Are you living a healthy lifestyle?

According to a recent study only three percent of Americans are doing most of what is commonly known to increase health and well-being: not smoking, eating five servings of veggies a day, exercising regularly and keeping a normal weight. (I only do three of those on good days.) Many more people don’t smoke than exercise regularly (76 percent versus 22 percent who exercise five times a week). And only 23 percent eat five servings of fruit and vegetables daily (see the full abstract here.)

This really isn’t all that surprising. People know what is good for them but they don’t want to do it, because they enjoy smoking, fast food tastes better, exercise takes too much time and it’s too hard to lose weight. We have excuses for everything. But we would all lead such better, healthier, longer lives if only we could take these four steps for ourselves. If this is the only life we get, shouldn’t we spend it in the best body possible? I’m going to try to remember that as I try to exercise more and eat more veggies. I hope you’ll think about it, too.

Obesity Backlash

I wanted to just title this post “Wow!” or “Outrageous!” because that’s how I really felt when I read this story from Reuters about the Center for Consumer Freedom running full-page ads in the big newspapers (New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, etc. as well as Newsweek) citing the study released last week that says fewer people are dying from obesity that before thought (I wrote a little about it for our sister blog, The Diet Logs, which you can read here.)

Basically, the group is saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to retract a study published last year that said 400,000 Americans are killed each year because they are overweight. The group says its more like 25,000, and, like this new study says, being technically overweight poses no health risk.

Which is all well and good, but the kicker to this story is who the Center for Consumer Freedom really is. You might have guessed the punchline by now. It’s not a group of doctors, or even a group of consumer advocates. It “is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.”

Yup. Restaurants. Probably fast-food chains, mostly, though they don’t disclose thier membership and the couple of big chains contacted for that Reuters story said they couldn’t say if they contributed to the group.

If you want to see the ad or learn more about the group, check out its website. If nothing else, you’ll probably be amused and disturbed. I know I was.

More on Mother Nature’s Gym

There was recently a post extolling the virtues of using the natural gym around us. I’d like to throw my two cents in on that topic. Yesterday I went for my first bike ride of the season. Whizzing up and down the Chicago lakefront of Lake Michigan always does my heart good, in more ways than one. You just can’t beat riding next to the waves crashing on the rocks. Kids are out playing soccer and softball, other bikers and runners race with you around the curves. The wind, which occasionally forces you to work harder and get that heartrate up, also cools you down and urges you on.

Me personally, I hate the gym. I’ve never been able to force myself to go on a regular basis. In my mind, by the time I get ready, grab my bag and drive to the gym, I can already be at the lakefront and on my ride. Plus, the gym doesn’t have the smell of the outdoors, the sound of the water and beaches every few hundred feet. What better way to end a workout than to sit in the sand and read a book, stick your feet in the water or just relax for a bit. Nope, it’s no contest…Mother Nature wins hands down.

For Boomers, Cats Can Help

If you’re experiencing empty nest syndrome, the grief that follows a grown child’s departure from home, the answer may be adopt a cat. According to the June 2005 issue of Cat Fancy, “cats may protect baby boomers against high blood pressure and stress.�
Makes sense. Kid grow up and leave; cats grow old and stay. And boomers, according to a National Pet Owner Survey represent nearly half of the cat owners in the United States. Sixty-two percent of whom view their cats as children.
“In many cases, parents have been accustomed to taking care of their young for years and may long for another ‘child’ to nurture,� says a North Carolina-based therapist quoted in the article. It also helps couples reconnect after years of focusing on child rearing rather than romance. “Couples often grow closer when they adopt a new pet. When spouses refer to each other as ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy,’ as in ‘Go to Mommy, she’ll feed you,’ waves of affection are ignited.�
In regards to lower blood pressure and lower stress, the research suggested “the owners didn’t need to make physical contact with their pets to received health benefits. The cat’s presence in the room was enough.�
If you’re thinking about adopting a stray from the shelter, the same issue offers tips on how to “rein in your indoor cats outdoor desires.� Everything from spaying and neutering to leashes and window trees is covered.

Food Fresh From the Backyard

My husband and I enjoyed the first few salads from our backyard garden this weekend. I alwyas love this time of year, when things in the garden first bgin to produce. It’s the calm before the storm of July, when there will be (almost) more tomatoes than we know what to do with, and when we could eat something out of our own yard every day.

I really like gardening and I think of producing some of your own food as a key component of healthy living. Whether you make bread from scratch or grow herbs in a window box or have a huge backyard garden, getting your hands a little dirty and then reaping (and eating) the rewards is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It makes you feel a little self-sufficient and in tune with the Earth and the goodness of the food you are eating, even if it’s not actually planted in earth.

It is possible to grow a little something no matter where you live. If you don’t have a yard, you can garden on your balcony. (Here is a great list of vegetable plants you can grow in containers.) At the very least you have a windowsill, or a place inside you could put a lamp with a grow light so you can grow some herbs.

There’s nothing like going into the back yard (or to the ledge or the kitchen window) and picking something to eat that you’ve grown yourself. See if you can find a place to bring a little life into your life. You’ll be glad you did.

Earth Day Eats

I’ve had that Dramarama song stuck in my head all day: “It’s April 21st, and everybody knows today is Earth Day, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday to whoever’s bein’ born…”

Which has nothing to do with anything, but it is Earth day (though not April 21st) and though it’s a topic I bring up a lot, it’s worth repeating today that we should all spend more time thinking about where our food comes from.

And I don’t just mean its country of origin, though of course that is important. Is it organic? Full of pesticides? Genetically modified?

Labels are getting better and better at showing you when things are organic or free of growth hormones, but sometimes it can still be tricky to find out what kind of food you are eating. There is a trick, however, when it comes to produce, that is buried inside the PLU code.

Almost all produce in your traditional grocery store has a sticker, tag or bag with a code on it, which is used by the checkout person much like a UPC code is on any other product. This number can tell you if the produce was conventionally grown, organically grown or genetically modified.

A number that is four digits long indicates the attached food is conventional produce (meaning chemical pesticides, fertilizers, etc. may have been used). A number beginning wiht 9 is organic, while an 8 indicates genetically modified foods. These two possibilites will both have five digit PLUs.

If the produce doesn’t have a label (if you’re buying at a farmer’s market, for instance) ask the seller how the food was grown. You have every right not to put strange chemicals into your body if you don’t want to (and you shouldn’t want to). So do your homework and enjoy the great produce of spring. Happy Earth Day!

Stop drinking with Yoga

My doctor was less than thrilled with the amount that I go out and party and drink too much. Being honest, I told her that it probably wouldn’t completely stop any time soon (I am, after all, only 25!) But then I realized something. On the days that I do yoga, I drink less. Not only is that true, but if I am doing yoga regularly, I tend to go out less on the whole. Maybe it has something to do with the relaxing qualities of both alcohol and yoga…maybe I feel healthier when doing yoga and don’t want to taint that by getting completely wasted…or maybe it is just the time that I spend doing yoga that takes away from my drinking time. Whatever it is, I obviously feel healthier when doing yoga. And my doctor will be thrilled with my drinking less. Looks like everybody wins.

My Food Pyramid

The government unveiled today the next generation of food pyramid, actually a series of 12 different sets of steps that can be customized for each indivuidual. If you’d like to find the “pyramid” that’s right for you, check out the USDA’s new website devoted to the diet plans.

The site, understanadably, is running very slow right now (as every news organization in the coutry tries to access it) but if you can get it to work you will be able to enter some basic information about yourself and find the diet plan that the government thinks will work best for you. It asks age, sex and level of physical activity you get “most days” (the choices being none, less than 30 minutes, 30 to 60 minutes and more than 60 minutes). I chose 30-60 even though it’s not always true.

The immediate flaw I see with the system is that it doesn’t ask your weight, adn for some reason it decided I need 2,200 calories a day. If I ate that much, well, there’d be a lot more of me to love.

But the recommendations themselves seem sound: 7 ounces of grains, 3 cups of vegetables, 2 cups of fruit, 3 cups of milk (obviously the dairy lobby got to them on this one) and 6 ounces of meat or beans (at least it says beans and doesn’t insist I eat meat, but it should include tofu there, too, since most people consider it something other than a bean) daily. It suggests 3.5 servings of whole grains daily and three cups of dark green leafy vegetables weekly. It says to use no more than six teaspoons of oil and to limit “extras” to 290 calories daily (which seems like a lot, but that’s just barely more than the calories in a Twix bar, is about eight Resses’ minitures cups, or about three beers or less than two regular sodas).

It certainly sounds like these guidelines lean toward a more vegetarian lifestyle than anything we’ve seen out of the government before. Which of course sounds pretty good to me. The site also offers tips, dietary guidelines and information for professionals to help them use this information for their clients. Of course I couldn’t access any of that becasue the site was too busy, but it still looks like a good idea that can potentially help a lot of people eat healthier and live longer, better lives.

Health Patterns in Families

Newsweek has a really excellent series of articles in its edition hitting newstands this week about health in families and how the health of one member often affects the health of other members. This article highlights disease and mental illness patterns that aren’t due to genetics: the 10-year-old who has ulcers because her parents are fighting, the fact that widowed spouses die at twice the normal rate within the first year after their spouse dies, while widows of people who take their own lives are 22 times more likely to kill themselves.

Some of these patterns, like spouses of people with asthma or high blood pressure having increased risk for those ailments, are due to environmental factors (everyone in the family eats the same bad food and doesn’t exercise, for example). But there’s certainly more going on than that.

The article states that when there’s a chronic illness in the family, all members need to be paid attention to and taken care of. Other siblings of a chronicly ill child may feel neglected or guilty, and the health and emotional needs of all might be subverted for the one who is in pain. Lots of interesting stuff to think about. There are many other good articles in this issue and I’m sure we’ll be talking about them as the week goes on.

Maybe Doctors Should Decide

Doctors Take Issue With Bextra Withdrawal
Some believe the decision to use the drug should stay with physicians
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 8 (HealthDay News) — Medical professionals expressed surprise and concern at Thursday’s FDA announcement that the prescription painkiller Bextra would be withdrawn from the market, and that a host of other effective analgesics will now come with tough “black box” labeling warning of their potential cardiovascular and gastrointestinal risks.

As physicians lose another tool in helping patients fight pain, some practitioners wondered if the decision to prescribe Bextra would be better left to individual doctors instead of a federal agency.

“The FDA is taking away doctor-patient decision-making,” said Dr. Gerard Varlotta, director of sports rehabilitation at New York University Medical Center in New York City.
“I think they could allow Bextra to be sold with warnings and it would then be a doctor-patient decision. We have warning labels on everything, even plastic bags.”

“I’m not second-guessing the FDA… but, by the same token, the average consumer is going to be confused and the average physician, myself included, is somewhat confused,” added Dr. David A. Peura, professor of internal medicine and associate chief of gastroenterology at the University of Virginia Medical School and incoming president of the American Gastroenterological Association.

Less than two months after expert advisory panels recommended that the cox-2 drugs Celebrex and Bextra stay on the market — albeit with enhanced warnings — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday asked Pfizer Inc. to remove Bextra from the market. The agency also mandated strong black-box warning labels for Pfizers’s Celebrex, the only drug in the cox-2 class still available to consumers.

Traditional nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) — such as prescription dosages of naproxen and prescription dosages of ibuprofen — will also adopt these tough new warnings.

In addition, the agency took the step of asking all manufacturers of over-the-counter NSAIDs such as Advil, Aleve, Motrin and generic ibuprofen to revise their labeling to include more specific information about cardiovascular and gastrointestinal risks and the risk for a rare but potentially fatal skin reaction.

The cox-2 inhibitors, a subclass of the group of NSAIDs medications, have been embroiled in controversy since Merck & Co. voluntarily withdrew its blockbuster drug Vioxx from the market last September. That action was prompted by reports of cardiovascular side effects. Since then, all three cox-2 inhibitors came under scrutiny, culminating in a highly visible joint meeting of two FDA advisory committees in mid-February.

The FDA said Thursday that it would consider “carefully” any proposal from Merck for putting Vioxx back on the market.

The cox-2 inhibitors were originally developed to provide pain relief without the gastrointestinal side effects associated with traditional NSAIDs, such as aspirin or ibuprofen.

Life is now going to be more complicated for patients requiring treatment with NSAIDs, Peura said. Depending on their risk for heart and gastrointestinal problems, they could be on several drugs at once, he said.

For example, a person with cardiovascular risk who needs Celebrex may have to take aspirin to counteract potential heart risks. But then aspirin reintroduces the risk of gastrointestinal problems, Peura explained. In that case, a proton pump inhibitor, such as Prevacid or Nexium, may be required, as well, he said.

“Whether patients can comply with all of that, or whether physicians will do that, or whether the pharmacy-benefits folks will allow that, remains to be seen,” Peura said.
Some doctors felt the risk from cox-2 inhibitors was minimal, he added. For one thing, the cardiovascular side effects were seen in much higher doses than are normally prescribed and for longer durations of time, he said.

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