properly warm you up for resistance training or weight-lifting. The reason is the related joints and connective tissues you use for most resistance exercise (your elbow or shoulder, for example) are not activated during the aerobic exercise.

So if you immediately try to do some “bicep hammer curls” with a heavy weight you are risking a muscle strain that could keep you out of the gym for a few weeks or more.

When doing resistance training start with a low weight or resistance that allows you to do 30 or more reps so that the specific muscles and joints that are being exercised can warm-up. Do this first and then increase the weight or resistance so that you can do about 15 reps. Increase it again so that you can do 10 or fewer. Gym instructors or personal trainers who tell you otherwise are idiots, stay away from them.

When swimming, do a set of stretches (in or out of the water) that includes warming up your shoulders and stretching the muscles in your arms and legs as well as your lower back. Begin your swim with a couple slow laps and then increase the pace.

In tennis, after stretching you should warm up by hitting the ball inside the service box for a few minutes. This is not only a safe way of getting your heart and lungs, muscles and joints going--it is a good exercise in racket control.

Whatever the sport or activity, stretch first and start slowly. When you finish, don’t just stop, let your body cool down gradually. Swim a couple slow laps, hit a few lobs, do some more stretches. Think of your body as a machine that will function better when properly cared for.

For a great collection of stretches for 20 different sports: click here.

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Pass the Kelp, Please!

The conventional wisdom is the vast majority of us get enough iodine in our diet so we don't have to worry about iodine deficiency.  A few years ago this might have been true because conventional table salt is fortified with about 40 mcg of iodine per gram and heavens knows, we all ate a lot of salt.

Today, however, people eat less salt and many of us don't use table salt.  Instead we use sea salts or kosher salts which are not fortified, plus many of us eat soy or soy products such as soy protein isolate which is found in processed foods.  Soy has been shown to actually inhibit thyroid synthesis.  If you eat soy, you need more iodine.

What does iodine do, you may wonder.  The answer is iodine stimulates the thyroid gland to manufacture a hormone called thyroxine.  This essential hormone regulates metabolism in the efficient burning of calories.  In children it regulates growth and development. 

A deficiency in iodine leads to a condition called hypothyroidism, the symptoms of which include fatigue, weakness, lethargy, weight gain, depression, memory problems, constipation, dry skin, intolerance to cold, coarse and thinning hair, brittle nails and sometimes a yellowish tint to the skin.

If you have some of these symptoms and are worried about having an iodine deficiency you can ask your doctor to test your iodine levels via a urinalysis test.  Or you can order a home testing kit from Medicalhometesting.com for $39.95.

Personally, I don't think I have an iodine deficiency, but hypothyroidism is a very slow developing disease and not one I want to ever deal with.  So, as a preventative measure, I take a "super kelp" supplement.  Available at most retail or online vitamin outlets, these pills are cheap.  I paid less than $5 for 250 daily tablets, which are small and contain 250 mcg of iodine (the RDA is 150 mcg). 

A few people report that kelp supplements can aggravate existing thyroid problems so you need to pay attention to any changes you feel if you follow my path by taking kelp supplements.  And if you have an immune deficiency you need to check with your doctor first. 

My only concern, though, is whether or not 250 mcg's is enough.  A Harvard thyroidologist, Dr. Robert Utiger, thinks the RDA should be increased to 300 to 400 mcg.