October 25th, 2011 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips
Tags: 8 glasses, 8x8 myth, Advice, Boys And Girls Clubs, Fit Family Challenge, Fluids, how much water should I drink?, Hydration, hydration calculator, Kidneys, Nephrology, Nutrition, Urine, Water
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Perhaps you’ve heard that increasing your water intake is part of a healthy lifestyle – and that you should drink at least 8 glasses of a day. This “rule of thumb” is actually not based on scientific evidence. Although for many people it’s not harmful advice, you may not need to work so hard at getting enough water every day.
The amount of water that your body needs depends on three main variables (yes, needs can vary with different illnesses and conditions, but let’s talk about the average American):
1. Your body’s size
2. Your activity level
3. Your environment (weather and humidity conditions)
The larger you are, the more water you lose from sweat (be it from physical activity or hot weather conditions), the more water you need to replace. The amount you need can vary a lot – and in most cases there are two tricks you can use to stay properly hydrated: Read more »
October 22nd, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in Health Tips, News
Tags: 39 weeks, Active Lifestyle, Amber Miller, Babies, Chicago, Chicago Marathon, Doctors, Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway, Exercise, Family, Labor And Delivery, Marathons, Mothers, Parents, Pregnancy, Pregnant Women, Women
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The fact that Amber Miller did not fall or faint or develop complications while running in the Chicago Marathon is nothing short of a miracle. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. What on earth was her physician thinking when she was given the green light to half-run half-walk a 26.2 mile marathon? Miller was not your usual runner; she was approximately 39 weeks pregnant.
Although pregnant women are encouraged to maintain an active, healthy lifestyle that includes aerobic exercise, moderation is the order of the day. A woman’s body changes when she becomes pregnant. She has more fluid circulating in her body; hormones from the pregnancy make her ligaments more relaxed, thus she waddles. As the baby enlarges, the diaphragm (aka muscle of respiration) gets pushed up making it difficult for pregnant women to breathe. The heart rate increases and the center of gravity changes as the uterus becomes larger thus, increasing her risk of falling.
Miller participated in Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
October 21st, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
Tags: Benson-Henry Institute, Dr. Herbert Benson, Harvard, Harvard Medical School, Health, Meditation, Mental Health, Relaxation, Religious, Repetition, Secular, Stress, Stress Management, Stressors, The Relaxation Response, transcendental meditation, Well-Being
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In the early 1970s, when Dr. Herbert Benson was defining and testing the techniques he presented to the world in his revolutionary book, The Relaxation Response, I was a hippie teenager learning transcendental meditation (TM). Flash forward about 40 years and I’m sitting in an amphitheater packed with a few hundred medical students, faculty, and staffers from Harvard Medical School listening to the iconic director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute explain the myriad benefits of the relaxation response.
The relaxation response is a self-induced quieting of brain activity. It leads to a body-wide slowdown and a feeling of well-being that have measurably positive effects on disorders caused by stress or made worse by it, including high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, and many digestive disorders. As Dr. Benson describes in Stress Management, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
October 21st, 2011 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips
Tags: Boys And Girls Clubs, Exercise, Fit Family Challenge, Fitness, Healthy Eating, National Weight Control Registry, Nutrition, Psychology, secrets, Secrets To Success, Triple Play, Weight Loss
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Most people who have lost weight understand how easy it is to gain it back. In fact, I often hear patients tell me that over the course of their lifetimes they’ve “tried every popular diet out there” and yet have failed to keep the weight off permanently. If that’s your situation, you’re not alone. It’s estimated that only 20% of overweight individuals are successful at long term weight loss. But there is hope for success, and we can learn the secrets of “successful losers” from the National Weight Control Registry.
In a flash of brilliance, sociologist Rina Wing and psychologist Jim Hill decided to create a database of weight loss success cases, and simply observe how they live their lives over decades of time. They called this research study the National Weight Control Registry, and it has been enrolling study subjects since 1994. What they’ve found is that those who have been successful at losing at least 30 pounds and keeping that weight off for at least 1 year share many behaviors in common. I believe that the closer we follow in the footsteps of these successful people, the more likely we are to be fit for a lifetime. So here goes – this is what the study subjects report: Read more »
October 19th, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
Tags: B12, Beliefs, Benefits, Culture, Deficiency, Diet, Evidence, Health, Marketing, Micronutrients, Nutrition, Prenatal Vitamins, Risks, Science, Science Based Medicine, Society, Supplement Industry, Supplements, Vitamin D, Vitamins
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The discovery of various vitamins – essential micronutrients that cause disease when deficient – was one of the great advances of modern scientific medicine. This knowledge also led to several highly successful public health campaigns, such as vitamin-D supplementation to prevent rickets.
Today vitamins have a deserved reputation for being an important part of overall health. However, their reputation has gone beyond the science and taken on almost mythical proportions. Perhaps it is due to aggressive marketing from the supplement industry, perhaps recent generations have grown up being told by their parents thousands of times how important it is to take their vitamins, or eat vitamin-rich food. Culture also plays a role – Popeye eating spinach to make himself super strong is an example this pervasive message.
Regardless of the cause, the general feeling is that vitamins Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
