Walking Could Lower Effect Of Genetic Predisposition For Obesity, Study Suggests from Huffington Post

Walking briskly for just an hour a day is enough to cut the effect of genetic tendencies toward obesity, according to new research.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health also found that staying sedentary -- measured in the study by how long a person watched TV per day -- worsened the effects of the "obesity genes."

"In our study, a brisk one-hour daily walk reduced the genetic influence towards obesity, measured by differences in BMI by half," study researcher Qibin Qi, Ph.D., a post doctorate research fellow at Harvard, said in a statement. "On the other hand, a sedentary lifestyle marked by watching television four hours a day increased the genetic influence by 50 percent."

The research was presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions.

Qi and colleagues analyzed data from 7,740 women and 4,564 men who were part of the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. They looked at the study participants' physical activity and TV watching habits two years before they looked at their body mass indexes (BMI, a ratio of weight to height that tells whether a person is obese or overweight).

For the full article please go here.

Cocoa: A Surprising Superfood from Yahoo News

Amazing but true: Eating chocolate could actually save your life, by dramatically reducing risk for heart attacks and stroke, new research shows. Dark chocolate and cocoa powder actually contain more disease-fighting antioxidants than do blueberries, cranberries, acai, and other “superfruits,” according to a peer-reviewed study published in Chemistry Central Journal.

People who eat the most chocolate are 37 percent less likely to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD)—the leading killer of Americans—and 29 percent less likely to suffer a stroke, compared to those who eat the least, according to an analysis of seven earlier studies involving 114,009 participants. One of the most surprising findings was that indulging in the sweet treat also trims diabetes risk by 31 percent, an international team of researchers reported in British Medical Journal.

Used as currency by ancient Aztecs and dubbed “food of the gods” by 18th century naturalist Carl Linneaus, the beans of the tropical cacao tree contain powerful disease-fighting compounds called flavonols--antioxidants also found in tea, wine, fruits and vegetables. To find out about cocoa’s cardiometabolic benefits, I talked to Amy Doneen, MSN, ARNP, medical director of the Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Center in Spokane, Washington.

For the full article please go here.

Overweight People May Benefit From Active Breaks During Prolonged Sitting from Medical News Today

Interrupting prolonged periods of sitting with regular, two-minute breaks of light or moderate intensity activity like walking may be good for overweight and obese people's health, because new research reported recently in Diabetes Care shows it helped their bodies keep glucose and insulin levels under control after consuming the equivalent of a high calorie meal ("postprandial" levels).

Repeated spikes in blood sugar or glucose, such as those that can occur after a meal, have been linked to poor health outcomes, including artery stiffening and cardiovascular disease. The body keeps glucose levels under control with insulin secreted from the pancreas.

For the full article please go here.

How Exercise Can Change Your DNA from Time

Exercise does a lot of good things — it burns calories, helps keep your weight in check and lowers your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Now add one more thing to the list: physical activity can change your DNA.

Unlike the aberrations and genetic mutations caused by carcinogens and toxins, exercise-induced alterations to DNA are more like tune-ups, helping muscles to work better and more efficiently. What’s more, these changes occur even after a single 20-minute workout.

Juleen Zierath, a professor of physiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, reports with her colleagues in the journal Cell Metabolism about these very early changes that muscle cells undergo the first time you get off the couch and into the gym. The researchers worked with a group of 14 young men and women who were relatively sedentary, and asked them to work out on an exercise bike that measured their maximum activity levels. The participants also volunteered to give up a little bit of muscle, from their quadriceps, in a relatively painless biopsy procedure performed under local anesthesia. The researchers took the biopsy of muscle cells once before the participants exercised, and again within 20 minutes afterward.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/07/how-exercise-can-change-your-dna/?iid=hl-main-lede#ixzz1oSDwnU6w

10 Habits of Healthy Families from Health.com

Team approach

Every wonder how families stay healthy, fit and thin? We asked Dr. Oz for his tips on how to build a healthy family strategy. Dr. Oz says families (like the Carroll's, pictured) that make healthy lifestyle choices together, stay healthy together. Here's his game plan for your family.

For the full article please go here.

6 Habits of Fit and Healthy People from Nurse Together

Typically, habits are viewed as bad or negative. Interestingly enough, Webster’s Dictionary defines the word habit as “a thing done often and hence easily, a usual way of doing, an addiction.” Adopting good and healthy habits are easier than you may think; simply follow the example of fit and healthy people. By developing and including their top six ‘good to have’ habits you will be amazed at the significant impact on your day-to-day life.

For the full article please go here.

5 Surprising Myths About Excess Weight from Huffington Post

We get it. We’re fat. Americans are fat. Europeans are fat. And the rest of the globe is quickly catching up. And, yes, excess weight is very, very bad. Gaining too much weight boosts your risk of cancer, heart disease, and, well, 17 other terrible things that we’ve written about before.

So, do our chubby thighs and seems-like-we’ll-never-shed-it baby weight always spell disaster? Is there any silver lining at all? Maybe. Here are five surprising things you may not know about weight—and why a few extra pounds aren’t always as bad as you think.

For the full article please go here.

So You Think You Want to Lose Weight? Trust Me: You Don't! from Huffington Post

Whenever a client expresses to me that they want to lose weight, I always say to them, "No, you don't -- what you really want is to thin out the layer of fat that is sitting on top of your muscle, and add more muscle to your body."

Yes, all that. Let me explain.

For the full article please go here.

Heart attack? Nope, just a spin class from MSNBC

For anyone who has felt like their heart might explode after a spin class, the truth might not be that far off -- biochemically speaking, that is. New research out of Sweden has shown an hour of spinning triggers the same biochemical reactions as a heart attack.

Research from the University of Gothenburg has shown that spin workouts and other forms of strenuous exercise can secrete the same enzymes into the bloodstream as a heart attack, increasing the possibility of a misdiagnosis. The results will be published in the Scandinavian Cardiovascular Journal.

For the full article please go here.

Unbinding the Heart: Put Yourself on Your To-Do List from Huffington Post

I used to be one of those people whose happiness was dependent a lot on how good I made others feel. I think this pattern started a long time ago as a child, when I saw my parents fighting and having problems with each other, so I took it upon myself to be responsible for their happiness. An absolutely hopeless task, especially since I was only 11.

This pattern carried over to my adult life and spilled over to my relationships. I had an overall general feeling of care taking. It often left me empty and depleted. It took me years to realize the value of replenishing myself and putting myself on the top of my to do list, of taking care of myself so I can take care of others. And at some point I really got that the key to happiness is to going deep inside myself and realizing that I was enough, and that is what I call the process of "unbinding."

For the full article please go here.

Food For Memory: 5 Foods That Age Your Brain from Huffington Post

A healthy diet is about more than keeping yourself fit and free of heart disease, wrinkles and impotence (yes, all are related to food!). It's about preserving your memory, too.

For instance, eating high amounts of saturated fat -- more than four grams in an hour -- can raise the levels of bad cholesterol in your blood, which can stick to your arteries, and, even worse, turn on inflammatory genes that result in those wrinkles, poor organic quality, and you got it, that gunk in your brain that makes your memory be less than it is now.

The same arterial plaque buildup from this saturated fat -- we call it a food felon -- that leads to heart disease is a major culprit for vascular dementia -- when the brain neurons become inflamed or don't get enough oxygen and blood flow. Inflammation and lack of oxygen (resulting from that donut or sugary soda) result in accelerated memory loss.

This gives serious meaning to the phrase "eating to forget."

For the full article please go here.

The Experts’ Guide to a Healthier You from Health.com

By Jamie Beckman
From Health magazine

So you’ve resolved to kick your healthy living up a notch in the new year. Good for you!

Where to start? "It’s a combination of lifestyle habits that makes the difference," says Susan Love, MD, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation. So we polled top docs for totally doable tricks that offer big benefits.

For the full article please go here.

7 Steps to Make Healthy Living a Lifetime Habit from Huffington Post

1. Accept the need to change.

You must take responsibility for your present condition and understand that you are not a victim of your past but claim the power to shape your future. No matter what may have held you back (late-night snacking, cocktails after work, no time to exercise, depression, emotional eating, fatigue, poor eating habits or sugar addiction) you still have the power today to change the choices you make for your future. If you want a different outcome then you must accept that what you've been doing up until now is not working, so you must make a change. The only person that can change your life is you.

2. Make the essential connection to honor your mind, body and spirit as a whole.

You are a whole person that consists of mind, body and spirit going through life, craving to feel balanced. If areas in your life such as career, relationships, finances, creativity, home cooking, spirituality, joy, social life, home environment, education, health and physical activity are off-balance then your body will respond. You must learn to listen to your body and take the time necessary to reclaim your balance. If you keep going on auto-pilot, ignoring the signals that your body gives you, then you'll end up sacrificing your health and happiness. Some of those stress and off-balance signals are headaches, migraines, poor digestion, constipation, anxiety, depression, increase appetite, loss of appetite... and the list goes on. Discover the problem -- don't ignore it, or it will develop into a bigger health problem. When you take care of yourself first you will be stronger and more capable of taking care of everyone else.

For the full article please go here.

10 Techniques to Increase Motivation and Willpower from Huffington Post

For many of us, the New Year represents a time to reflect upon and resolve to follow through with healthy changes we want (and need) to make. In the beginning, keeping up with a new exercise or eating plan, for example, generally comes pretty easily. Motivation and willpower are high -- quite evident by the packed gyms we see every January. But after a few weeks, motivation tends to lag and willpower runs dry, and we revert to our former, less-healthy ways. For most people, it's not intuitively obvious what to do to preserve our resolutions and reach our goals, but cognitive behavior therapy (a form of psychotherapy that targets maladaptive and unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviors) can help boost our ability to stay on track (and get back on track when we lapse).

This blog will be the first in a series designed to teach you specific cognitive (thinking) and behavioral skills that will help you increase your motivation and willpower whenever it begins to lag. I will use dieting and healthy eating (and weight loss maintenance) as the major example, but the techniques I will describe may be applied to other goals as well: sticking to a budget, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol consumption and becoming organized, to name a few common ones. Below you will find a list of essential skills. I will describe how to implement them throughout this series.

For the full article please go here.

7 Steps to Make Healthy Living a Lifetime Habit from Huffington Post

1. Accept the need to change.

You must take responsibility for your present condition and understand that you are not a victim of your past but claim the power to shape your future. No matter what may have held you back (late-night snacking, cocktails after work, no time to exercise, depression, emotional eating, fatigue, poor eating habits or sugar addiction) you still have the power today to change the choices you make for your future. If you want a different outcome then you must accept that what you've been doing up until now is not working, so you must make a change. The only person that can change your life is you.

For the full article please go here.