Health & WellnessS


Heart

Add Raw Foods to Your Diet

A raw food diet is made up of uncooked and chemically unprocessed foods. By virtue of its definition, most items on a raw food diet are fruits and vegetables. Purified water, beans, grains and nuts are also included. Concerns about taste and texture can be easily put to rest if you try a variety of different foods.

A diet rich in raw foods may still use cooked items. Special cooking techniques will preserve all nutrients while increasing digestibility. Drying and blanching are two cooking methods that preserve nutrients. Investing in a food dehydrator may be just the ticket. Dried strawberries, pineapple, apricots and cherries just can't be beat. Dried yams, chick peas and carrots are also tasty. It may take a little time to get accustomed to eating this type of diet, but the improvement in your overall sense of well-being will surely please you. There are other benefits to a raw food diet. Healthy weight loss, better sleep quality, easier digestion, more energy and fewer heart problems have all been documented. Additional pluses include intake of less sodium and more natural vitamins and minerals. Raw food meals give the immune system a natural boost, also.

Bell

Harmful Chemicals Found in Liquid Medicines for Babies

Newborns are not able to swallow pills and capsules, and liquid medicines are thus used to treat any medical problems they may have. And premature babies, being out in the world early, have a higher chance of being hit by various health complications and diseases.

A study published in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood has revealed that newborns who consume liquid medications may be exposed to dangerous toxins which are added to improve their effectiveness, taste and appearance. What is more worrying is that the babies' intake levels may be even higher than recommended adult guidelines.

Details of Study

For the study, the drug records of 38 premature babies admitted from June 2005 to July 2006 to a neonatal intensive care unit in England were looked at. The newborns had been born at or before the 30-week mark of pregnancy, and they all weighed below 1.5kg at birth. The researchers analyzed the type and ingredients of liquid medicines which had been given to these babies.

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Mad as Hell: Anger and the Economy

There's a lot to be angry about these days.
➢ My retirement fund is gone because of the greed of others.
➢ I lost my job while my boss gets a bonus.
➢ I've saved all my life, lived within my means and yet the irresponsible guy in default gets bailed out!
Angry yet?

In the blogosphere lately I've noticed the number of angry comments from readers responding to blog posts meant to sooth and uplift people traumatized by the economy. "How dare you make light of what I'm feeling!" sums up the reactions.

Here's the truth: Anger is a good, natural, healthy reaction to anything that can, or has, hurt us. But anger is also a difficult, often frightening, emotion - especially when it is overwhelming. 'Mad' can mean 'insane' as well as 'furious.'

Ambulance

Australia: Obesity epidemic forces Ambulance Victoria to buy bigger ambulance

The obesity epidemic has forced Ambulance Victoria to buy new heavy-duty vehicles, as schools and airlines are ordering wider seats. Even funeral parlours are super-sizing crematoriums.

Victoria has spent $1.4 million on four new ambulances for patients who weigh more than 159kg.

Paramedics treated and transported 1450 extremely obese patients during a trial of the state's only existing "complex patient transport vehicle" last year -- rising from one-a-day to five-a-day in just 12 months.

Ambulance Victoria has ordered four more of the $350,000 custom-built Mercedes vehicles to enter the service from April. They will transport patients up to 350kg.

Health

Rare genetic conditions on the rise in Australia

The number of people living with identified rare genetic diseases is on the rise in Australia, because more conditions are being recognised. It is thought that up to 1.5 million Australians are now living with unique, rare and often recently identified genetic conditions which go largely under the radar.

"It isn't so much that the number of people affected are going up it's more that the number of diseases that we recognise is increasing," says University of Melbourne Professor of Medical Genetics Bob Williamson.

"There are now seven or eight thousand different genetic diseases known to occur, although many of them only affect a handful of children."

Magnify

Maca is the New Old Herbal Supplement

This unusual root has been growing in high-altitude areas of South America for at least two-thousand years. Deliberately cultivated and harvested by Peruvian Incans, it was used as currency at one time. During Spanish colonization of Peru, maca was used by the Incans to pay taxes. Although known to the indigenous populations for centuries, maca is fairly new to the commercial supplement world of Western cultures, but is rapidly gaining in popularity due to its amazing healing properties.

Before general commercial cultivation can be successful, maca needs to be adapted to different growing conditions. Thus far, germination of seeds is somewhat hit-and-miss in all but the high-altitude, harsh growing conditions in Peru. A variety of maca is found in Bolivia, at lower altitude and easier growing conditions, but it too, doesn't grow well in a greenhouse. From historical data, maca is known as an aphrodisiac and energizer. Recent studies done on rats demonstrate that maca can reduce prostate size. Current small studies are underway in humans but published findings are not yet available. Preliminary studies find that maca can heighten libido but does not raise actual hormone levels.

Early research findings suggest that maca acts by balancing hormones. Proponents of this supplement allege that it produces energy by its action on the adrenal glands. They also report it reestablishes hormone balance in women to prevent negative symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes and mood swings. It serves as an aphrodisiac for both men and women, again by balancing hormones and lifting depression. This seems like a tall order for a cousin of the radish!

Magnify

Caffeine May Kill Some Cancer Cells

A cup of joe a day may help keep skin cancer away: A new study shows that caffeine helps kill off human cells damaged by ultraviolet light, one of the key triggers of several types of skin cancer.

The finding, detailed in Feb. 26 online issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, could one day lead to the development of caffeine creams or ointments to help reverse the effects of UV damage in humans and prevent some skin cancers.

Nonmelanoma skin cancers, which rarely metastasize or cause death, are the most common form of cancer in humans, with more than 1 million new cases occurring each year in the United States alone. (Melanoma is, however, one of the deadlier cancers.)

Family

Youths Are Most Influenced by Negative Family Members and by Positive Adults Outside the Family

While children look up to and aspire to be like a positive family member or peer, they are more likely to imitate traits of other role models -- including negative role models, which can lead to behavioral problems, according to a Kansas State University researcher. Brenda McDaniel, assistant professor of psychology at K-State, worked with colleagues at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa to study the relationship of moral traits shared by youths and their role models to find predictors of outcomes like youth conduct problems.

"Understanding the relationship between youths' view of self, youths' view of role models and youths' behavioral and psychological outcomes provides the knowledge to foster healthy, successful youth," McDaniel said.

The researchers surveyed 30 boys and girls, ages 7 to 14, from Boys and Girls clubs in Manhattan and in Tulsa, Okla. McDaniel said all of the participants in the study were categorized as having a lower socioeconomic status, lower academic outcomes and being at-risk.

Brick Wall

Antidepressant Drugs May Also Suppress Basic Human Emotions

Loveless
© Brent Moore/Flickr
Antidepressant drugs, already known to cause sexual side effects, may also suppress the basic human emotions of love and romance.

That SSRIs, or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors - the most common type of antidepressant - cause sexual dysfunction is common knowledge. Of the 31 million adults in the United States who take the SSRIs, about 30 percent are believed to experience sexual dysfunction.

But a new theory suggests that SSRI antidepressants may also subtly alter the fundamental chemistry of love and romance, snuffing the first sparks between two people otherwise destined to become lovers, and preventing couples from bonding.

"There's every reason to think SSRIs blunt your ability to fall and stay in love," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University biological anthropologist who has pioneered the modern science of love.

Family

Parenting: The Idle Parent's Time Has Come

Parents
© Andrew CrowleyThe kids are all right: Tom Hodgkinson and wife Victoria with their children Arthur, Delilah and Henry at their family home in North Devon.
Will the credit crunch mean that parents spend more time with their families? And have children forgotten how to use their imagination? Author Tom Hodgkinson discusses his new book, The Idle Parent, with psychologist Oliver James.

Tom Hodgkinson: The Idle Parent is really a mixture of two things. One was my own experience in having small children and finding it very hard work - stressful, sleep-depriving - and wondering why. And the other was a bit of DH Lawrence where he says, "Leave the child alone." That hit me as a real revelation. I thought, well, that sounds like a lot less work! And if the child is left alone more, it will develop its own inner resources and self sufficiency. So to leave them alone is good for the parent and good for the child.

Oliver James: I think that it all depends what is meant by "leave them alone". For quite a lot of parents, that is exactly what they do: they just leave them in front of the television. I imagine that what DH Lawrence meant was something like the ideas of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. He wrote on the theory of play. In a book called Playing and Reality, he is very much about not trying to fill the child up with all of you and your stuff, but letting the child discover for itself about its own body and mind, and the relationship of those things to the "not-me", to the external world. To learn that play and art and creativity happen in the place between me and not-me, the transitional space...