Health and Diet Blog

Mark Glazer asked:




The HeartStart defibrillator is one of the most popular products manufactured by Philips. The HeartStart OnSite AED defibrillator is a best seller. This defibrillator is designed to be used by anyone just about anywhere. You can use the AED at home, at the office, in schools, or in your car.

The U.S. FDA approved the Philips HeartStart OnSite AED defibrillator for public purchase. The HeartStart was the first AED approved to be sold over the counter to the general public. The display instructs the operator on proper use. Verbal instructions are provided as well. Easy to follow instructions ensures that anybody can use the device while waiting for emergency medical professionals to arrive. The built-in safety features prevent accidental shock to the operator and heart attack victim.

All HeartStart products are portable and easy to use. Since heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the country, having AEDs available to anyone for purchase makes sense. The availability of HeartStart defibrillators to non-professionals helps increase the survival rate of heart attack victims. Presently, only about five percent of heart attack victims survive. Of those that survive, many have permanent brain damage. Immediate treatment with a defibrillator greatly increases survival while minimizing long-term damage to the victim.

The HeartStart defibrillator is one of the most reliable life-saving products on the market today. This is especially important for lay-operators. You want to feel confident using a defibrillator in a crisis. And every heart attack is just that, a crisis. You don’t want to be trying to figure out how to use the AED. And you definitely don’t want to be wondering if the device is working properly while you are trying to save someone’s life. You want to be completely confident using the defibrillator while waiting for medical professionals to arrive and take over the care of the victim.

The HeartStart is the best defibrillator for individuals with no or general life saving skills. HeartStart defibrillators are high-quality, low-cost life saving products that should be in every home, business, and school. If you or a loved one has a heart condition, definitely invest in a HeartStart defibrillator. It’s a life saving investment you won’t regret!

Joe Goertz asked:




Beekeeping is an ancient activity. There is evidence from rock paintings that suggests beekeeping was happening as early as 13.000 BC. The ancient Egyptians were excellent beekeepers, as were the Greeks.

Honey is produced as food by the honeybees to sustain them during the winter months. The bees take nectar from flowers, take it to the hive, and, by concentrating it, make honey. It is stored within the hive on structures called combs.

The flavour, aroma and colour of honey differ depending on the flowers from which the bee removed the nectar. Climate, humidity and altitude also have an affect on the characteristics of honey. Clear honey has a weak flavour and aroma. Dark honey is rich in proteins and minerals. Common flavours of honey include orange blossom, tupelo, buckwheat, clover, blackberry, and blueberry. In Australia, the most common honey comes from eucalyptus trees, such as red gum, yellow gum and stringybark. Other countries are also noted for their honey, including Tasmanian leatherwood honey, Greek wild thyme honey, and French lavender and acacia honey.

There are three forms of honey, liquid, partially crystallized and granulated. Honey can be used as a food, preservative, or medicine. As a food, honey is rich in fructose, sucrose and glucose, making it a natural source of energy. Its antioxidant properties make it ideal as a preservative in foods, including meat, poultry and pastry. For about 4,000 years, honey has been used as a medicine. The ancient Egyptians used it for the treatment of wounds. Today it is also used to treat burns and skin ulcers. As a dressing on wounds, it provides a moist healing environment. Honey rapidly clears infection and reduces inflammation. Honey kills bacteria and prevents yeast infections because neither can survive in its low moisture content. Thus wounds are protected from infections and they heal quicker, making skin grafting unnecessary.

Honey diluted with water has been used to treat sore throats and coughs, inflammations, some eye diseases, athlete’s foot and fungal diseases, upset stomachs, constipation and diarrhea, cardiovascular disease and cancer. It is also effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as salmonella, and H. pylori, which cause stomach ulcers.

Honey is used extensively in the cosmetics industry in moisturizers, lotions, facial creams and bath and shower products. It is an anti-irritant, making it suitable for sensitive-skin and baby products. Honey is a natural humectant, which means it both attracts and retains moisture. Many hair care products include honey in their basic ingredients.

There are some downsides to honey. Commercially processed honey is filtered and contains few allergens. Raw honey, on the other hand, retains a greater amount of pollens and may cause a reaction in people who are allergic to pollen. The reactions are usually small, but severe reactions, although rare, have occurred.

There are also several types of honey which are toxic to humans. Bees can produce “Mad Honey” from rhododendrons, mountain laurels and azalea flowers. The nectar of these plants sometimes contains grayanotoxin, which is poisonous to humans but harmless to bees. Toxic honey also results when bees gather honeydew produced by vine hopper insects feeding on the tutu plant in New Zealand. This introduces poisonous tutin into the honey and as little as one teaspoon of this can produce severe effects or death in humans. To reduce the risk of tutin poisoning, New Zealand beekeepers are required to closely monitor tutu, vine hopper, and foraging conditions within three kilometers of their bee hives.

In addition, honey isn’t for everybody. It contains Clostridium botulinum spores which cause botulism. While adults and children can safely digest the spores without harm, babies under one year of age cannot. They are susceptible to infant botulism, because their gastrointestinal tracts are not fully working.

Kevin Pederson asked:




The papaya is an amazingly rich source of the proteolytic enzymes. These are the chemicals that enable the digestion of protein. Papain, which is the most important of these enzymes in the papaya, is extracted and dried as a powder for use to aid the digestion, and it is often used as a meat tenderizer, the enzyme partially breaking down the meat fibers – digesting them in fact.

Many experts, such as Dr Lytton-Bernard, have claimed rejuvenating properties for papaya, especially for the control of premature ageing. It may be that it works simply because a poor digestion leaves the body without the correct nutrients. Those who find it almost impossible to digest anything frequently find that papaya used regularly, either in tablet or juice form, marks the turning point in the climb back to vitality and good health.

As a cleanser you can take a quarter pint (150ml) of papaya juice alternated each hour for twelve hours by the same amount of cucumber or green bean juice. Papaya loses some of the enzymes as it ripens, so if you have the choice select them green. They are easy to obtain in most parts of America but are not found in British greengrocers very often. Fortunately there has been a rapid expansion in the numbers of specialist shops providing for the needs of the Indian and West Indian communities where papayas can be bought.

Papaya contains arginine which is known to be essential for male fertility and also carpain, an enzyme thought to be good for the heart. Fibrin also occurs and this substance is not commonly found in the plant kingdom; in man it forms part of the blood clotting process. The papaya is an excellent source of vitamin C, with 82mg per 100g (4oz), and is rich in carotene.

After treatment with antibiotics the use of papaya juice will quickly assist the restoration of the normal bacteria in the gut which will have been destroyed by the treatment. Papaya is good for many digestive disorders and is excellent for improving poor digestion. It has also been recommended as part of the treatment for cancer. Therapeutically it can often be combined with pineapple juice in which there is another important enzyme bromelain.

The skin of the papaya is a first class external treatment for skin wounds and places that do not heal quickly. The pulp from the juicer can be used for this and as a poultice.

Mark Ransome asked:




Healthy eating is difficult to achieve because we have so many health factors to consider and food choices to make. We know antioxidants are good for us so we want to eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables because they contain phytochemicals like carotenoids and flavonoids which neutralize the free radicals that cause the age-related degenerative diseases. We know that we may not get all the antioxidants that we need in our food so we take supplements to ensure an adequate supply of antioxidants. But what about the actual food we eat. One of the major problems with our modern diet is that the food we eat is a tasty combination of saturated fats and highly processed and quickly digested carbohydrates. However in the last several years, people have become so concerned about fats in their diet that they have substituted carbohydrates and avoided even the good unsaturated fats in lean meat, olive oil and other plant oils. Now everybody seems to be eating a medium- to high-carbohydrate diet without giving proper attention to the type of carbs that they eat.

Not all carbohydrates behave the same in our bodies. We have been told for years to avoid simple carbs like honey and white bread and eat complex carbohydrates that our body doesn’t digest and turn to glucose as quickly. However determining whether a food containing carbohydrates is absorbed and raises our blood sugar quickly or slowly is not at all intuitive. Scientists have done a lot of rigorous testing over the past several years and have found that white bread and baked potatoes raise our blood sugar level much faster than honey, jams and chocolate bars. These scientists developed a numerical index called the Glycemic Index or GI to compare the ability of different carbohydrate containing foods to raise the body’s blood sugar levels – or in other words the speed of conversion to glucose. GI values are determined by feeding human subjects who have fasted overnight a fixed amount of the food and then measuring their blood glucose levels at fixed intervals of time. Pure glucose is set at 100 and then other foods are compared to this profile. Testing is time consuming and the tests have to be averaged for a number of individuals. However these studies have yielded some surprising results such as the fact that the starches in rice, bread, potatoes and many types of cereals were absorbed and raised blood sugars very quickly but the sugars in fruit, candy, chocolate and ice cream did not result in prolonged rises in blood sugars. In other words many of the starchy foods had a much higher Glycemic Index than many of the sugary foods. Needless to say these results seem counter intuitive and have caused a lot of controversy in the food industry. The rate of absorption is very dependant on how the carbs are bound up with the food fiber and the particle size. For example less gelatinized products like al dente spaghetti and oatmeal have lower GI values and stone ground flours have lower GI values than finely ground flours. The fibrous coat surrounding beans and seeds stop enzymes from getting at the starchy carbs inside and will slow the digestion of grainy breads, legumes and barley. The acidity of foods also slows down digestion and vinegar, lemon juice, pickles and sourdough bread will result in lower GI meal values.

The Glycemic Index is important not only to diabetics but also to non-diabetics because we need to know what foods will keep our blood sugars on an even keel and not raise them too high and then have them plummet down again causing hunger. The slow digestion of low GI foods and the gradual rise and fall in blood-glucose response helps people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels and increase their sensitivity to insulin. Low GI foods will help healthy people delay hunger pangs and promote weight loss in overweight individuals. In addition low GI carbohydrates can reduce blood cholesterol levels and also reduce our risk of heart disease. High blood glucose spikes can result in oxidative stress leading to the formation of plaque that can cause atherosclerosis and even blood clots. So keeping our blood sugar levels fairly level and low seems like what we should be trying to achieve through healthy eating. How do we go about achieving this?

The first step is to look at what carbohydrates we are consuming and the GI levels of the meals that we are eating. Then we should try and ensure we have at least one low GI food in each meal to keep the overall meal GI close to 50. Most fats and proteins have no effect on the GI level of our meal because they don’t contain carbs. However watch out for saturated fats and too many calories. Let’s look at some meals and see what substitutions we could make. The GI values are shown in brackets.

Breakfast

Cut back on Corn Flakes (92), Rice Krispies (82) and substitute All-Bran (32) or switch to a cereal based on oats, barley or bran. Stop eating white bagels (72), white bread (70) or whole-wheat bread (77) and switch to pumpernickel (50) or sourdough (55). Fruits are mostly low GI foods and surprisingly orange juice (46) is very good.

Lunch and Dinner

Eat your colored vegetables and make your salad dressings with olive oil and vinegar. Avoid parsnips (97) and substitute pastas like al dente white spaghetti (38), linguini (46) or macaroni (47) for Instant white rice (87) and potatoes – baked (85), red-skin peeled and boiled (88). Except for parsnips and potatoes most vegetables have a low GI value.

Additional information on GI values can be found at the University of Sydney website http://www.glycemicindex.com/ or in the “The New Glucose Revolution: Shopper’s Guide to GI Values 2006.

Nathan Wei asked:

Almost 70 per cent of 10 Americans experience neck pain at some point in their lives. Stretching and strengthening exercises have long been considered a key component for keeping the neck strong and healthy.

A Danish study published in 2007 demonstrated that women with neck pain who practiced specific strength training (SST) exercises for the neck and shoulder muscles experienced substantial pain relief.

Neck pain is usually triggered by repetitive use or holding the neck and shoulders, in a poor position as a result of either stress or poor posture habits or both.

There are many options to consider that can be done simply on your own:

• Stretching exercises. An example are shoulder shrugs. With your arms at the side, breathe in slowly as you shrug shoulders up toward the ears, breathe out as you lower them to a relaxed position. This gentle, repetitive motion works the trapezius muscle in the back of the neck, relaxing this common site of tension. Head tilts also relieve muscle spasms in the neck and increase range of motion. Wrap your right arm around the left side of your head so your right hand is under your left ear. Gently stretch your head toward your right shoulder and count to 10. Repeat on the other side. Try to perform these exercises four to six times each during the day.

• The Danish study focused on dumbbells. These consist of five exercises — the arm row, shoulder abduction, shoulder elevation, reverse flies and upright row — targeted toward strengthening the neck and shoulder muscles. Note, however, that in the study these exercises were performed under the close supervision of trainers. If you’re interested in giving specific strength training exercises a try, you should contact a personal trainer to teach you how to correctly perform them.

• Take breaks hourly. Long hours at the desk or computer can leave you achy and stiff. Take time once an hour to practice shrugs and head tilts, stretch the muscles and break up the tension. Also, change position frequently. These measures will pay off over the long run.

• Stand (and sit) up straight at all times. Proper posture and alignment of the entire body is critical for ease and comfort in both the neck and back. While sitting, alignthe base of your spine to the top of your head, with shoulders slightly back and the lower back slightly curved out. While standing, adjust this slightly, now picturing a straight line through your body, into the ground beneath your feet. Place your feet shoulder width apart, bend knees slightly and find the place where you’re neither leaning forward nor backward, but perfectly balanced, with head directly over your feet. If you are doing it correctly, you’ll notice less tension in the neck and shoulders.

• Fix your workspace. Little changes can be significant in reducing neck strain and pain. For example, make sure your computer monitor is at eye level… sit up straight with your feet resting comfortably flat on floor… use a desk with armrests that create an angle slightly greater than 90