Easy Habits to Keep You Healthy

Swap for raw:

Now you don’t even need to cook it! The golden rule here is if it’s raw, it’s better for you (no, this does not extend to meats). Out with greasy and sugary snacks and in with the fruit and vege, make sure you’re getting your 5+ a day by grazing on the right stuff. It’s also a good idea to include a side salad with your meals to sneak those veges in and indulge in favorite fruits like yummy berries for desert!

Eat when you’re hungry, not when it’s ‘time’:

Your mum wasn't actually right when she made you sit at the table until you finished your meal. While we have a strong convention surrounding the breakfast, lunch and dinner meal times, there’s no point actually eating then if you’re not hungry. You’re body will let you know when you need food so learn to listen to it rather than stockpiling on extra calories you don’t need. Same rule applies when eating a meal; don’t feel like you have to finish everything on your plate if you're full!

Get a walk in

It’s important to get moving at least a little bit everyday. Even if you’re stuck in a desk job, there are some sneaky little ways you can get your walk on. If you struggle to get out of bed in time for a morning stroll or feel too tired when you get off work, then use up every other opportunity you can during the day. This could mean getting off the bus a couple of stops early, not catching the bus at all, parking a bit further away or doing the old trusty stairs-over-lifts trick.

Watch what you drink

We’re not telling you not to indulge every now and again, but stick to the tried-and-true water option as much as you can.

This means that in between drinks at the bar, grab a water (this is also a bit of a cash saver), when you go to get your daily coke, grab a nice cool water instead and so on. On a different note, a nice cup of green tea will do you a lot better than a coffee and a glass of red will be kinder on you than a white wine.

Relationship Healthy

Sometimes it feels impossible to find someone who is right for you and who thinks you're right for him or her! So you want to maintain this feeling well. But it is hard to do because of different personalities, background and habits. If you want to keep your love everlasting, the following tips may help.

Always accept the unexpected. That is a great secret to everlasting love. To enjoy your love life, you should give thanks every moment and learn to appreciate the small problems we experience. Do not always expect the best from your beloved. And keep a right attitude towards the unexpected happenings. To experience how it feels to have everlasting love, you need create time for each other as lovers.

Giving the required space for each other is another factor that plays a decisive role in maintaining healthy love relationship. Previously in a relationship between the opposite sexes the man invariable emerged stronger, taking the role of a decisive force.

Mutual respect is essential in your love life. Respect in a relationship means that each person values and understands the other. Never challenge the other persons' boundaries.

The norms of any relationship demand understanding and consideration. But love relationship demands a lot more than togetherness as it also implies sharing of responsibilities and decisions. While you are into a love relationship you can really claim enough authority on each other' life and decision, but bear in mind that show your understanding and consideration. Try to give advices on the standpoint of the other.

In a healthy love relationship, everyone needs to make compromises, which doesn't mean you must lose out on being yourself. When you started going out, you both had your own lives and that should not change. And you also should feel free to keep developing new talents or interests, making new friends, and moving forward.

Good communication plays a very important role in keep a healthy love relationship. Never keep a feeling bottled up because you're afraid it's not what your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to hear or because you worry about sounding silly. And if you need some time to think something through before you're ready to talk about it, the right person will give you some space to do that if you ask for it.

Biking, walking to work

We've heard it all before: the keys to staying healthy are a good diet and plenty of exercise. But just when are we supposed to make time for physical fitness in our busy lives?

Walk to work. Or bike. People who ride a bike or walk to work are more fit, less fat and have healthier triglyceride levels, blood pressure and insulin levels, according to a new study in this week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied about 2,300 men and women between 2005 and 2006 and recorded the length of their commute, how they got there and assessed their fitness levels with a treadmill test.

Both men and women who biked or walked performed better on fitness tests but men tended to have even healthier body mass index numbers, and better blood pressure and insulin levels. Researchers weren't sure why women didn't reap all the same benefits as men, but said perhaps women did not exercise as intensely or commuted shorter distances.

Even people with the most hectic of schedules can benefit from just 60 minutes of brisk walking a day, researchers concluded.

Still, for all its supposed benefits, few Americans bother to bike or walk to work -- just 17 percent, the study found. With many cities lacking proper bike lanes and so many people living in far flung suburbs, it's no wonder. The researchers hope the study leads to policies that make neighborhoods safer for biking.

The authors call it "active commuting," but to me it may as well be called the Dutch model. I took a trip to Amsterdam this spring and was amazed at the sheer number of people going about their daily activities on two wheels -- commuting, grocery shopping, in rain or shine. There, biking is ingrained into the culture. Any signs of that happening here? Do you walk or bike to work?

5 Reasons to Have Sex Today!

1. Sex boosts your immune system. “Honey, I have a headache,” may now be the best reason to have sex! A startling number of physicians are now recognizing how sexual and emotional health affect our entire well being. In other words, how our brain directly impacts our immune system. “We know that people who enjoy a regular, satisfying sex life (i.e. regular orgasms) are less stressed, less depressed and generally more well physically, mentally and emotionally,” says Wendy Strgar, loveologist and CEO of Good Clean Love. In a recent article, Dr. Paul Pearsall, director of Behavioral Medicine at Detroit’s Beaumont Hospital, concludes that many of his patients had experienced sexual dissatisfaction prior to a heart attack. He also claims that sexual contentment leads to less severe headaches and reduced discomfort from arthritis in both genders.

2. Sex burns calories. Oh yeah, forget those fad diets and get busy gettin’ busy. A mere 30-minutes of sex burns 90 calories and while that may not sound impressive, at an average of three times a week, you’re burning 5 pounds in a year! Or, according to Forbes magazine, having sex just twice a week for a year will burn off the equivalent of seven huge spaghetti dinners. Seconds, anyone?

3. Sex relieves pain. Orgasm is one serious narcotic! Oxytocin, a naturally occurring chemical in the body surges during and after climax while working in conjunction with a few other endorphins to make sure you feel no pain. In his book, How to Treat Arthritis, rheumatologist Carter V. Multz asserts that sex can reduce pain, swelling, and inflammation associated with arthritis, headaches and menstrual cramps.

4. Sex decreases aging. “Use it or lose it” has never been more applicable. Regular sex releases a plethora of “happy” chemicals into your bloodstream, including testosterone. As we age, our testosterone levels decrease. Sex is a wonderful way to build your reserves back up, helping build new bones and muscles while putting a youthful glow on your face. According to a study by Dr. David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland and co-author of Superyoung, men and women who reported having sex an average of four times per week looked approximately 10 years younger than they really were.

5. Sex is great for depression. “The release from orgasm does much to calm people. It helps with sleep, and that is whether we talk about solo sex or sex with a partner,” says Jennifer Bass, the head of information services at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington, Ind., in a recent MSNBC article. Researchers believe that sex helps the brain produce serotonin which, in turn, prompts new neurons to grow. Most chemical, antidepressant medications, like Zoloft, work to increase serotonin levels. These drugs take three to four weeks to begin working–about the same amount of time required for new neurons to form. One reason these drugs could be an effective treatment is because they increase cell growth–just as sex does.

Healthy & Green Living

What would Valentine’s Day be without an opportunity to mention the three-letter word that gets everyone so riled up? Yes, you guessed it–I’m talking about at a little S-E-X. So, let’s chat, shall we? Beyond being just one-heck-of-good-time, medical studies report that an active sex life contributes to a longer and more fulfilling life. So come on, everybody’s doing it (or at least the lucky ones), and here are five reasons for you to join in:

Getting Connected

There is an actual, physical chunk of brain that runs your emotions called the limbic brain. You can trace its development back a hundred million years. You can see it on an MRI. Every second you spend with other people, your limbic brain is tuning in to them, being changed by their moods, and changing theirs in turn. It's a constant, life-affirming limbic dance.

Experimental psychologists have known for decades that we share moods. If you don't believe me, just think of the people who make you feel better simply by walking into a room. These sorts of interactions feel so good (directly and unconsciously) that we would wither away without them. This is why you should never underrate the emotional side of your life.

Women are better than men at keeping the limbic dance going by working to ensure that families stay connected as the years go by and by building lasting friendships and deep connections from the many different aspects of their lives. High school and college friends, friends from work, friends from raising children together, from neighborhood committees, from shared vacations -- sure, some of these bonds and friendships fall away as part of the natural cycle of growing and changing, but most women find new friendships to replace them. Women who don't find close friendships, who have trouble keeping up connections, need to make an effort to change those patterns.

Hundreds of research studies confirm that isolation hurts us and connection heals us through the same physical mechanisms as exercise and healthy diet. Blood vessels are measurably more elastic, the heart's ability to respond to extraordinary demands is higher, cardiac inflammatory protein levels are lower, and blood pressure response to exercise is better in more connected people. Their stress-hormone blood profiles are also measurably healthier than those of isolated peopl

Reasons to Have Sex Today!

iled under: Fitness, General Health, Health & Wellness, Healthy Mind, Love & Relationships, Relationships & Sexuality, Spirituality, aging, fun, good clean love, health, immunity, intimacy, pain, relief, sex

5 secrets to keeping a long-term relationship fresh and vibrant

What is the most important thing in your life? After giving it some thought, you'll probably agree that the most important thing in life is the feeling of love inside and around you. If you feel the flow of love in your life, you have a springboard to miracles under your feet with every step. If you don't feel the flow of love, you could be a billionaire and feel like a pauper. Without love, you could be a movie star and not be able to look at your face in the mirror.

We know this firsthand because several thousand couples have come through our office doors over the past 20 years. All of them were seeking to restore the flow of love between them. A few of them were billionaires and movie stars you'd recognize. All of them had problems you'd recognize. They are the same problems we've faced in our own marriage. They are the exact problems that you and everyone else will face in a committed relationship. On the surface, the problems revolve around specific issues:

How can you end blame and criticism?

How can you stop arguing about money?

How can you keep passion and romance alive over time?

How can you agree on how to parent the kids?

Beneath those specific issues, though, are bigger questions that everyone must answer:

How can you thrive in a long-term relationship as a creative individual and as an intimate partner?

How can you use the inevitable challenges of a long-term relationship as a springboard to greater closeness and creative vitality?

How can you ignite passion and vitality--and keep it glowing forever?

These were the questions we had to answer in our own marriage, and they were the questions that inspired much of our work in the decade after our book, Conscious Loving, was published. Since 1990, we have worked with many people in long-term relationships: 2,000 couples in private sessions, groups, and seminars. These relationships ranged from 7 to 52 years in length, with an average length of 12 years, were mostly heterosexual, and were racially and ethnically diverse. We were interested in discovering what saps the vitality from long-term relationships and what can make the vitality surge again. We were especially interested in finding out what people could do to prevent vitality from decreasing in the first place. Here is the essence of what we learned.

Here are 7 Love Questions To Ask Your Partner

1. When did you fall in love with me - It's always nice to know the exact moment your partner fell in love with you. It can really get your heart racing like mad to hear your partner describe his or her feelings at the exact moment of falling in love.

2. What is the thing your partner loves the most about you - You may find out that a certain body part drives your partner wild and you would have never known about it. It can really get you to feel sexy to know this. This is a great love question to ask your partner.

3. Did your partner like you instantly - A lot of people have a first impression of their partner which wasn't so hot, and only later did they start to like them. It's really fun to know how far your partner's impression of you changed with the time you spent together.

4. If you had a lot of money, where would we go on vacation - It's nice to fantasize about going on a long romantic vacation together with your partner and to dream about a time when you both become rich, and who knows? Perhaps some day it will be true.

5. What is your major dream - This question is a great way to really know the love of your life. Knowing your partner's dreams is knowing them deeply.

6. Have you ever lied to me and if so, why? - Don't worry if you find out that your partner told you a small lie at the beginning of your relationship. Use this question to get a clean slate from now on.

7. Do you see us together in another year, 3 years, 5 or so? - Don't ask this question right at the beginning of the relationship to avoid stressing your partner out, but once you're steady, it's nice to know how your partner feels about a future with you.

5 Questions Women Don't Ask Their Doctors

Women everywhere dread going to the OBGYN. It’s not just the cold metal stirrups. Sometimes invasive medical procedures can make us anxious to get out of the office ASAP. Meanwhile, some of the questions we were dying to ask the doctor are forgotten. If you’ve ever worried about your low sex drive or wondered what you can do for mild PMS, now's the time to get your questions answered.

Q. I don’t enjoy sex very much because I often experience discomfort. Is there anything a doctor can do for this?

A. Physical and emotional factors alike can contribute to painful intercourse, or dyspareunia. Certainly there are gynecological conditions that manifest as sexual discomfort, and most of them can be resolved with a physician’s guidance. It’s important to be evaluated.

Common conditions represented by superficial pain include yeast infections, dryness and vulvodynia (pain in the vulva). Vaginismus, a spasmodic tightening of the vaginal muscles, can have roots in a medical malady or be a psychological reaction to sex.

If your pain is physically deeper, it could signal anything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis to a pelvic inflammatory disease. But don’t get spooked by the possibilities. Talk to a physician about your symptoms.

Q. I’m having trouble conceiving. What can my husband and I do before resorting to expensive treatments?

A. “Healthy bodies allow you to have a baby, and healthy bodies produce healthy babies,” says Jill Blakeway, a licensed acupuncturist and fertility specialist based in New York City. “It’s really not rocket science.”

Moms-to-be should exercise in moderation to reduce stress and achieve a comfortable body weight. Eat a lot of organic fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods. “We can be pretty sure that the collective burden of all the toxins and chemicals we take in on a regular basis stresses our reproductive cycle,” Blakeway explains.

Holistic solutions can be an excellent, affordable option. And remember, getting pregnant is a team effort. Women and men alike can give fertility a strong head start by minding the following:

• Avoid alcohol
• Avoid coffee
• Eat healthy, unprocessed foods
• Reduce stress
• Don’t smoke
• Don’t use marijuana or other drugs
• Take multivitamins
• Have sex!

Many factors will come into play—age, body weight, medical history—but there are several avenues of treatment to pursue. Not all are expensive, and you might even get some assistance from your insurance carrier.

Q. Is there anything I can do about my terrible PMS? I only have it a few days each month, but those days are wretched.

A. There are over 150 symptoms associated with premenstrual syndrome, from acne to swollen feet to wishing your spouse would get hit by a bus. But if you’re having extreme symptoms such as incapacitating pain, significant depression or cramps outside your normal cycle, consult a doctor to rule out more serious conditions.

Although there’s no cure-all, the right diet and exercise can bring physical and emotional relief.

Dial back the caffeine, which can bring on mood swings as well as breast soreness, and avoid alcohol. Reduce your intake of salt, sugar, fatty foods and red meat. Instead, seek sources of calcium, magnesium and vitamins B6 and E. The evidence on herbal remedies like primrose oil and chaste tree berry is anecdotal; some women swear by them, some swear at them.

Moderate aerobics (running, walking, swimming) and relaxation techniques (yoga, massage) tend to reduce fatigue, anxiety and depression.

While over-the-counter ibuprofen and diuretics can be helpful, there is better medical evidence that low doses of SSRIs—the same drugs used to counter depression—will relieve PMS symptoms effectively and rapidly.

Q. My doctor doesn’t want to prescribe hormone replacement therapy, but my hot flashes and insomnia are destroying my daily life. What can I do to get some relief?

A. The first line of defense against menopausal symptoms is keeping a healthy diet, exercising and avoiding hot-flash triggers such as alcohol and caffeine. But for many women it’s not enough to sit near a fan eating soy.

“For women who do not get relief from lifestyle measures, a retreat from all therapy does not make sense,” says Dr. Nanette Santoro of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y. “Quality-of-life studies indicate that women who do get relief are better off with the therapy. And for about 85 percent of women, this is going to be short-term treatment.”

Hormone replacement therapy (or HRT) treats menopausal symptoms by replenishing estrogen and/or progesterone, which the body stops producing in menopause. Studies show a small degree of risk relating to breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke and blood clots. Establish whether your doctor is drawing a hard line against the therapy or if your personal medical history puts you at higher risk.

Low doses of SSRIs, the serotonin uptake inhibitors used to treat depression, are a fast-acting, non-hormonal alternative. Dr. Santoro notes, “The way these drugs work in low doses is distinct from how they treat depression. As anyone who’s ever had a hot flash can tell you, it’s not psychiatric.”

Q. This is really embarrassing, but I suffer from constipation and gas a lot. Is that a sign of something serious or should I just try to live with it?

A. The body is designed to work correctly; any malfunction signals a problem worth investigating.

In the greatest number of cases, patients find complete relief with a modification of eating habits. Nonetheless, constipation and gas can signify digestive conditions such as ulcers, lactose intolerance and acid reflux. The concurrent presence of the two could imply an obstruction in the lower GI tract, which is sometimes caused by diseases of the colon. Or you could be pregnant. Oops.

Over-the-counter and home remedies can bring relief—active charcoal tablets, or antacids for gas; plenty of fiber and water for constipation—but prolonged self-medication can mask real problems or even create new ones. A gastroenterologist can help you treat the cause rather than the symptoms. And if you’re over 50, the doctor will want to rule out colon cancer.

Make an appointment with a gastrointestinal specialist. Bring with you a log of your diet and the symptoms that arose in the previous two weeks. The impact of digestive complications on lifestyle can be substantial. There’s no reason to “just live with it.”

Keep your heart healthy – your sweetie will love you for it

In the spirit of Heart Month and Valentine’s Day, here are some important heart health tips for you and your families.

This Valentine’s Day make a date to do something healthy for your heart. Why not try joining your loved one at an exercise class, check your blood pressures and cholesterol levels and finish the day with a romantic, but healthy meal, low in carbohydrates.

When a sedentary person becomes physically active, heart attack risk can be reduced by 35% to 55%. Five million Canadian adults—22% of the population—have high blood pressure. Of those who have high blood pressure, 42% are unaware of their condition. Risk factors for heart attacks include stress, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, diabetes and obesity.

To be as healthy as possible for next Valentine’s Day, Dr. Teddi Orenstein Lyall, a Richmond Hospital cardiologist suggests:

Exercise – stay fit with 30 minutes of brisk aerobic exercise into each day. This can be a walk, bike, swim, an aerobics or dance class. Consult with your doctor before beginning an exercise program.

Reduce stress - Find a peaceful balance between work, family, community, exercise, passion and love. Discuss your biggest stress with a doctor and plan on how to manage it.

Check your blood pressure – Know what your target blood pressure numbers should be and get your blood pressure checked yearly even if it is normal.

High Cholesterol – Know your good cholesterol (HDL) and your bad cholesterol (LDL) numbers. Limit fatty red meats, eggs, and greasy fried foods.

Diabetes - Learn how to read carbohydrate quantities on all packaged foods. If you have diabetes, your A1C blood test should be less then 7 per cent Check your A1C every three months.

Obesity - Try to eat fewer carbohydrates by halving your rice, bread or pasta intake and avoid sweet juices, pop and junk food.