Think & Create

• Examine the food labels at a local organic food store to determine its source and find out if the facts are accurate.
• Educate yourself on the standards and definition of organic food provided by your local health authorities
• Go through each ingredient on the food label to ascertain that the products are devoid of preservatives and chemicals
• Long unidentifiable chemical names should be seen as a warning sign against purchasing a particular food
• Converse with experienced shoppers at your local organic grocer for tips on how to read food labels. Those who have consumed organic food for years can help you sort out confusing labels and choose which food are truly organic.

Happy eating!

By Melanie Segala

As bad as too much sugar is for you, its cousin is even worse. I’m speaking, of course, about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the sugary goo that’s been added to soft drinks, salad dressings, cakes, cookies, and cereals for over 30 years. The darling of food manufacturers everywhere, HFCS made its debut as the ideal solution for extending the shelf life and reducing the cost of producing commercially sweetened foods.

While it might have been a magic bullet for manufacturers and retailers, it’s been a bullet of a very different kind for consumers. According to nutrition expert Jonny Bowden, writing in Total Health Breakthroughs, HFCS comes with a veritable laundry list of associated health risks, including raising triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, reducing insulin sensitivity, and causing dangerous intra-abdominal fat (the kind that’s a precursor to heart disease).

Not enough to make you think twice? Here’s another frightening twist: mercury contamination!

Mercury can damage the heart, kidneys, nervous system, and immune system. In pregnant women, mercury can cross the placenta and affect the neurological development of the fetus. (Is it any wonder we’re seeing so many cases of autism and ADHD?)

The latest news regarding the dangers of HFCS came to light in late January when several news outlets published the results of two eye-opening studies. In the first study, it was reported that, in 2005, an FDA scientist tested 20 commercial products containing HFCS and found that nine were positive for mercury. If that wasn’t bad enough, the FDA, asleep on the job as usual, did not release these dangerous findings to the public until recently.

In the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, analyzed 55 commercial products containing HFCS that were purchased in the fall of 2008. They found that nearly 1 in 3 of the foods and beverages it tested contained mercury.

At this point you might be wondering what a toxic heavy metal has to do with high-fructose corn syrup. Was it an accident or shoddy manufacturing practices that caused mercury to be found in these foods? No. In creating the corn syrup, a mercury reagent is typically used with a caustic soda to separate corn starch from the kernel. In the process, the mercury cells can contaminate the caustic soda, which is then transferred to the corn syrup.

A spokesperson for the Corn Refiners Association claims that the industry has not used mercury reagents in the manufacturing of HFCS for several years and the study is therefore outdated. But can that really be true if the products tested in the second study were purchased off the shelf by IATP in 2008?

And even so, that feeble excuse cannot reverse the damage done to countless Americans who unknowingly ingested mercury-contaminated food for 30 or more years, clogged their arteries, and possibly affected the neurological development of their unborn children.

What’s the takeaway advice here? It’s obvious. Get high-fructose corn syrup out of your diet. The health dangers are just too alarming to ignore. Don’t wait for the FDA or food manufacturers to do the right thing. If their track record is any indication, the wait will be a long one.

By Kelley Herring

The foods you eat can make you overweight and prone to disease. But they can also help you stay lean and trim… and keep serious health problems at bay.

Here are two modifications you can make to your diet to help prevent cancer.

Balance Your Blood Sugar

One of the most important elements in preventing cancer is keeping your blood sugar stable. High-glycemic foods fuel cancer’s fire by elevating insulin. But that’s not all. Sugar also depresses your immune system, giving cancer cells the opportunity to multiply and divide while the body’s defenses are down.

Protect yourself by sticking with low-glycemic foods.

Boost Omega-3 Fats

In the U.S., 80 percent of the fats we consume are omega-6s – and omega-6 fats (found in vegetable oils like corn oil and soybean oil) promote inflammation and turn on genes that fuel cancer. Omega-3s, on the other hand, supply the antidote. Not only are these healthy fats (found in coldwater fish like wild salmon and sardines, as well as flaxseed, walnuts, and chia) potent anti-inflammatories, they up-regulate the genes that guard against cancer.

Aim for at least 1 gram of omega-3s daily in the form of a high-quality fish oil supplement (like Carlson’s) or a serving of wild salmon.

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Everyone suffers from stress. And the stress we suffer takes a heavy toll on our bodies, emotions and minds.

Feeling stressed out, worn out by fatigue or just simply having a miserable day, the best thing to do is relax.

Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but is not a recommended method by experts. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. So how do we achieve relaxation? If there are thousands of ways we can get stressed, one of them is not meeting deadlines, there are also many ways we can relax.

In recent studies, experts have determined that heart disease is linked to anger and irritability is linked to mental stress. Too much stress brings about ischemia that can lead to or cause a heart attack. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter. Managing your anger and attitude is significant to heart health, and relaxation can help you manage stress.

One way of relaxation is transcendental meditation. Recent studies have also shown that this method might reduce artery blockage, which is a major cause for heart attack and stroke. People practice transcendental meditation by repeating uttering soothing sounds while meditating, this is to achieve total relaxation. The researchers found that practitioners of transcendental meditation significantly reduced the thickness of their arterial wall compared with those who didn’t practice transcendental meditation.

Another study on another method of relaxation, acupuncture, seems to reduce high blood pressure by initiating several body functions for the brain to release chemical compounds known as endorphins. Endorphin helps to relax muscles, ease panic, decrease pain, and reduce anxiety.

Yoga is also another method for relaxation and may also have similar effects like acupuncture. In another study, participants were subjected to several minutes of mental stress. Then they were subjected to various relaxation techniques, such as listening to nature sounds or classical music. Only those who did Yoga significantly reduced the time it took for their blood pressures to go back to normal. Yoga is a form of progressive relaxation.

Breathing is one of the easiest methods to relax. Breathing influences alamost all aspects of us, it affects our mind, our moods and our body. Simply focus on your breathing, after some time you can feel its effects right away.

There are several breathing techniques that can help you reduce stress.

Another easy way to achieve relaxation is exercise. If you feel irritated a simple half-hour of exercise will often settle things down. Although exercise is a great way to lose weight, it does not show you how to manage stress appropriately. Exercise should also be used in conjunction with other exercise method.

One great way of relaxation is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the handling and touch of a professional therapist.

There are several types of massages that also give different levels of relaxation.

Another method of relaxation is Biofeedback. The usual biofeedback-training program includes a 10-hour sessions that is often spaced one week apart.

Hypnosis is one controversial relaxation technique. It is a good alternative for people who think that they have no idea what it feels like to be relaxed. It is also a good alternative for people with stress related health problems.

Drugs are extreme alternatives to relaxation. They are sometimes not safe and are not effective like the other relaxation methods. This method is only used by trained medical professionals on their patients.

These relaxation techniques are just some of the ways you can achieve relaxation.  Another reason why we need to relax, aside from lowering blood pressure in people and decreasing the chances of a stroke or a heart attack, is because stress produces hormones that suppress the immune system, relaxation gives the immune system time to recover and in doing so function more efficiently.

Relaxation lowers the activities within the brains’ limbic system; this is the emotional center of our brain.

Furthermore, the brain has a periodic need for a more pronounced activity on the right-hemisphere. Relaxation is one way of achieving this.

Relaxation can really be of good use once a relaxation technique is regularly built into your lifestyle. Choose a technique that you believe you can do regularly.

How many times have you gone to sleep at night, swearing you’ll go to the gym in the morning, and then changing your mind just eight hours later because when you get up, you don’t feel like exercising?

While this can happen to the best of us, it doesn’t mean you should drop the ball altogether when it comes to staying fit. What people need to realize is that staying active and eating right are critical for long-term health and wellness — and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more you know about how your body responds to your lifestyle choices, the better you can customize a nutrition and exercise plan that is right for you. When you eat well, increase your level of physical activity, and exercise at the proper intensity, you are informing your body that you want to burn a substantial amount of fuel. This translates to burning fat more efficiently for energy.
In other words, proper eating habits plus exercise equals fast metabolism, which, in turn gives you more energy throughout the day and allows you to do more physical work with less effort.

The true purpose of exercise is to send a repetitive message to the body asking for improvement in metabolism, strength, aerobic capacity and overall fitness and health. Each time you exercise, your body responds by upgrading its capabilities to burn fat throughout the day and night, Exercise doesn’t have to be intense to work for you, but it does need to be consistent.

I recommend engaging in regular cardiovascular exercise four times per week for 20 to 30 minutes per session, and resistance training four times per week for 20 to 25 minutes per session. This balanced approach provides a one-two punch, incorporating aerobic exercise to burn fat and deliver more oxygen, and resistance training to increase lean body mass and burn more calories around the block.

Here’s a sample exercise program that may work for you:

* Warm Up — seven to eight minutes of light aerobic activity intended to increase blood flow and lubricate and warm-up your tendons and joints.

* Resistance Training — Train all major muscle groups. One to two sets of each exercise. Rest 45 seconds between sets.

* Aerobic Exercise — Pick two favorite activities, they could be jogging, rowing, biking or cross-country skiing, whatever fits your lifestyle. Perform 12 to 15 minutes of the first activity and continue with 10 minutes of the second activity. Cool down during the last five minutes.

* Stretching — Wrap up your exercise session by stretching, breathing deeply, relaxing and meditating.

When starting an exercise program, it is important to have realistic expectations. Depending on your initial fitness level, you should expect the following changes early on.

* From one to eight weeks – Feel better and have more energy.

* From two to six months – Lose size and inches while becoming leaner. Clothes begin to fit more loosely. You are gaining muscle and losing fat.

* After six months – Start losing weight quite rapidly.

Once you make the commitment to exercise several times a week, don’t stop there. You should also change your diet and/or eating habits,’ says Zwiefel. Counting calories or calculating grams and percentages for certain nutrients is impractical. Instead, I suggest these easy-to-follow guidelines:

* Eat several small meals (optimally four) and a couple of small snacks throughout the day
* Make sure every meal is balanced — incorporate palm-sized proteins like lean meats, fish, egg whites and dairy products, fist-sized portions of complex carbohydrates like whole-wheat bread and pasta, wild rice, multigrain cereal and potatoes, and fist-sized portions of vegetable and fruits
* Limit your fat intake to only what’s necessary for adequate flavor
* Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water throughout the day
* I also recommend that you take a multi-vitamin each day to ensure you are getting all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

I suppose that’s all I can think of for now. I should extend my thanks to a doctor friend of mine. Without him, I wouldn’t be able to write this article, or keep my sanity.

Enjoy life, we all deserve it.