Category: Health

Winter Health Tips

Winter is the season when many people get sick with flu, colds or coughs. Hence it is important take care of your health during the season of rain and snow. Here are a few winter health tips that guarantee an enjoyable winter:

First, a balanced diet assures proper health throughout the year and winter is no exception. In winter you should emphasize fresh foods and seasonal food items. Make salads with vegetables and fruit and eat healthy carbs and fats. Make sure to eat from a range of different foods so as to ensure that you get the vitamins you need to maximize your immunity and resistance power.

Although it isn’t hot, so you don’t’ feel thirsty, it is just as important to drink plenty of water duing the winter. Hot soups and herbal teas are also a good source of winter fluids.

Exercise! This is especially important in winter as it invigorates the body and develops the immunity system and resistance power of the body to fight the flu, cold and cough and other illnesses that frequent during the winter.

Dress in layers, with protective garments like sweaters and jackets to shield yourself from the cold winds and falling temperatures. Keep your head and feet particularly warm.

Stay warm and healthy and enjoy the winter!

Why You Should Drink Orange Juice

Everyone knows that orange juice is the perfect beverage to go with breakfast, and that it is recommended even by doctors. However, the reasons for this are less known.

Orange juice is in fact incredibly healthy, and here’s why:
• It contains a high amount of vitamin C, which is known to significantly boost the immune system and help prevent illnesses.
• Medical studies have shown that OJ can lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure, two problems common in middle aged women
• It is rich in antioxidants, which are believed to prevent certain forms of cancer
• It is rich in potassium, which is a significant nutrient of the body.
• It improves blood circulation.
• It contains Folate, a substance involved in the reproduction of new cells, which can help with healing processes.
• It has anti-inflammatory qualities, and may help relieve arthritis-related pain.

Daycare May Mean Getting Sick Less

Beginning daycare at a younger age may reduce children’s illnesses during the elementary school years, a new study says. The report, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, tracked 1,2000 children in Quebec from birth through age eight. They found that kids who began attending a daycare program with at least seven other children when they were younger than two-and-a-half initially got sick more – suffering 60% more respiratory tract and ear infections than stay-at-home toddlers. However, these same children then experienced 21% fewer respiratory tract infections and 43% fewer ear infections during their first years in elementary school. The children had, on average, three respiratory infections, one ear infection and one gastrointestinal infection each year. No variance in gastrointestinal infection rates was seen among the different groups of children.

The study’s lead author, Sylvana Cote of the University of Montreal, in Quebec, suggested that being sick more frequently at a younger age may help to build children’s immunity and thus enable them to better protect themselves against infections at a later age.

About one in three children in the U.S. attends an organized childcare program prior to kindergarten.

Vegetarians and Iron

/Iron-oreVegetarians and vegans often worry about the level of iron that they consume, as meat, poultry and fish are all rich sources of this nutrient. In reality, the amount of iron found in beans, leafy green vegetables and enriched cereals comes pretty close to that in meats. Why, then, are vegetarians and vegans often lacking iron in their blood?

Iron comes in two forms: nonheme and heme. Meats and other animal products contain iron in the ‘heme’ form. This form of iron is easily absorbed and stored in the human body. Nonheme iron, on the other hand, is not processed as efficiently in the body, and so it is more difficult to maintain healthy stores of iron with foods that contain it. Also, many vegetarian foods contain phytate, a protein which interferes with iron absorption. Vegetables, grains, soy; all these foods contain such proteins.

Medicare Payment Reduction Helps Eliminate Unnecessary Therapy

The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published an online study which suggests that cuts in payments for Medicare has reduced the amount of treatments done for patients with low-risk prostate cancer.

In contrast, the frequency of use of the same therapy for metastatic prostate cancer was not reduced, according to the new study.

Researchers concluded that the lower Medicare payments probably helped to reduce the amount of over-treatment for low-risk cancer, while not affecting the amount the higher-risk cancer was treated. The amount both types of prostate cancer was treated with androgen suppression therapy more than tripled in the period between 1991 and 1999, even though there was no evidence that this treatment improves the survival rate of persons with the low-risk illness.

In 2004 and 2005 the reimbursement schedule for doctors using androgen suppression therapy was reduced by 64%. The use of the therapy for patients with low-risk prostate cancer fell by 40%. No significant reduction in the use of the therapy for metastatic prostate cancer was observed during those years.

The conclusion by the researchers of the study was that the decline in use of androgen therapy “likely represents a real effect of reimbursement change and not physician awareness of clinical evidence.”