Managing Your Health

With today's hectic lifestyles, most of us end up eating out at least once a week. That could mean grabbing a sandwich from the supermarket deli counter for lunch, ordering take-out for dinner, or splurging on a special meal at a favorite restaurants. Meals away from home make it harder to control ingredients, calories, and portions. This can be particularly challenging for people with type 2 diabetes (and for those of us trying to avoid getting this condition). The following tips can help you enjoy eating out without abandoning your efforts to eat well: Ask how the food is prepared: Before you order, ask about ingredients and how the menu selections are prepared. Try to choose dishes made with whole grains, healthy oils, vegetables, and lean proteins. Meat that has been broiled, poached, baked or grilled is a more health-conscious option than fried foods or dishes prepared with heavy sauces. Look for less. You eyes are the perfect instrument for sizing up portion sizes. Use yo...

My wife and I have this argument (she calls it a "discussion") several times a year. I discover some perfectly good food of uncertain age in the refrigerator. She wants to throw it away - better safe than sorry! I say if the color looks right, it smells like food, and tastes alright, we should eat it. And with that another perfectly good pasta dish (or was that chicken?) is tossed out. We have similar discussions about expired medications. I'd heard medications were often safe and effective well past their expiration date; she's ready to throw them out if they're even close to the date on the bottle. So who is right? The U.S. Air Force started a study in 1985 and later extended it to other military services in the early 1990s. The military had gathered a stockpile of medications worth more than a billion dollars that were close to or past their expiration dates. No one wanted to throw away expensive medications that might still be safe and effective. So the dr...

Some earwax is good for your ears, so often the best policy is to leave it alone. And a few drops of water may be all you need to get rid of a blockage. Earwax, a bodily emanation that many of us would rather do without, is actually pretty useful stuff -- in small amounts. It's a natural cleanser as it moves from inside the ear canal outward, gathering dead skin cells, hair, and dirt along the way. Tests have shown that it has been antibacterial and antifungal properties. If your ears don't have enough earwax, they're likely to feel itchy and uncomfortable. And if you don't have the right kind, you may be more likely to get ear infections. Researchers have found that the earwax of people with diabetes is less acidic than that of people without the disease, a difference that may help explain why some people with the disease are prone to ear infections. The side effects of excessive earwax But for many people, earwax is manifestly too much of a good thing. An ear canal...

Normal aging leads to gradual changes in many skills associated with thinking and memory. For example, you might find it harder to focus your attention and absorb information quickly. The slowdown in processing can lead to a bottleneck of information entering your short-term memory, reducing the amount of information entering your short-term memory, reducing the amount of information that can acquired and encoded into long-term memory. But the following 4 strageties can help enhance your focus and ability to attend to the information presented to you: 1. When someone is talking to you, look at the person and listen closely. If you missed something that was said, ask the person to repeat it or to speak more slowly. 2. Paraphrase what is said to make sure that you understand it and reinforce the information. For example, if someone says, "We can see the movie either at Loews Theater at 7:30 or at 7:50 at the Paramount?" 3. If you find that you tend to become distracted duri...

The way you live, what you eat and drink, and how you treat your body can affect your memory just as much as your physical health and well-being. Here are five things you can do every day to keep both your mind and body sharp. 1. Manage your stress. The constant drumbeat of daily stresses such as deadline pressures or petty arguments can certainly distract you and affect your ability to focus and recall. But the bigger problem is an ongoing sense of anxiety -- that can lead to memory impairment. If you don't have a strategy in place for managing your stress, protecting your memory is one reason to get one. Deep breathing, meditation, yoga, and a "mindful" approach to living can all help. 2. Get a good night's sleep. People who don't sleep well at night tend to be more forgetful than people who sleep soundly. A good night's sleep is essential for consolidating memories. The most common reason for poor sleep is insomnia -- difficulty falling asleep or staying ...

Many women have a bunion -- a deformity of the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint at the base of the big toe. A bunion develops when the first metatarsal bone of the foot turns outward and the big toe points inward (toward the other toes), causing the joint to jut out. The Latin name for the deformity is hallux valgus (hallux means big toe, and valgus means turned away from the midline of the body). Most shoes don't accommodate the resulting protrusion and so put pressure on the misaligned joint. Eventually, the bursa (a fluid-filled sac that surrounds and cushions the joint) becomes inflamed, and the entire joint becomes stiff and painful. A bunion is most likely to develop when susceptible feet are repeatedly squeezed into narrow, pointed-toe footwear. The big toe pushes against other toes, sometimes diving over or under them. As a result, the base of the big toe -- the metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint - juts or angles out from the foot. To judge how severe a bunion is, clinician ta...

Much has been made of the recently published results of the DIETFITS (Diet Intervention Examining the Factors Interacting with Treatment Success) study. Most of the headlines emphasized the fact that the two diets involved - low-fat and low-carb - ended up having the same results across almost all end points studied, from weight loss to lowering blood sugar and cholesterol. What's more interesting, however, is how these two diets are similar. The authors wanted to compare low-fat vs. low-carb diets, but they also wanted to study genetic and physical makeups that purportedly (their word) could influence how effective each type of diet will be for people. Previous studies had suggested that a difference in a particular genetic sequence could mean that certain people will do better with a low-fat diet. Other studies had suggested that insulin sensitivity may mean that certain people will do better with a low-carb diet. What DIETFITS revealed about weight loss The study began...