When Judith Salerno, the deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, ran her first half-marathon at the age of 50 after exercising with her personal trainer, 77-year old Dixon Hemphill, she showed once and for all you can stay physically fit well past 40. In fact, a combination of diet and regular exercise is considered essential for healthy aging as it combats many of the widespread problems of passive lifestyle. In this article, you will learn the three reasons why strength exercise is so important for healthy aging.

First and foremost, what is resistance training for the 40 to 70 age group? Clearly, we are no longer talking about lifting 30kg dumbbells or exercising to become a bodybuilder. Strength training in this context is just about any challenging weight-lifting exercise – even if it involves little more than raising your legs with ankle weights attached! Therefore, do not even try to repeat the kind of exercises that you did when you were 20 as you will likely hurt yourself; instead, don’t try to push your limits just yet and try working with weights that you know you can handle.

Why is strength exercise important for healthy aging? The first reason is that it helps reduce the rate at which you lose your muscle mass. Loss of muscle is a sad but inevitable side effect of older age and passive lifestyle – but you can reverse it (or at least slow it down) with a lot of strength exercise. With enough muscle mass, you will be able to avoid or reduce the effect of creaky joints, which seem to get to all of us as we age.

Second, resistance training contributes to healthy aging by increasing bone density. Brittle bones are another inevitable result of growing older, and lower muscle mass makes your bones even more fragile. However, what you probably don’t know is that our bones are always in a process of remodeling, with parts of them constantly breaking up and getting rebuilt. Your body will focus on rebuilding the bones that carry more muscle mass, because they’re under more pressure! The more muscle you have the less brittle your bones will be, which is essential for healthy aging.

Third, strength exercise has a number of major cardiovascular benefits. Avoiding heart conditions is an important element of healthy aging, especially since coronary diseases continue to be the leading cause of death in the United States. This form of exercise also helps you control your weight. In short, strength exercise is very important for healthy aging – and although it can be difficult to get started (especially if you did not exercise a lot before), the long-term benefits will be well worth it.

Strength exercise also offers a whole range of less tangible benefits which indirectly contribute to healthy aging. For example, studies show that people who exercise a lot in the 40+ age group are generally more active and energetic. They are also more likely to engage in various activities events. Remember that social interaction is a very important part of both healthy aging and overall wellness. Nothing is more miserable than facing old age completely alone.

As you can see, strength exercise plays a very important role in healthy aging. Of course, there is only so much it can do on its own, so it is important to combine strength exercise with a balanced diet for the best result. However, studies show that even 30 minutes of exercise a day can make an important contribution to any healthy aging efforts. Not having enough time is no excuse!

 – Reuben John

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Sue Shouldis of Middletown, MD, age 61, began to see the humor in what she’d been through after she started feeling better. A mysterious, debilitating illness crept in and stole her health, her job as a legal assistant and her satisfying life in Florida. In retrospect, though, it seemed kind of funny that food had caused her body to attack itself. So she wrote a poem:

Oh, Bread! Bless thy white glutinous face
Savior of the human race
Staff of life you’re said to be
Oh, Bread, methinks you’re killing me!

Shouldis has celiac disease, a highly variable condition that’s also called sprue or celiac sprue. Celiac is vastly under-diagnosed; 95 percent of Americans who have it have no clue that’s what ails them. It can cause anything from “nervous stomach” to impaired brain function. There is no typical case; it can look like 1,000 other conditions. A National Institutes of Health consensus report says celiac affects up to 1 in every 100 people in the U.S. Some are as sick as Shouldis was; others feel only vaguely unwell.

The Who, What and Why of Celiac Disease

Celiac, which affects more women than men, is an autoimmune condition. It inflames the villi, tiny fingerlike projections that blanket the lining of the small intestine and absorb nutrients into the bloodstream. This inflammation is triggered by gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. (Gluten is a technically incorrect but more convenient term than the scientific names: wheat gliadin, rye secalin and barley hordein.) Daily irritation from breakfast toast, lunchtime sandwiches and less obvious gluten sources like soy sauce and beer damages a sufferer’s villi. The resulting atrophy creates nutritional deficits that worsen with time. Celiac is, essentially, a disease of starvation.

Celiac disease symptoms don’t necessarily indicate degree of intestinal damage. Peter H. R. Green, M.D., director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University and author of “Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic” (HarperCollins), says that “studies show the majority of patients do not have classic celiac disease, but a silent presentation with few or no GI symptoms.”

Testing, Testing

If you test positive for IgA endomysial antibody, you almost certainly have celiac disease. But that blood test is expensive. The less pricey test for IgA tissue transglutaminase picks up a key celiac marker but also registers positive for other conditions. Screens for IgA and IgG antigliadin antibodies are falling out of favor (too many false positives and false negatives). The gold standard? A biopsy of the small intestine, done by a gastroenterologist who knows where to look.

* What Can People with Celiac Disease Eat?

It can seem hard to construct a diet that allows no pasta, bread or pastry. But meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, beans, rice, corn and potatoes are all healthy choices.

Once a strict gluten-free diet is adopted, the villi almost always recover in six months to two years. Symptoms, from mental confusion to dark circles under the eyes, also vanish.

For more information, contact:

* University of Chicago Celiac Disease Program: call 773-702-7593 or visit celiacdisease.net

* Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University: call 212-342-4529 or visit celiacdiseasecenter.org

* Gluten Intolerance Group of North America: visit gluten.net

With an early diagnosis of celiac disease and adoption of a gluten-free diet, it’s possible to halt your symptoms and prevent complications. So see you doctor if you suspect celiac disease. You’ll be that much closer to feeling better.

Writer: Mary Brown
©REMEDY, Summer 2007

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For years you’ve been assured that “life begins at 40.” And so it does – if your middle years are protected from the serious ailments that often sneak in with the 40th birthday. But I doubt if you’ve given much thought to the fact that youth begins at breakfast.

I consider breakfast the most important meal of the day. For me it is always a high-protein meal, with little or no pure starch of any kind. Nor is this merely a whim of mine. There’s a solid nutritional basis for eating high-protein breakfasts, and eliminating the pure starches from your “wake-up” meal.

My breakfast menu sometimes causes comment among my fellow breakfasters whenever I am away from home. I remember one morning in the dining room of a Pittsburgh hotel when I ordered sliced oranges, two broiled lamb chops, and a cube of cheese for my breakfast. The waitress repeated the order as though I had ordered hummingbird tongues, then set off doubtfully toward the kitchen.

At that particular time I was just beginning a series of difficult lectures, all the while trying to rush to completion the manuscript of one of my earlier books. I needed all the energy I could muster – and I knew that each day’s energy is supplied primarily at breakfast.

But the weary-looking couple at the table next to mine evidently didn’t agree with my choice of breakfast. For, as the waitress placed the platter of nicely browned chops in front of me, I heard the woman murmur to her husband, “Disgusting! A regular cannibal’s breakfast.” And then she and her husband smugly downed their own all-starch break fast of d patented dry cereal, sweet roll and coffee. Yet I’ll wager that around 11 that morning I had by far the most energetic body, and the best-controlled nerves of the three. And all because I had the foresight to supply my mind and body with the type of food – high-protein – that assures the most nourishment for muscles, nerves and brain cells.

Although you may not have realized it, your disposition – your “mood,” that is – for the day is largely determined by the kind of breakfast you eat. A high-starch breakfast starts you out for the day with your appetite temporarily appeased, yet with your digestive tract laboring under the burden of a lot of gooey food that probably will have you belching before you leave the table. As the gas from this undigested starchy mass accumulates in your digestive tract, crowding uncomfortably around your heart, you begin feeling as though you shouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all that morning. Your night’s rest apparently did you little good, for you are tired and weary even before the morning gets well under way.

And how sensitive you are on days like this! The least little upset is likely to make you either want to cry, or swear. Because your own nerves are “on edge,” you’ll probably end up by offending someone else. Nobody loves you, you’re getting old and touchy, the world is against you and so on, until you end up actually looking older because of the dreary thoughts you’ve been harboring. Yet all your fancied woes had their roots in the fact that you didn’t eat the right kind of breakfast!

Until someone can prove to me that a high-starch breakfast of fruit juice, white toast, devitalized cereal and white-sugared coffee contains any thiamin to feed hard-working nerves and brain cells, I will continue to delight in my own high-protein breakfasts.

Article Source: girlarticles

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It’s been weeks since you started dieting to shed off those extra pounds. You’ve made a vow to become a better person and to get rid of unhealthy eating habits. You want to look better, feel better, and live longer. And you firmly believe that losing weight will help you achieve these goals.

Natalie Reynolds enjoyed socializing with her friends in college — going out for drinks or girl talk over pizza. But after graduation and starting a full-time job, Reynolds found that she needed to consume fewer margaritas and calories.

“Eliminating alcoholic beverages and sugary sodas and eating less sweet stuff like cookies and ice cream has really been the right combination for me,” she said after losing about 10 pounds.

Reynolds recognized that consuming cocktails — one of the most widespread bad habits of weight watchers — can hinder a successful diet.

Experts have noted a handful of things that tend to trip up dieters in their efforts to lose weight.

Don’t Binge

One of these is binging. Foods such as crackers, cookies and other snack foods are low in fiber and high in sugar, salt and trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils. The tendency is to over-consume them.

Binging on refined processed foods is probably the greatest cause of obesity in America, according to BellyBytes.com.

Flip Side Of Binging

Before and after binging comes starvation. If you skip breakfast, your body will have been “starving” for 12 to 18 hours before lunch or dinner, resulting in overeating again and causing your body to store much of the food as fat since it can not burn it all for energy.

Most people do not pay much attention to how many low-fiber calories and how much bad fat they consume daily, especially if they eat often in restaurants.

Those excess calories get stored as fat.

Not-So-Healthy Health Foods

Stephen Cabral, a nutritional specialist and personal trainer, recently published a list of 13 foods that profess to be good for the body, but in reality fall short.

The first of these is granola bars, which appear healthy because they contain whole-grain oats — but almost half of the carbohydrates often come from sugar.

Pretzels also may seem like a light, wheat snack, but are highly glycemic, get digested rapidly and are high in sodium.

Highly glycemic foods raise the body’s blood sugar rapidly, throwing a wrench into a healthy diet plan. Meanwhile, A consistently high-sodium diet can lead to congestive heart failure, cirrhosis or kidney disease.

Store-bought trail mix is also high in sodium, can contain sugar and food coloring and tends to have trans fats.

You should also be sure to check the ingredients before you stock up on fruit juice. Most juices contain very little actual fruit, but plenty of sugar. Cabral said even pure fruit juice has less fiber and vitamins than raw fruit.

Sugar Can Mean Storing Fat

Watch your intake of sugar, white flour and caffeine. Sugar raises blood sugar levels — also known as glucose — causing your body to produce insulin and changes your metabolic rate. That means that those who eat a lot of white flour and sugar products, loaded with empty calories, will store more fat and have a harder time burning it.

Caffeine can often be a double-edged sword. Mayo Clinic dietician Katherine Zeratsky said that some studies show caffeine can slightly enhance weight loss, as it acts as both an appetite suppressant and diuretic. But on the clinic’s Web site, she said both are short-term effects and caffeine has not proven to be an effective means for weight loss.

“Keep in mind that caffeine is a stimulant that can increase your heart rate and blood pressure, interrupt your sleep, and cause nervousness and irritability,” Zeratsky said. “Also, many caffeinated beverages are high in calories, which can contribute to unwanted weight gain.”

Always Good — Water

The building blocks of every diet plan begin with drinking plenty of water. For your body to burn fat, it needs at least eight glasses of pure water daily, according to BellyBytes. Water not only satisfies your thirst, it reduces hunger and flushes out toxins.

Many small things also add up to unwanted pounds. Nutritionists tend to discourage eating before bed or eating while doing something else. Environment can often be a large obstacle for dieters to overcome.

Find Support, Sweet Alternatives

“Having a boyfriend who enjoys eating fast food for meals and chips and candy for snacks (has been a challenge),” Reynolds said. “But my best friend from high school is super skinny, so anytime I am around her I am more motivated to lose weight. I also had another friend who recently lost 30 pounds. She has also motivated me.”

Finding support when following a diet plan can be crucial. Whether through online chat rooms, group meetings or even recruiting a friend to exercise with make the challenges more manageable.

For many, satisfying a voracious sweet tooth can also seem like a major hurdle, but there are a variety of ways to still eat healthy.

“I have stocked my fridge with sweets like sugar-free Creamsicles, which are only 20 calories apiece, or fruits like apples and oranges that still give me the satisfaction of eating something sweet after a meal,” Reynolds said.

Despite some setbacks, she said when it comes down to it, kicking bad eating habits begins in the mind.

“I think the things that make people put on weight are when a person gets off track and loses sight of why they really want to lose weight,” Reynolds said. “Losing weight is really about wanting to.”

 – Jill Tydor

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Is a total overhaul possible in, say, 12 hours?

Well, no. You can’t seriously drop pounds, lose inches or sculpt muscles in just one day. But you can use the following quick-fix tactics to look better and bolster your confidence.1. Put in a little extra oomph in your cardio.
Just for today, do 10 extra minutes of cardio at about 10 percent above your typical workout intensity. While this won’t affect the short-term poundage picture all that much, you’ll burn more calories than usual and you’ll feel better about yourself. Bonus: High intensity exercise, combined with lovey-dovey emotions, should minimize your appetite.

2. Perk up your posture.
Good posture makes you appear 10 pounds thinner than you actually are. For a longer, leaner look in an instant, try this Wall Roll-Up:

Stand with your back against a wall and your feet a comfortable distance from the wall, heels together and toes apart. Pull your abs in, and gently press your entire back, including your neck and shoulders, into the wall. Let your arms hang down at your sides, loose and relaxed.
Drop your chin to your chest, and then peel your neck off the wall, followed by your shoulders, then your upper back, then your middle back, and then your lower back. Keep your tailbone and your butt against the wall. Hang forward a moment and then slowly reverse the movement, pasting your entire spine back onto the wall until you have returned to the starting position.
3. Pump up pre-date.
Right before your date, do a couple sets of push-ups and biceps curls. This will pump blood into your muscles, making them appear more buffed and toned than they actually are. The special effects should last for an hour or two. Trust me, this works. Men have been using this trick for centuries.

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Some of the benefits of weight loss are being able to develop a new self image. See yourself in the future after losing weight, and make that your desired future outcome.

Check with your doctor. Make sure that your health status allows lowering your caloric intake and increasing your physical activity.

Follow a calorie-reduced, but balanced diet that provides for as little as one or two pounds of weight loss a week. Be sure to include at least five servings a day of fruits and vegetables, along with whole grains, lean meat and low fat dairy products. It may not produce headlines, but it can reduce waistlines. It’s not “miracle” science — just common sense. Most important, it’s prudent and healthy.

Make time in your day for some form of physical activity. Start by taking the stairs at work, walking up or down an escalator, parking at the far end of a lot instead of cruising around for the closest spot. Then, assuming your physician gives the okay, gradually add some form of regular physical activity that you enjoy. Walking is an excellent form of physical activity that almost everyone can do.

Consider the benefits of moderate weight loss. There’s scientific evidence that losing five to 10 percent of your weight and keeping it off can benefit your health — lower your blood pressure, for example. If you are 5 feet 6 inches tall and weigh 180 pounds, and your goal weight is 150, losing five to 10 percent (nine to 18 pounds) is beneficial. When it comes to successful weight loss and weight management, steady and slow can be the way to go.

For many people who are overweight or obese, long-term — and healthy — weight management generally requires sensible goals and a commitment to make realistic changes in their lifestyle and improve their health. A lifestyle based on healthy eating and regular physical activity can be a real lifesaver.

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Is the Cambridge diet right for you? With around 50% of the population on some sort of diet at any given time, losing weight is an industry in itself. There are so many different types of diets available that it can be difficult knowing which one will help you lose weight and keep you healthy. One diet that has been around for over thirty years is the Cambridge Diet.

This very low calorie weight loss plan – called the Cambridge diet as it was designed at the UK’s Cambridge University – was developed in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s by Dr. Alan Howard.

At first it was used exclusively in weight loss clinics, but was then launched in 1980 as a commercial product in the US, with the UK starting to sell it 1984.

There are claims that the Cambridge diet has helped over 15 million people to lose weight.

How it works is that patients follow an extremely low calorie diet – from 415 calories a day up to 1500 calories depending on how much weight they need to lose and other factors. The idea is that, according to the Cambridge Company, the formula for the diet harnesses “the excellent weight loss properties of starvation”.

Dieters are encouraged just to eat three of the Cambridge Diet pre-packaged meals daily for the fastest weight loss, or to use a combination of the meals plus regular foods for slower weight loss.

The meals are typically shakes, soups, and nutrition bars which, the makers claim, eliminate a sense of hunger as well as giving the right levels of vitamins and minerals, and the other nutrients needed to maintain good health.

While the makers may claim that their diet provides the nutrition you need when on their diet, long term starvation-type diets are really not a healthy way to lose weight.

And while crash diets like the Cambridge Diet may be used for a quick fix for an event coming up in a week or so when you want to feel svelte, long term faddy diets confuse the body and are not a healthy way to lose weight.

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Sleep disturbance or insomnia is not uncommon in women starting at midlife. While this may be due to a physical concern, usually it’s not. Let’s discuss some things you can do NOW to improve your sleep.

Good sleep is a component of good health. Things that you do for good health are essential and will directly impact your quality of sleep. This means eating a healthy diet, regular exercise and good daily multivitamin/mineral supplements.

•A healthy diet that is high in phytoestrogens such as fruits and vegetables may help if the cause of your sleep disturbance happens to be related to being perimenopausal. Apples, carrots, cherries, green beans, oats, peas, potatoes, soybeans and sprouts – just to mention a few!

•Avoid stimulating agents such as nicotine and caffeine – that includes coffee, tea, soft drinks, and chocolate. Even one cup of coffee in the morning can affect sleep quality hours later. We, as women, tend to metabolize caffeine much slower than men. If you smoke or chew tobacco…quit. Short of that, avoid smoking/chewing within a few hours of going to bed.

•Sleep in a dark room. (How bright is your illuminated clock?)

•Develop a sleep routine: going to bed at the same time; rituals such as having a cup of relaxing tea and then washing up, and the like.

•Avoid taking naps.

•Is your sleeping space comfortable? Look at light, noise and temperature. How about your bed? Is it too firm or too soft?

•Avoid late night heavy meals. However, a light snack at bedtime may be helpful.

•Try relaxation – mediate, take a bath, listen to soft music, read a gentle book, get a massage.

•Avoid the news and other violent or emotional stimulation before bed! It’s hardly relaxing!

•Avoid alcohol late in the day. It can cause waking in the night and impairs sleep quality.

•Limit your bed activities to sleep and sex.

•If you cannot sleep – get up and do something until you can sleep.

•If worries are keeping you awake, try journaling – it may provide a way for you to “release” the worry onto paper and thus relax and sleep.

There are natural supplements that can be tried. If you are a milk drinker, consider having a glass of warm milk. Milk when it is warm releases tryptophan, the same substance that was in that Thanksgiving turkey that had you napping. On the other hand, I recently read that warm milk also has substances that can keep you awake. Let your own body tell you what it likes about milk.

Other suggestions include valerian root, melatonin, passion flower and of course the chamomile, catnip, anise or fennel teas. Some companies package teas in their own formulations for sleep, such as “Sleepy Time”. Your local herbalist or health food store may also be able to give you suggestions. As with anything else, the key to try different things and see what you respond to.

If none of these suggestions work, I would recommend the following. First of all, see your see your health care provider to ensure there is nothing physical that needs to be attended to. Keep a sleep diary for 3 months with the goal to see if there is some sort of pattern. Keep track of the time you go to bed, awaken, how often you are awake and/or up at night. Are you tired when you awaken in the morning? What time are you getting up? Is there something that is on your mind? Does any of this correlate with your cycles (if you still have them)? Use of sleeping medication is something that can sometimes be used to get your body back on track, but it’s not for long term use, and should only be used when other remedies have been ineffective.

Peaceful dreams!

-Barbara C. Phillips, MN, NP 

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Protein is an important nutrient that performs a number of functions in the body. Protein molecules are long chains that are made up of amino acids, and are important in aiding the well being and functioning of the body. Amongst the functions performed by proteins are the building and repair of the body, muscle growth, aiding the production of hemoglobin, and forming antibodies to fight off disease and infection.

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Certain acids from fish oil, also called Omega-3, may have a positive effect on the body by enhancing the metabolism of muscle proteins, according to a study of the Laval University ‘s Institute of Nutraceutics and Functional Foods.

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