Stress: It Should Never Be Ignored!

by | Jul 26, 2013 | General Health | 0 comments

Stress Your stress level is a major player in your overall health, impacting your risk of chronic health conditions like heart disease, depression and obesity.

But unlike other more obvious risk factors, like over-indulging in junk food or not exercising, stress is more insidious, subtly sneaking up on you over time, increasing your risk of health problems even as you don’t noticeably feel sick or realize that your late-night work habits and financial worries are slowly zapping away your vitality.

That said, you may very well feel stressed, and if you do, this is a warning sign that should not be ignored.

People Who Believe Their Health Is Affected By Stress Are Twice as Likely to Have a Heart Attack

In a recent study of stressed individuals, those who said that their health was “extremely” affected by stress had more than twice the risk of having or dying from a heart attack, compared to those who believed stress had no impact on their health.

This could mean that these individuals were highly in tune with their bodies, and correctly perceived that stress was wearing them down. On the other hand, it could also be an example of the mind-body connection, in that if you believe stress is harming your health, it increases the likelihood that it will.

Either way, this is a significant increase in heart attack risk, so if you currently feel stressed to the point that you believe it is affecting your health, it’s time to take stress relief very seriously.

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Could Artificial Sweeteners Cause Weight Gain?

by | Jul 25, 2013 | Artificial Sweeteners | 0 comments

Artificial Sweetener Artificial sweeteners appear to disturb the body’s ability to count calories and, as a result, diet foods and drinks may wind up encouraging weight gain rather than weight loss, an expert contends.

These sweeteners may also increase the risk of health problems like heart diseaseand diabetes, some evidence suggests.

In an opinion piece published July 10 in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, Susan Swithers, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., rounded up recent research on artificial sweeteners.

Commonly used sweeteners include sucralose, aspartame and saccharin, among others.

Swithers has been studying the effects of artificial sweeteners on rats, but the journal asked her to look at evidence of health effects in humans too.

Swithers said studies following people who regularly consume diet soft drinks over time have found that those people are at higher risk for weight gain and obesity than people who don’t drink sodas at all.

Compared to people who avoid diet or regular soft drinks, diet soda drinkers also appear to have elevated risks for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and metabolic syndrome — a group of symptoms that puts people at increased risk for those conditions.

What’s more, Swithers said, the risks for these health effects seem to be similar in people who drink diet sodas compared to those who drink regular sodas, suggesting that there isn’t much benefit in switching.

Some of those studies aren’t conclusive, however, because they can’t rule out the possibility that people were drinking diet sodas because they were gaining weight, not the other way around — a problem called reverse causality.

One study of soda-drinking teens found that those assigned to swap regular soda for one diet soda every day gained less weight over the course of 18 months than those who kept drinking sugar-sweetened soda. The study didn’t look at what might happen if teens were asked to drink water instead of sweetened beverages, however.

Not everyone agrees with Swithers’s assessment of the research.

“The views in this opinion piece I found to be biased and speculative,” said Theresa Hedrick, nutrition and scientific affairs specialist for the Calorie Control Council, a lobbying group for the manufacturers of artificial sweeteners. “She’s presented only the research that supports her opinion and ignored the large body of scientific research that demonstrates the safety and benefits of low-calorie sweeteners.”

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Fitness on the fly

by | Jul 24, 2013 | Exercise | 0 comments

Fit Man While a well-structured daily exercise regime should include plenty of cardio, stretching, body-weight exercises and resistance training, and does require at least 30 minutes, life usually does not offer ideal conditions or situations. So here’s a programme that takes care of multiple problems. You need 10-15 minutes, almost no equipment and little space to complete the entire set of exercises.

This programme is for you if you are a beginner, or are returning to an exercise regime after a long break but can’t get yourself to mentally commit a lot of time to it, and need to build up your physical and mental strength slowly. It’s for you if you exercise regularly or go to a gym, but find yourself in circumstances that do not let you visit the gym. And it’s for you if you are a fitness freak and want that extra boost in full body and cardio conditioning.

In part 2 of our 10-minute fitness blast workouts, we step up the tempo. As usual, these programmes involve no weights—just your own body weight used in creative ways. You will be surprised at how difficult that can get, and how far you can push your strength and conditioning without equipment. Gravity can be very mean.

The first routine here has got a bit of everything—strength, mobility, core recruitment, endurance— and lights the fat-burning torch as well.

The second routine involves plyometrics, basically moves that are explosive in nature, contracting and releasing muscles in the shortest possible time.

A practical definition of plyometric exercise is a quick, powerful movement using a pre-stretch, or a counter-movement. For these exercises, all you need is a bench or a box, or any raised platform. A pile of books can be used for the push-up drill. In the photograph, we have piled together a bunch of rubber tiles to create a 6- to 9-inch step.

As with most body-weight routines, it is safe for beginners to do these, and those with more advanced fitness can scale it up by doing more sets and reducing the rest times between sets for a fast and furious workout.

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Late Bedtimes Linked To Weight Gain In Healthy People

by | Jul 23, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Weight gain | 0 comments

Sleep If you are healthy and go to bed late regularly and you do not sleep enough, your risk of gaining weight is significantly greater than if you go to bed earlier and have a good night’s sleep every night, says a new study published in the journal Sleep.

If you also eat late at night, you will probably put on even more weight, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania added. In fact, they say it is the extra eating among sleep-deprived individuals that appears to be the main reason for the weight gain.

The authors say that theirs is the largest study so far of healthy people, under controlled laboratory conditions, that demonstrates a clear association between very late night sleeping combined with sleep restriction and weight gain.

Andrea Spaeth and team had one group of participants sleeping just from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each night for five nights running, and compared them to a control group who were in bed from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.

The investigators also found that those who slept much less consumed more food, and therefore calories, compared to the normal-hours sleepers. Meals eaten during the late-night hours had a higher overall fat content than the other meals.

Lead author, Andrea Spaeth, a doctoral candidate in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania, said:

“Although previous epidemiological studies have suggested an association between short sleep duration and weight gain/obesity, we were surprised to observe significant weight gain during an in-laboratory study.”

The experiment was conducted at the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It involved 225 people aged between 22 and 50 years, all of them healthy and non-obese. They were randomly selected either into the sleep restriction group or control group, and stayed in the lab for up to 18 days.

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7 Ways To Make Happiness Last

by | Jul 22, 2013 | General Health | 0 comments

Happy As each of us goes about our day-to-day life, it’s easy to stop asking whether we are happy. Oftentimes, we are so caught up in our hectic schedules, problems, and work, we don’t have time to think about what we really want out of life. In the process, we might feel overworked, stressed, tired and grouchy, and take it out on the barista who gets our coffee order wrong, the friend that forgets to call us back or our children that misbehave. What’s important to know, though, is that being in a happier state of mind has a two-fold benefit. First, you are more likely to think positively, be active, and live a conscious life where you are in the driver seat instead of being pulled and tugged by forces that seem out of your control. Second, when you are happier, it creates a ripple effect as those around you respond to your joyful energy and it influences their state of mind, as well. Although you may not realize it, happiness is highly contagious and it’s one bug that everyone wants to get stung by.

Here’s a few tips on how to create happiness ripples by increasing the happiness of yourself and, in the process, those around you:

Focus On Giving
Oftentimes, we feel unhappy when we aren’t getting what we want or need from others. The truth is that we can’t control others but we can look at what we put out into the universe. Give the love you hope to receive today, fully and without reservation. More importantly, give without expecting anything in return. When you give of yourself without expectation, you will be amazed at the fulfillment you will find in the process.

Be Kind To Yourself 
We live in a culture where we often feel that we have to look, act and be perfect, and we are hard on ourselves when we don’t measure up to the unrealistic standards that we set for ourselves. Consciously say nice things to yourself every day. Forgive yourself for making mistakes. Recognize that you are human and there’s only one of you, and that you are wonderful and imperfect and unique and something to celebrate.

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