Helpful Health Tidbits

Getting Active When Time's Short

It's no secret that regular physical activity is an important part of your health habits. When job pressures begin to crowd out your regular exercise time, there are ways to retrieve exercise opportunities even while you're at work:

* Don't stay in your office for eight hours straight. You need at least two 15 minute breaks during the day. Use at least five of those 15 minutes to stretch or walk briskly.

* Take the stairs whenever you can. Each flight burns 10 calories. Use a few moments on the stairs to do ankle lifts and calf stretches, too.

* If you have a cordless phone, make that time count. While talking, walk around your office or stretch your arms and legs.

(from the American Heart Association)

 

Does Aspirin Go Bad?

As with most medications, aspirin's shelf life depends largely on where it's stored. Aspirin reacts with water, and warm, humid air increases the rate of reaction.

Aspirin stored in the typical bathroom medicine cabinet is more likely to go bad. How can you tell? When the aspirin starts to break down, one by-product is acetic acid, the same acid found in vinegar. So open your bottle and give it a whiff. If you smell vinegar, your aspirin has started to lost its potency.

(from The Harvard Health Letter)

 

Are Your Lungs Getting Into Hot Water?

As the number of hot tubs in use continues to grow, physicians are seeing an increase in "hot tub lung" inflammation cases.

Mayo Clinic researchers believe that mycobacteria present in hot tubs have the potential to cause lung irritation in regular users. Hot tubs provide an excellent growth environment for the bacteria - warm temperatures promote growth, and hot tub owners often don't clean their filters at recommended intervals. Also, at temperatures higher than 84 degrees, chlorine loses much of its disinfectant property. And hot tub's steam and bubbles efficiently aerosolize the organisms, making them easy to inhale.

All reported cases of "hot tub lung" have been associated with indoor hot tubs at personal residences.

(from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings)

 

Wine Benefits Without the Wine
(In honor of Inamorata, who like myself, doesn't like the taste of wine)

While wine's supposed health benefits continue to be a focus of many media reports, there are many ways to get the health-protective properties of wine into your diet without any alcohol.

Remember, there's nothing in wine that isn't in grapes, except for the alcohol. So add a variety of red and purple table grapes to your diet. Also, most berries, plums, currants, and other deep-red or deep-blue fruits are excellent sources of anthocyanin phenols found in wine. And quercetin, another phytonutrient in wine, is actually more abundant in apples with skin.

Onions, whole buckwheat, oranges, and grapefruits provide some too. A healthy dose of colorful fruits and vegetables provides many other health-protective nutrients not found in wine.

(from Environmental Nutrition)

 

Pressure to Cope

If you can cope well with stress, you may be able to lower your blood pressure as effectively as if you took medication.

A new study shows that adults with high blood pressure who had 10 lessons in stress management lowered their pressure readings by an average of seven points. This is similar to the results of some blood pressure medications.

Some experts suggest that for mildly high blood pressure, stress management therapy may be a good first-choice treatment. Stress management doesn't produce any side effects and may give you the effect you want.

If stress management doesn't work well for you, then you still have all other treatment options available to try.

(from the Archives of Internal Medicine)

 

Angry? Get Some Rest!

Do you find yourself snapping at people everywhere - on the road, at stores, in your home? It could be that you're not getting enough sleep.

More than 47 million Americans (including yours truly) don't get the minimum amount of sleep they need to be alert the next day. And now comes research that links sleep deprivation and mood problems. A new survey shows:

* those who get less than six hours of sleep on weekdays are more likely to describe themselves as stressed, sad, and angry.

* people who report being sleepy during the day are likely to describe themselves as dissatisfied with life.

* those who don't get enough sleep are more likely to get impatient or aggravated with common daily occurences, such as waiting in line or sitting in traffic.

(from the National Sleep Foundation)

 

that is some depressing stuff, turbo. oll

 

these are very interesting to me.

since gina's gone back to work, i sleep much less.

i get home at 1:30 at the earliest) and i'm not asleep until 3 (at the earliest). gina's out the door at about 9 three r four days a week, so i'm getting six hours at the most those nights. and i usually go from the couch to ty's bed during the night. and i'm usually awakended by jillian screaming or ty being loud.

hrm.

interesting.