January 2010

Next week is Women’s Heart Week, a time to remember to take care of our tickers. Heart disease is one of the top killers in America. Here are 6 ways you can help celebrate this week.

6. Eat a Healthy Meal

And then eat another, and another… Make healthy eating a good habit. Just start with one today—replace your bacon and hash browns with some oatmeal. Or use one of these heart-healthy ideas. Whatever you do, just keep it up and you’ll be surprised at how quickly it becomes a part of your normal routine.

5. Move It, Move It

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It's winter, which means it's cold and flu season. Ergo, at least one out of every eight of you readers are experiencing some kind of viral misery at this very moment. It also means that TV commercials and Internet banner ads are doing their best to sell you some kind of tincture, pill or spray that promises to make your life while sick a breeze, if not outright cure you. Sorry, folks. If there was a cure for the common cold it'd be in lockdown in some billionaire's heavily fortified mansion waiting for customers who are willing to pay a small fortune for the convenience. For the rest of us, battling that blasted rhinovirus requires some time, a little know-how and some positive thinking. Here are some tips to put you on the mend as fast as modern technology will allow.

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AlcoholismA few months ago, the LA Times ran an article relating to a study about alcoholics. Specifically, the study focused on an alcoholic’s sense of emotions including how they reacted to faces and how easy it is for alcoholics to feel out other people’s emotions from facial expressions.

The results were unusual- alcoholics, even when they are not drinking, have a much harder time reading people’s emotions than everybody else. This isn’t due to any inherent flaw in an alcoholic, but a difference in the brain’s reaction in the area of hippocampus and the amygdala. Usually, these areas light up after seeing someone’s face, but this doesn’t necessarily happen in the typical alcoholic.


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It’s very important to keep a healthy weight for a variety of reasons. It will save you money, help you find clothes that fit easier, sometimes allow you to live a longer life, save you from various health complications, etc. That said, the average size for women in this country is now a 14 and clothing departments have yet to reflect that. As times change, people change and evolve, and it’s important to change our thinking with that.

This doesn’t mean that we should abandon efforts to live a healthy lifestyle; on the contrary, we should all strive for a weight and lifestyle that allows us to be happy, healthy, and to function to the best to our abilities. However, this doesn’t mean that we should kill ourselves doing that—or that the media or other people should have the right to down us because of the way we look, either.

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House Leader Nancy Pelosi Is Doing What She Can To Get The Votes To Get The Bill PassedThe Labor Union has said that they now support a higher tax on high-cost health insurance, one of the many methods that Democrats are trying to institute to pay for the new reformed health care system. It’s a big deal- Labor Union support would count as one of the major hurdles that the bill had to get in order to have any hope for moving forward.

It is being called the “Cadillac Tax,” and it was a big divider between the Senate and the House versions of this bill. Many are hopeful that this will mean adoption by both houses and sending of the health care bill to the President soon.

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Who doesn’t love an ice cold glass of freshly squeezed juice? Yes, the dentist and the doctor both advise us to eat fresh fruit rather than drink juice for the sake of our teeth and sugar intake, respectively, but juice doesn’t have to be so bad—if you make it fresh without adding sugar and you drink with a straw, you’ll inflict less harm on yourself. Of course, indulging every once in a while isn’t going to kill you, either. Here are a few ways to celebrate this juicy week.

Get a juicer. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s also well worth it if you love to have fresh juice. You can also use it to make juice out of vegetables, something your body will love. The pulp from the juice also works great as healthy filler in foods like muffins and meatloaf.

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Contented Cow SyndromeAn older friend was the first to let me in on the sad phenomenom of “contented cow syndrome” or the reality that once singles become couples, they get a little more comfortable, chew on their cud, sit on their couches, and gain what is usually the equivalent of the freshmen fifteen. Science, being a little late to this reality, has just confirmed this sad fact.

According to this NYT article, a recent study found that a 140 pound  childless single woman will gain 11 pounds over ten years, a married (or partnered) woman who has had a kid will gain 20 pounds over the same ten years, and 11 pounds if she is married but has no kids.


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GarlicCholesterol is a substance that can gather around the cells of your body and accumulate in your blood stream, reducing the flow of blood through your body. This can negatively impact your heart and can lead to coronary heart disease and heart attacks. Since heart disease is the leading cause of death among the general population and can rob you of a decade or two off of your life span it is important to keep your heart healthy. For good heart health you must lower your cholesterol levels and while there are a variety of medications on available for this purpose, there are also natural ways that you can reduce your cholesterol levels before they get that far or in conjunction with medication.

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