Protein is your friend

You need protein! About half of adults get no protein in the morning because they skip breakfast entirely, which is another reason breakfast skippers tend to put on pounds. They haven't eaten since the night before, so their bodies get panicky by mid-morning, wondering when/if the next meal is coming. The result? Their bodies start storing calories instead of burning them.

Successful weight loss, which includes not gaining back your hard-lost pounds, is about staying full, not going hungry. Hunger and cravings are your enemies. Feeling full and content are your allies. Morning protein and fiber? They’re your secret weapons.

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A NEW STROKE INDICATOR

A NEW STROKE INDICATOR

Blood Clots/Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator -The Tongue

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

During a BBQ, a woman stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) ......she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Jane went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening.

Jane's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Jane passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Jane would be with us today. Some don't die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Remember the '3' steps, S.T.R.

Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

1. S *Ask the individual to SMILE.

2. T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)

(i.e., It is sunny out today.)

3. R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue

Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.

KEEP THAT SPONGE CLEAN

that handy kitchen sponge can harbor more than moisture—things like foodborne pathogens, yeasts and molds. So Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Beltsville, Md., have tested several methods for reducing risks from harmful microbes hiding in reused sponges.

At the ARS Food Technology and Safety Laboratory in Beltsville, microbiologists Manan Sharma and Cheryl Mudd and two student interns did the testing. First, they soaked sponges at room temperature for 48 hours in a solution made from ground beef and lab growth medium to attain a high level of microbes (20 million per sponge) to simulate a very dirty sponge.

Then, they treated each sponge in one of five ways: soaked for three minutes in a 10 percent chlorine bleach solution, soaked in lemon juice or deionized water for one minute, heated in a microwave for one minute, placed in a dishwasher operating with a drying cycle—or left untreated.

The scientists chose these methods because they're commonly used in most household kitchens. They found that between 37 and 87 percent of bacteria were killed on sponges soaked in the 10 percent bleach solution, lemon juice or deionized water—and those left untreated. That still left enough bacteria to potentially cause disease.

Microwaving sponges killed 99.99999 percent of bacteria present on them, while dishwashing killed 99.9998 percent of bacteria.

As for yeasts and molds, the sponges treated in the microwave oven or dishwasher were found to harbor less than 1 percent (0.00001 percent). Between 6.7 and 63 percent of yeasts and molds survived on sponges soaked in bleach, lemon juice, deionized water or left untreated.

Thus microwave heating and dishwashing with a drying cycle proved to be the most effective methods for inactivating bacteria, yeasts and molds on sponges. These simple and convenient treatments can help ensure that contaminated sponges don't spread foodborne pathogens around household kitchens of today's busy families

Is your TV killing you?

Every hour spent watching TV, DVDs and videos as an adult reduces life expectancy by almost 22 minutes, a study suggests.

And viewing TV for an average of six hours a day can cut short your life by five years.

The research claims that a sedentary lifestyle is as bad for health as smoking and obesity, because of the dangers posed by inactivity and the greater opportunities it offers for unhealthy eating.

The academics conducting the study set out to calculate the overall risk to life expectancy from watching television. Their research involved more than 11,000 people over the age of 25.

Writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, they concluded: ‘TV viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.’

This finding is also comparable to risk factors such as smoking, with other research showing that one cigarette cuts 11 minutes off a lifespan – equivalent to half an hour of watching TV.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, said it was ‘biologically plausible’ that prolonged TV viewing results in disease and premature death. Other work suggests that sedentary behavior is linked to obesity, high levels of bad blood fats and other heart disease risk factors, and more opportunities for grazing on junk foods.

In another meta-analysis, published earlier this summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers suggest that spending just two hours a day in front of the TV raises your risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease by 20 percent. Add another hour to your viewing time, and you also significantly raise your risk of premature death from any cause.

One researcher, Dr. Aric Sigman, has identified a slew of negative effects he believes can be blamed on watching television:

• Obesity
• Delayed healing
• Heart trouble
• Decreased metabolism
• Damaged eyesight
• Alzheimer's disease
• Decreased attention span
• Hormone disturbances Cancer
• Early puberty
• Autism
• Sleep difficulties
• Increased appetite
• Limited brain growth
• Diabetes

Watching TV also has a major impact on your brain chemistry. In fact, the longer you watch, the easier your brain slips into a receptive, passive mode, meaning that messages are streamed into your brain without any participation from you. (This is an advertiser's dream, and likely one of the reasons why TV advertising—particularly ads directed at children and teens—works so well.)

England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, said: ‘Physical activity offers huge benefits and these studies back what we already know – that a sedentary lifestyle carries additional risks. We hope these studies will help more people realize that there are many ways to get exercise.’

Another study shows that exercising for just 15 minutes a day can increase your lifespan by up to three years.

It can reduce the risk of early death by 14 per cent, with each extra 15 minutes reducing all-cause death rates by 4 per cent.

Exercise also protects against cancer, although the benefits peak at 100 minutes a day, says the study in The Lancet medical journal.

It involved more than 400,000 adults taking part in a medical screening programme in Taiwan, whose progress was followed between 1996 and 2008.

The experts found that if individuals engaged in low-volume daily exercise, one in six all-cause deaths could be postponed.

Sources: Daily Mail Online August 16, 2011 and Dr Mercola

Be smart, stay healthy

Protect your eyesight

Free radical damage from age and environmental factors can keep your eyes from functioning optimally. There are natural common sense things you can do to help preserve our healthy vision.

1. Quit smoking. Smoking creates a lot of free radicals in your system and hinders your health in general and your vision as well

2. Keep your cardiovascular system in good health. High blood pressure can cause damage to the blood vessels on your retina

3. Normalize your blood sugar. Excessive sugar in your blood can pull fluid out of the lense of your eye, affecting your ability to focus.

4. Eat plenty of dark green vegetables. Kale, spinach, collard greens, turnip greens being the highest on the list.

5. Omega 3 and Krill oil are your best friends. Consume a lot of food containing Omega 3 such as: fresh wild salmon, walnuts, flax seeds, halibut, chia seeds, etc. Do not forget to use a good quality supplement as well.

6. Use a good quality anti-oxidant as it will help get rid of the free radical causing havoc in your body.

7. Lutein, zeaxanthin, bilberries and black currants have been shown to protect and enhance vision.

Take good care of your eyes and they will stay healthy for as long as possible.

Be smart, stay healthy!