Online Dating and Love Information Articles

While everyone is well aware that proper diet and exercise are paramount to good health, still many people find it too much of an inconvenience to watch what they eat and to exercise. These people may feel that the benefits that they may get from all that effort is not worth the hassles of watching calories, cutting fat, running about, and moving weights around. But what if there was a benefit, and I mean a real good benefit, associated with proper diet and exercise? Maybe that would at least make those who don’t worry about diet and exercise give a little more thought to it.

Well, as if the already known benefits of proper diet and exercise aren’t enough to make some people want to incorporate them into their lives, perhaps the following information from Purdue University and Science Daily will be enough incentive to get them off their duff’s and give it a try.

According to Dennis Savaiano, dean of Purdue’s school of consumer and family sciences and professor of foods and nutrition, poor diet and lack of exercise are responsible for just as many cases of cancer as cigarette smoking.
He says, “approximately one third of cancer cases are related to smoking, one third are related to poor diet and lack of exercise, and one third are related to genetic or other factors”.

Most people are already well aware of the ill health effects of cigarette smoking, but the percentage of obesity and the rate of poor diet in America is a cause for serious concern. It is estimated that 65% of Americans are overweight with 30% being at least clinically obese. This is further escalated by the fact that 15 to 20% of the children in America are considered overweight. The main reason for this alarming statistic overall is the rate of poor diet seen in America.

Savaiano, who is chairman of the Food and Nutrition Science Alliance, along with several other members of the organization, recently reviewed scientific studies on diet and cancer. The group has since issued a statement urging Americans to change their diets in order to help reduce the number of cancer related deaths.

While Savaiano notes that some types of cancer are influenced more by diet than others, nutrition and food scientists agree that these four methods are practical ways to lower the risk of cancer:

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

Avoid highly processed foods that are high in fat and sugar.

Limit or avoid consumption of alcohol.

Get in some moderate or vigorous exercise daily.

Much of the reason why people have trouble getting into a healthy lifestyle can be attributed to lack of knowledge on how to start with exercise programs and proper diet plans, and to marketing which is mostly geared toward foods that are high in fat and excess calories and low in nutritional value. Not much marketing is done to promote fruits and vegetables or whole grains.

Long hours at work also attribute to less meal preparation and more fast food and takeout food purchases. It will take some effort on your part, but making healthier food choices and exercise a part of your life can and most likely will give you rewards that no amount of money can buy.

Technology has played a role in our health. We are surrounded by wireless phones and computers and while they play a tremendous role in increased productivity, they also create an imbalance in positive and negative ions in your bodies system. When you sit in front of a computer all day you are bombarded with positive ions coming at you from your monitor and wireless phones anywhere in your vicinity. This makes you feel tired and sluggish and you can lose some of your concentration. It can be difficult to sit there for long periods of time. To undo this phenomenon, you need a boost of negative ions to put you back in balance

Have you noticed that when you are in the mountains near trees and a waterfall, or paddling down a river or just walking on the beach with the water lapping around your feet how much better you feel? This is because you are bombarded with an abundance of negative ions. This gives you that comfortable peaceful feeling we all seem to crave these days. No wonder people flock to these crisp clean air destinations to get some much needed down time.

Being that most of us are bound most of the year to our jobs and home, we tend not to experience enough of natures natural balance. And to make things worse, we are living in an environment that is far more toxic today than our fore fathers. Everything we eat, drink and breathe is more toxic than it was even 20 years ago.

An ionic foot bath is a great way to restore that feeling of well being and detox at the same time.

It works by filling a plastic tub of clean water, add sea salt, which is high in minerals, place the array and your feet in the water and the array will put out positive and negative ions. This travels through your body attaching itself like a magnet to oppositely charged toxins and mucus and excretes it through the pores in your feet. If you’ve never seen the results of a foot bath then you will be amazed at what you see. What started out as clean water will become very dirty indeed. The color of the water determines what area of the body is detoxing.

How to read your water:

Black or brown water is the liver.
Orange; means the joints.
Dark green; the gallbladder
Yellowy green; kidneys, urinary tract,
White foam; Lymph nodes draining
Red flecks; blood clot material
Black flecks; heavy metals

With the liver and kidneys taking a heavy load of toxins it is not unusual to see a lot of people with brown and black water for several foot baths. But don’t be surprised one day if you develop a urinary tract infection and your water turns green. People with arthritis will often have orangey water.

If you leave the array in the water for the allotted time you will see some color change because it will react with the minerals in the water, but placing your feet in the water changes the consistency and you will have mucus, foam and or flecks in the water, sometimes so heavy that you cannot even see your feet. Just the array in the water may be colored, but will remain clear.

Some of the benefits of ion footbaths are;

1) An enhanced the immune system
2) Assists in recovery time from injuries and surgery
3) Can relieve pain and joint stiffness due to arthritis
4) Improves sleep pattern
5) Remove heavy metals
6) Removes blood clot material
7) Improve liver and kidney function
8) Increase your energy

Detoxing is a normal function of the body but when it gets overwhelmed and pain or disease sets in, then we must do what we can to help the body unburden itself and ion foot baths help you do that.

Anything you can do to relieve your body of toxic build up will be beneficial to your health.

Healthy Diet Lies Exposed Part I

Food Too Deadly for Pigs Sold to Humans: when synthetic varnishes were invented the varnish makers had to find an alternative market for their old varnishes, so they sold them to us as food.

Best Experimental Animals

Pigs are the closest to humans in their response to food, so the best way to test the unsaturated vegetable oils as food would be to test them on pigs. But that would cost too much, so the salesmen persuaded the pig farmers to try out this new “super food” for pigs. I have a sneaky admiration for that sales job!

The farmers were delighted because unsaturated vegetable oils made pigs put on weight explosively, and they were obese enough to slaughter much sooner, so they didn’t require as much food. That seemed to make unsaturated vegetable oils perfect for pigs, but not for humans who wanted to stay slim.

Then the problems started. Pigs would die of cancer or heart attack before they could be slaughtered. So that market closed down. Do you remember what I said about pigs giving results closest to humans?

Growth of Heart Attacks

The first recorded heart attack was in Britain in 1878. In the early 1900s Dr Dudley White (referred to as the founder of cardiology) said that he wanted to find out more about the new disease reported in European medical literature, but he had to wait until 1921 before he met his first heart attack patient.

As the market for unsaturated oils continued to expand heart attacks and cancer became the second and third (medical “mistakes” kill most people) major causes of death and obesity has become an epidemic as saturated fat use dropped from 30gm per day to about 3gm per day. The pig farmers could have warned us!

Lies to Increase Market

You may be old enough to remember the start of some of these lies.

1. You can’t tell butter from margarine.
2. Unsaturated oils are healthy for you
3. Saturated fats are deadly for you
4. High cholesterol is caused by saturated fats and will kill you.

A couple of decades ago the researcher who was originally bribed to invent the cholesterol myth confessed his part in it. Margarine has been shown to be loaded with trans fatty acids that can kill you. Unsaturated oils cause heart attacks but saturated fats are good for you and help you lose weight. Think about it! How much unsaturated oil would our ancestors have eaten? They used to pig out on animal fats.

Suppression of Evidence

The main article mentioned in the resources box describes a deliberate policy to suppress the evidence. After all, if you owned a branch of the media would you want to lose your main advertisers just because you exposed their lies?

Cellular Damage
Unsaturated oils are drying oils. That means that they harden when exposed to oxygen, whether it is in putty, or varnish, or your blood stream.
Our ancestors lived on a diet high in saturated fats. Dr Yamori reported that rats given high cholesterol and saturated fat diets had fewer strokes. Saturated fats don’t produce free radicals, so antioxidants were not as necessary to our ancestors as they are in today’s diets.
The membranes round the cells in our body are mostly fat. Saturated fats are C shaped and interlock to produce a strong membrane. Unsaturated oils are straight so don’t lock together, so weaker membranes are produced, more open to infection.
Perhaps you don’t mind getting obese? If you take drugs to lower the amount of cholesterol produced by your liver you are 5% more likely to die of cancer. But that isn’t what worries me most.

Our brains are largely made up of cholesterol so Americans are becoming more stupid as they restrict the amount of cholesterol in their blood. Now that does worry me. I can be stupid enough without any help from interference with my cholesterol.

Suggested Solution

Before I mention a possible solution consider the bogus research results described by the media. One research report showed that saturated fats help you slim, and unsaturated fats make you gain weight. The media reported it as proving the opposite, which is the story that everyone hears.

Coconut is a special saturated fat. Unlike animal fats, coconut oil has short-chain molecules. As it happens these short chains can be burned for energy, and your body uses some of the long-chain fats to add fuel to the fire, so you actually lose weight.

That isn’t why coconut oil was banned for a few years. The vegetable oil manufacturers saw it as competition and did some spurious research to “prove” that it was dangerous to health. The ban was removed when their arguments fell through.

Even olive oil, the safest of unsaturated vegetable oils becomes toxic when heated too much, so although you can pour it over your salads you shouldn’t use it in your cooking. Coconut oil doesn’t have this problem.

Some chemically extracted coconut oil tastes vile, so you should shop around for a cold-pressed version.

What I’ve done is to replace all my unsaturated vegetable oils with coconut oil, and I’ve lost weight. Other people have lost weight the same way. Of course, the pig farmers could have told us that, and I wish they had blown the whistle a hundred years ago.

Do not be fooled by glitzy infomercials and attractive ads saying that diet patches can effectively bump, block and flush fat from your body’s system in as little as three days. There is no such thing as instant weight loss, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any diet patch for weight loss.
Diet patches are particularly tricky. The manufacturers claim that they can suppress appetite and control metabolism when they are worn on the skin – a farfetched, if not ludicrous theory altogether. So ineffective and unsafe are diet patches that the FDA has already seized millions of these products from manufacturers and promoters.
Most diet patches claim to have no side effects because the chemicals used are all herbal. The FDA has banned more than a hundred ingredients once found in over-the-counter diet products – and some diet patches may very well still contain them. Even if claims that diet patches use only natural herbal medicines, the question stills remains – do these herbal medicines work? There have been no clinical studies that have proven they do. Manufacturers could simply be stealing people’s money. This is why the Federal Trade Commission and some state attorney generals are continuously filing cases against marketers of diet pills claiming to absorb or help burn fat instantly.
The most dependable program for losing weight will always involve hard work – regular physical exercise, a healthy food intake, and a good night’s sleep. You can do these simple tricks without endangering your health or spending too much money. Find an honest-to-goodness exercise and diet program and religiously follow it. Don’t be impatient – it will usually take at least a month for results to show. Diet patches would simply rob you of your hard earned cash without yielding any satisfactory results. Diet patches are already being investigated and considered by the government as ‘bogus.’ Keep your money and treat yourself to a healthy salad instead – you get to eat out, keep your weight down, and protect your health.

Beauty might be only skin-deep. However, it is given a lot of value in certain fields such as modeling, and acting. Since everyone is not born with the same level of perfection, enhancing the best features is one way to look stunning. One such feature in the body that can be enhanced to perfection is the smile. Perfect teeth and jaw line, can bring out an attractive smile in a person. Cosmetic dentistry is a field wherein the dentists deal with a variety of procedures to enhance an individual’s smile.
Cosmetic dentists usually are a couple of steps ahead of regular dentists. Cosmetic dentists must be familiar with dental implants, dentures, dental crowns, and dental bridges like regular dentists, however, unlike regular dentists, they also deal with porcelain veneers, teeth straightening, restorative dentistry, bonding techniques, teeth whitening, teeth bleaching both surgically and cosmetically. Patients can choose the kind of cosmetic treatment that interests them and consult the dentist.
Cosmetic dentists who deal with dentures and dental implants provide a permanent solution for those missing a few teeth. The price depends upon the materials used to make the implants, the laboratory used for the making of the implants, and the experience of the dentist. Most of the time, cosmetic dentists might charge a bit more than the regular dentists for these tasks. However, cosmetic dentists would be able to provide a better solution to this kind of problem in cases of multiple dental implants.
Cosmetic dentists provide some excellent treatments for straightening crooked, uneven or askew teeth. Straightening the teeth in an adult is usually done with Invisalign, an orthodontic method of treatment. This involves the patient’s teeth being fit individually with brackets that are made of transparent material, unlike the traditional metal ones. A few months of wearing different sets of aligners would correct the teeth gradually providing a perfect position. However, a regular visit to the orthodontist is recommended while using these aligners to ensure perfect alignment. The other method for this is to use the porcelain veneers that are a much simpler method to straighten teeth and provide a perfect smile.
Cosmetic dentists get most patients for teeth whitening. This is because perfect white teeth help produce a perfect smile. Tooth whitening is a process where the dentist bleaches the patient’s teeth till the natural color comes through. This can be done with cosmetic products such as ‘BriteSmile’ and others that are available in the market or through surgery. Surgery is recommended only for those with strong and healthy gums and teeth and the procedure involves the bleaching agent being applied on the teeth and the ultraviolet radiation being passed through to each tooth individually.
Cosmetic dentists are expensive and can be consulted for all kinds of problems related to one’s teeth and smile. Browsing online can produce a list of all the available cosmetic dentists in an area.

Have you ever felt difficulty in expressing yourself? Have you ever come across a point in your life when words are not enough to give justice to what you feel?

Education

They say that knowledge is power. This is one power that cannot be divested or taken away from you. It is also only through proper education and training that a person can get hold of knowledge.

A person equipped with the knowledge and enough drive to pursue a field or goal can easily fulfill his or her potential. You can climb the corporate ladder. You can influence people. You can gain enough respect and reputation.

If knowledge is really the key, what about the others whose conditions would not allow it? Take autism for example. Its cause up to now is still not definite but it has been perceived by many people as disabling.

Autism

Autism is actually a condition that involves nerve development. The discrepancy of the development manifests in the behavior of the kid: communication, social skills and repetitive mannerisms. Autistic children often fail to respond to the world around them. As such, they are regarded for having a world of their own.

However, this is not to be regarded as a disease or ailment that will render the person entirely incapable. Some families that have a child diagnosed with autism undergo depression, withdrawal or despair. Parents get too engrossed with the problem that they overlook the alternatives. The special conditions or the limitations of a child with the autistic syndrome may be addressed properly.

The worry over providing the proper care and education to an autistic child is one of the many obstacles that will have to be confronted. As such for any family dealing with the condition, it is important to provide early interventions so as to facilitate a faster progress.

Providing Education to Autistic Children

There are many teaching methods that have been developed to address the situation of autistic children. The method would of course depend on the needs and capabilities of the child, whether the autism is mild or not.

Primarily, the parents think it is best to send the child to a special education institution if the local school does not have a special program. Institutions focusing on autism will also help in providing autism-specific classrooms. In such instances, the teacher will focus to the needs of the autistic child. There would be no other disorders to be addressed. It is also best to keep the teacher from being stressed or overworked. The teacher must be emotionally and physically up and about.

Also, there are cases of autism that will still make it helpful to attend regular schools. Some school districts have provided support to make the teachers and student body more aware of such situations. Some parents of autistic kids also work together to ensure that the needs of the kids will be met within the school boundaries.

Finally, we should constantly remind ourselves that education starts at home. The parents must properly comprehend and grasp the situation of the child. They should also consider the aspects and effects of the autistic condition and how they can properly address the development of the child. These are some of the few things that must be aimed for: understanding the behavior, knowing the proper response, encouraging new ones, dealing with the social problems, working and playing together.

There should also be considerable cooperation between the parents and the teachers or professionals to ensure that the problems of the child will be addressed. Parents should know the learning styles of the child and keep themselves informed of the various strategies that would help the child succeed.

Getting the kid in the appropriate educational institution would be very helpful. Still it is the family that will reinforce and support the child to progress.

We are living in a very fast world. The world keeps getting smaller and smaller as technologies are improved and knowledge is progressed. It is very easy to amuse ourselves, to fulfill our needs and even get what we want. However, in this fast-paced life not everyone will be able to catch up. Some may be left behind, not because they choose to be, but because their conditions limit them.

We should not limit this world only to the able. We should also learn to embrace and enable those who are limited by their existence.

This week, my gym is flooded with new faces. It’s that post-New Years craze that sends everyone to the gyms to try and fulfill that elusive but always primary goal of the New Year: lose weight and get into shape. I watched one new member make her way around through the jungle of strength training equipment last night. She moved from machine to machine doing one set here, two sets there, five repetitions here, twenty there. No rhyme or reason to it, no paper and pencil in hand, it just appeared another random attempt at a workout. What if there was a simple, straightforward way of taking a workout and figuring out exactly what should be in it? There is it’s called the 5 Rs principle.

The 5 Rs Principle can help beginning exercisers figure out what exactly goes into an effective workout. Each `R’focuses on an important element of an exercise routine that forces the beginner to look at their workouts in a holistic fashion.

RANGE of motion

Range of motion refers to how the capability of a joint to move through a prescribed set of movements. In order for a beginner to see results, each exercise should be performed from a fully stretched position of the muscle to a fully contracted position. An example: I see a lot of beginners (and people who have been around the gym long enough to know better) load up the EZ-curl bar for preacher curls and perform the exercise only lowering the bar halfway down on the eccentric portion of the exercise. Not only can this cause injury to the bicep muscle, it also doesn’t work the muscle the best way possible and limits the results of the exercise.

You’ll hear the term `range of motion’ often in reference to joint health and mobility. This is no exception in the gym. Your joints are supported by large and small muscles. In order to optimize your joint health, all the muscles surrounding the joints must be worked as well.

RESISTANCE

When you’re just starting to lift weights, how much weight to use is a huge issue. It’s unfortunate that many personal trainers will tell women to use a lighter weight so that they will “tone up” and not get bulky. This is probably the biggest myth in all of weight lifting? women who lift heavy weights will not get bulky. Don’t believe anyone who tells you this! Choose a weight that allows you to complete the exercise without sacrificing proper form but that is heavy enough that you cannot possibly perform another repetition at the end of your prescribed set of repetitions.

REPETITIONS

Another huge variable for beginning exercisers is how many repetitions to perform. Performing certain repetitions will indeed produce highly specific results. In general, low repetitions (3-8) produce greater absolute strength, medium repetitions (10-20) produce anaerobic strength endurance, and high repetitions (20-40) produce aerobic strength endurance.

Now, an ideal beginner routine will probably include sets of medium repetitions, just to allow the exerciser to learn to perform the exercise correctly, with proper form and technique and to allow her to experiment with experiencing muscle fatigue at 12-15 repetitions. As she progresses, she can experiment with different set/rep schemes customized to individual goals.

An important note is that in order to achieve the results desired from performing a certain number of repetitions is that muscular failure must be achieved within the repetition ranges above. Muscular failure means that you can’t possibly push out one more repetition no matter how hard you’re trying to do it.

REST

In general, your body needs between two to four minutes of rest between sets to prepare itself to perform another set at maximum capacity. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine (PC) are used by your muscle cells to contract during a weight lifting exercise. Your body needs time to regenerate these two compounds before it is ready to go again.

Unless you’re trying to develop all-out absolute strength by performing low repetitions with very heavy weight, you’re probably not going to need to wait that long between sets. Most beginners will be working within a medium repetition range and therefore do not need to wait that long between sets. One to two minutes is fine.

RECOVERY

You will not see faster or better results by working the same muscle groups day after day. As important as hard work is, recovery between workouts is even more important. Beginners should work the same muscle groups no more than two times per week, with at least forty- eight hours break between sessions. As an exerciser becomes more advanced, she will probably cut back to working each muscle group once every seven days or so.

Over two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. That’s quite a high percentage of adults who have a need to shed a little or a lot of fat! The only way to do this is one pound at a time!

Many overweight individuals wish and hope for a quick cure to their weight problems. They’ll try anything that promises instant results! Unfortunately, these ‘miracle weight loss’ products are scams! They may help a person shed some water weight, initially. But, the fat isn’t going anywhere without a little effort on that person’s part!

For those of you who have tried weight loss diets or are thinking about trying one, consider all the dieters who have tried the same diets and failed. The number one reason for permanent weight loss failure is the inability to stick with the diet!

Many individuals become ‘yo-yo’ dieters. They try one diet for awhile, lose a few pounds, quit the diet, gain back the weight (and then some), and move on to another diet. The process is repeated. With each new attempt, there is often more weight to lose than there was initially!

Successful Weight Loss Strategies

If you want to lose weight successfully, you must realize, first, that there are no miracle diets or products that will blast away the fat! You didn’t gain the weight overnight! You aren’t going to lose it overnight, either! You will have to put forth effort to lose the fat, one pound at a time! Even after you’ve shed those extra pounds, you will have to continue to work at controlling your weight, if you wish to keep the fat off!

In an article on Consumer Reports.org which rates various popular diets, Cathy Nonas, R.D., M.S., (an obesity researcher at North General Hospital in New York) states, “The best diet is the one you can stay on.” Consumer Reports goes on to say that “adherence is important…To maintain lost weight, dieters must permanently reduce their calorie intake, because they will need fewer calories to fuel their now-smaller body.”

Fad diets typically fail in the end. From my own personal experience, I have found that eating sensibly works best! If you want to lose weight (one pound at a time), keep it off, and feel good, too, why not try cutting down on the empty calories found in most American diets? Eat more raw vegetables and fruits and whole grains. Go easy on the fats and processed sugary or salty snacks. Limit yourself to smaller portions and avoid having second helpings. This type of diet is one that you CAN stick with and live with for the rest of your life!

Yes, you’ll have to make a few lifestyle changes, and you’ll have to work on being more disciplined in your eating habits. But, in the end, it will be worth it! You’ll look better! You’ll feel better! Your confidence will return, and you’ll believe that there isn’t anything that you cannot do!

Wouldn’t it be worth giving up that 44-ounce Coke and that huge order of greasy French fries for a healthier, happier you? If you simply can’t do without a few French fries and a Coke now and then, go ahead and treat yourself to a small serving. Cut back on calories somewhere else that day. Occasionally, it’s okay to indulge. But, if you seriously want to shed the extra fat and keep it off, be conscious about everything you put into your mouth. You’ll lose that weight, a pound at a time!

Starting a weight loss diet is one of the easiest things a person can do. Staying with it, well, that’s another thing entirely. There are so many reasons that people just can’t seem to stay with their weight loss attempts.

If you are like most people, you probably have a pretty full schedule nearly every day with what seems like more things to do than hours in the day to get them done. Between work, school and things at home that need to be done, it’s no wonder that it can be so hard to find time to lose weight.

Most of the time you are probably eating haphazardly, eating whatever is fast, convenient and can be eaten on the go. Your average day never seems to give you the time to exercise. Well, if you are serious about losing that extra weight there are a few things you can do that will help make your quest a little easier. It will still take some effort on your part, but you can do it.

To start with, you need to have a plan. Weight loss is a long term goal, and while long term goals may be important, they often do not have a sense of urgency. It is too easy for less important things, but things that have to get done right now, to take over and put your long term goal on the back burner.

The way to remedy this is to break your long term goal down into a series of short term ones, then break these short term ones into things that find their way onto your daily “to do” list. Make a list of what you want to accomplish with your weight loss plan and be specific. Rather than saying “I would like to lose this extra weight”, say “I want to lose 20 pounds in the next six months”.

Now that you have a long term goal for yourself, you need a plan of action to make it a reality. This is where you now say “to do this, I want to lose 3-4 pounds each month”. Now that you’ve set yourself up with a series of short term goals, you need to say to yourself “I will lose one pound every week until I have lost 3-4 pounds this month”. Now keep in mind that it is not enough to simply have the goal. You need to remind yourself of it everyday, all day.

Put your goal of losing one pound each week on your refrigerator door, on your computer screen, your calendar or your day planner, and even on the dashboard of your car. This way your plan is always there with you everyday, all day to keep you reminded of just how important it is, where ever you go.

You probably won’t be able to make all of the changes you want to all at once. To be realistic about it, select one or two things like snacking or fast food to eliminate, and focus on those things. Write down what you want to do different, and make it part of your ‘things to do today” list. Each day as you do these things, mark it off as done for that day. By doing this, you can see that you really are achieving your goals and you will feel so good about yourself each day for making yourself stay committed to it.

If one day here and there you didn’t accomplish your daily goal, do not feel defeated and do not get down about it. What you need to do here is sit down and assess the situation to figure out why it didn’t happen that day. Perhaps you just need to plan your day a little better.

If you had planned to bring a low fat, healthy lunch with you but got rushed and did not have the time to make it, start making it the night before and keep it in the fridge, then all you have to do is grab it and go. Remember, you are only human and you will make mistakes, but the important thing is that you learn from your mistakes and move ahead rather than letting them defeat you.

Take a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on everything that you did that day, and to plan out your next day. The little bit of time you take each day to plan will make a major difference in your weight loss success.

Though it may not be true for the younger people who are part of the dating world, there are some dating singles that won’t always know what they do want in a partner. However, the longer you date and the older you get you will probably be very certain and will have (at the least) a mental list of what you don’t want to deal with in a person you are dating.

The “don’t want” lists are dangerous in that you may say you don’t want to date a guy with a beard or a woman with green eyes. First you are limiting your choices on seriously unimportant aspects of a person as a whole being. And you can’t hold a conviction based on outward appearances, simply because you are bound to meet a wonderful man with a beard, or a charming woman with emerald eyes and you become flaky with yourself.

Just like boundaries you set with any person in your life, the boundaries you set for your self have to be consistently enforced. Allowing indecisiveness in your choices of date material will often lead you directly toward the path where you are bound to repeat past mistakes. Since it is imperative you stick to the boundaries you have set it’s a great decision to allow your “don’t want” list to contain things that are on a more inward level than eye color or hairstyles.

Being in an abusive, alcoholic, or immature relationship prior to your newest dating period in life is a perfect reason to be certain you are an emotionally healthy individual before you date again. In that emotional health you will gain a much better perspective of how abuse, addictions, and immaturity will lead your love train right back to the point of derailment again and again.

Typically when you talk to people who have been successful date partners and eventually successful life partners their topical list of “what I don’t want” usually, in the end, goes right out the window. However the list that pertains deeply thought out and healthy choices for a date partner is used as a basis for happiness. Discarding your old list of “don’t wants” and inventing a newer version from time to time is a sure sign of growth and overall health.

The best tip for successful dating is being a successful person in your own life first. Once you feel very comfortable within your own skin, once you can be on your own without feeling desperate for a date, and once you have decided the person you want to date will enhance what you are not complete you then you are the perfect date.

This program brings visiting scholars in health services research-related disciplines to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to use NCHS data systems and collaborate on studies of interest to policymakers and the health services research community.

Applicants must:

* Demonstrate training or experience in health services research.

* Be at any stage in their careers from doctoral students to senior investigators. (Doctoral students must have completed course work and be at the dissertation phase of their programs.)

* Be U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or be able to acquire a valid work authorization.

Join AcademyHealth and Health Affairs to hear leading experts from the Administration, academia, Congress, and the health industry share their insights on critical health care issues confronting policy makers. Among the topics to be addressed are: reducing disparities in health care, patient safety, improving services for mental health and substance use disorders, public and private sector perspective on responsibility for America’s health care, preventing and managing chronic conditions in children, pay for performance, and MA Implementation. Participants include federal and state policymakers, policy researchers and analysts, health industry executives, clinical decision makers, research funders, and health services researchers.

Interested in how research truly health policy? Attend the AcademyHealth minicourses on health policy tools and techniques and learn more. Held in conjunction with the 2006 National Health Policy Conference, these three-hour courses give participants the tools they need to reach their own informed conclusions.Program Evaluation for Nonresearchers–An overview of the basic concepts and models of program evaluation, with use of case studies to demonstrate the application of these models.

Cardinal Health is a global leader in product development, drug delivery technologies, contract manufacturing, packaging, and healthcare marketing services, serving the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. With a proven track record of global expertise and innovation, Cardinal Health brings its customers innovative expertise throughout a drug’s development, launch, and entire life cycle. And, Cardinal Health offers a broad range of dose-form development and manufacturing options–from traditional and proprietary oral forms to sterile products, inhaled forms, and topicals–in more than 40 facilities on five continents.

Technical services

Development: Cardinal Health offers a broad range of drug development services such as discovery support, synthesis, pharmaceutics, analytical chemistry, microbiology, structural chemistry, clinical manufacturing, and clinical supply services, as well as product development for both small and large molecules. The company also has expertise in inhalation and radiopharmaceutical product development, and can offer innovative cell-line development using its proprietary “GPEx” technology.

Drug delivery: Cardinal Health holds more than 1500 patents and patent applications for drug delivery systems. The company’s drug-delivery technologies include soft gelatin capsules, “Zydis” fast-dissolve dosage form; “EnCirc,” “EnVel,” and “EnSolv” for oral modified-release products; lyophilization; sterile liposomes; inhaled technologies (MDI, DPI, nasal sprays); and topical “Microsponge” for timed release and “DelPouch” for unit dosing.

Manufacturing: Cardinal provides manufacturing for nearly every close form on the market today. Along with proprietary close forms, the company also manufactures traditional oral dose forms (tablets, capsules, liquids), sterile dose forms (lyophilization, fill-finish manufacture in vials, pre-filled syringes, and the innovative “blow-fill-seal” aseptic technology), and topical and inhaled forms. Cardinal also produces biologics for preclinical and clinical studies, and both clinical and commercial radiopharmaceuticals. The company helps improve yields in commercial biologics production using its proprietary “GPEx” technology.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAH0) has established a Healthcare Information Technology Advisory Panel to focus attention on the improvement of patient safety and clinical processes as new healthcare information systems ate implemented, according to a Sept 22, 2005, news release from JCAH0. The panel includes representatives from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, American Health Information Management Association, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Veterans Health Administration, and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The panel is composed of researchers, physicians, nurses, chief information officers, educators, and leaders of health care organizations.

Members will be asked to recommend ways that JCAHO’s accreditation process and the widespread use of technology can be used to help reengineer patient care delivery and result in major improvements in safety, quality, and efficiency. Further, the panel members will examine topics such as the effect of electronic health records on performance benchmarking and public reporting capabilities. Two JCAHO board members will lead a strategic issues work group that will consider the panel’s recommendations and spearhead JCAHO’s future directions relative to healthcare information technology.

Welcome to The Lean Plate Club, hosted by Washington Post health and nutrition writer Sally Squires. Share your tips on healthy recipes, meal plans, sugar alternatives and resisting overeating with other readers.

On Tuesdays at 1 p.m. ET, Sally, who has a master’s degree in nutrition from Columbia University, leads a lively discussion for readers looking for new ways to eat smarter and move around more throughout the day. The Lean Plate Club is dedicated to healthy living — whether you’re trying to whittle your waistline or simply maintain it.

We want to hear your tips, strategies, meal plans, successes, setbacks and more. Of course Sally will be happy to answer questions and turn others over to the Club. None of this, however, is a substitute for medical advice

Squires is a veteran health reporter for The Washington Post. She is co-author of “The Stoplight Diet for Children” and author of the upcoming “Secrets of the Lean Plate Club” (St. Martin’s Press; 2006).

Sign up for the free Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter . The Lean Plate Club column appears weekly in the Washington Post Health section and is nationally syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group .

Sally Squires’s Recent Columns

Discussion Transcripts

The Transcript Follows.

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Sally Squires: Welcome to the Lean Plate Club! We’re marching into the Lean Plate Club Holiday Challenge and into the weeks where the rubber really hits the road with lots of holiday parties, travel, family time, shopping…oh yes, and just a little bit of stress. But we’re up to it!

So how’re you doing LPCer’s on the Challenge? Tell us today. Also, the weekly e-mail newsletter should be in your in-boxes right now. More magnets went out this week. Still have more to go. But my fingers are getting in really, really good shape with all this addressing!

Perfect Fit Diet by Lisa Sanders, MD

Weight Watchers Family Power by Karen Miller-Kovach

The Flavor Point Diet by David Katz, MD

The Fat Resistance Diet by Leo Galland, MD

are the prizes today. As always, regale, inspire, share, assist and one of these could be yours. Winnes are announced at the end of each chat. In making this offering we are not endorsing any book or program, simply showing you the wide array of information as you work to maintain your weight this holiday season and perhaps reach a healthier weight next year.

A study the Dietary Supplement Education Alliance commissioned last month found that seniors could reduce $5.6 billion in health care costs over a five-year period by supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids and lutein/zeaxanthin supplements.

Last year, a similar study, both conducted by the Lewin Group, found that widespread supplementation with folic acid and calcium would deliver a $15 billion savings in health care dollars over a similar five-year period.

“With health care costs for Americans 65 and older expected to reach $16 trillion by the year 2030, the need for innovative and preventative health care solutions is clearer than ever,” stated Elliott Balbert, president of DSEA and chief executive officer of the supplement manufacturer Natrol. “We think it’s remarkable that through the increased use of four low-cost supplements, Americans can shave some $20 billion off the national health care spend in the next five years,” Balbert said–and yet obody truly listens to that information.

“[The findings] are very significant,” he said. “I’m personally deeply disappointed that the media did not pick up on this on a more grand scale,” Balbert confided. He said that he had been confident in the two weeks to three weeks before the DSEA/Lewin Group announcement that November would be a very good month for dietary supplements. But the news never did pick up the story of the significant cost savings to national health care spending associated with getting more consumers to take omega3 and lutein supplements. He also assumed more would be made of the National Institute of Health’s study of the effectiveness of glucosaminechondroitin in treating arthritis pain.

An updated version of a computerized tool can help families gather their health information, according to a Nov 15, 2005, news release from the US Department of Health and Human Services. This free, web-based toot creates a graphic printout that organizes the user’s family health information into a diagram or chart that can be given to a health care professional, allowing for a more individualized diagnosis, treatment, and prevention plan.

Many diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, can run in families, and a detailed family history can help health care professionals determine which disorders a person may be at increased risk for developing. The tool is intended to make the process of gathering enough family information to make useful health predictions easier and more efficient for both patients and health care professionals.

Users are guided through a series of screens that help them compile information about six common diseases for each of their family members. Users also can enter information about other conditions that are of particular interest to the family but are not on the List.

Common button mushrooms may help lower cholesterol and prevent chronic diseases, according to new research. Penn State food scientists, using a new assay for examining fungi, found mushrooms to be the highest source of the powerful antioxidant ergothioneine. Ergothioneine, present in many foods in smaller amounts, may help fight off chronic inflammatory diseases and, as one study suggests, may even protect cells from the destructive beta-amyloid plaques that develop in Alzheimer’s disease. White button mushrooms have four times more ergothioneine than chicken liver, once considered the highest source, and exotic mushrooms such as shiitake and oyster have as much as three times more of the antioxidant than common mushroom varieties.

Competition is coming. And it will improve health care enormously.

In the unforgiving light of changing payment systems that give consumers unprecedented power to choose, new transparencies will emerge that hand out institutions’ true prices and safety records to potential customers, and new competitors will strive to entice patients across town, across the country or around the world.

All health care organizations will soon be forced to unimagined levels of cost-effectiveness, quality and customer cosseting.

What would it take to build health care organizations and systems that were as reliable as FedEx? That were as customer-friendly as the Ritz Carlton? That had the transactional accuracy and speed of American Express?

“What would it take,” as one hospital executive asked me recently, “for a discharged hospital patient to say, ‘Now, that was a pleasure’?”

Is this possible? Absolutely.

Some people complain that such expectations are “unrealistic.” The human body is not a machine, they say. It’s not a stack of numbers. Diseases can be mysterious, people’s lives are complex and the information they give you is incomplete and sometimes false.

True.

And because people are not crystalline, it is unlikely that health care will ever approach the “Six Sigma” perfection for which many industries strive–3.4 defects out of every million opportunities.

Still, it is absurdly likely that we can do better than we are doing now. When Beth McGlynn and the Rand Corporation set out three years ago to use normal industrial process measurement techniques to build “The First National Report Card on Quality of Health Care in America,” (published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 2003, 348.), they found a “defect rate”" in U.S. health care not of 3.4 per million, or thousand, or even hundred, but of 45 per hundred.

According to this report, using accepted medical guidelines, when you enter the U.S. health care system you have a slightly better chance than a toss of the coin that you will get a correct diagnosis and a correct treatment regimen correctly applied.

Add to that defect rate the unconstrained cost inflation at nearly every stage of the health care supply chain and system transaction costs that exceed 25 percent.

The Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health have launched a nationwide educational project aimed at teaching physicians more about teens and sexual health. The Adolescent Reproductive Health Education Project is a curriculum that offers modules on adolescent-friendly health services, adolescent reproductive health data, the physician as advocate for adolescent reproductive health, cultural competency, contraception, male adolescent reproductive health, pregnancy counseling, sexuality education, and minors’ legal access to confidential health services. The program was developed from a pilot program in Georgia that provided information to physicians, educators, parents, and teens. The curriculum is available free from the Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health by calling 646-366-1890.

Welcome to The Lean Plate Club, hosted by Washington Post health and nutrition writer Sally Squires . Share your tips on healthy recipes, meal plans, sugar alternatives and resisting overeating with other readers.

On Tuesdays at 1 p.m. ET , Sally, who has a master’s degree in nutrition from Columbia University, leads a lively discussion for readers looking for new ways to eat smarter and move around more throughout the day. The Lean Plate Club is dedicated to healthy living — whether you’re trying to whittle your waistline or simply maintain it.

We want to hear your tips, strategies, meal plans, successes, setbacks and more. Of course Sally will be happy to answer questions and turn others over to the Club. None of this, however, is a substitute for medical advice.

Squires is a veteran health reporter for The Washington Post. She is co-author of “The Stoplight Diet for Children” and author of the upcoming “Secrets of the Lean Plate Club” (St. Martin’s Press; 2006).

Sign up for the free Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter . The Lean Plate Club column appears weekly in the Washington Post Health section and is nationally syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group .

Sally Squires: Welcome to the Lean Plate Club web chat. We’ve got disordered eating–not to be confused with the better known anorexia and bulimia eating disorders–up for discussion today.

Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletters went out a little later today, but should be hitting your electronic in box about now.
Today’s issue has some great links for Irish dance, workout clothes as well as a number of healthful recipes that are designed to also taste great. That’s the key, isn’t it. No one wants to eat bad tasting stuff. What joy would you get out of that?

Larry Swain, a Pittsburgh minister, is happy that he’s lost more than 50 pounds in a year and a half. He credits several factors, especially wanting very much to wear a smaller tuxedo at his daughter’s wedding. A doctor’s visit also showed his cholesterol and blood pressure were at unhealthy levels.

It didn’t hurt to hear a pointed question from a guest speaker at his Pittsburgh Baptist Association meeting. “He asked me, ‘Larry’, what are you doing to take care of yourself?’” recalled Swain, executive minister of the association.

Spurred to slim down, Swain received a $300 “wellness grant” from the American Baptist Churches USA, which has asked its clergy to take better care of themselves. Some other denominations sponsor fitness walks or runs during their conventions. Books like Body by God have been best sellers.

Two newsmaking studies on obesity released in March prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson to declare in a news conference that “our poor eating habits and lack of activity are literally killing us, and they’re killing us at record levels.” An analysis published March 10 by the Journal of the American Medical Association said deaths caused by poor diet and sedentary lifestyles rose by 33 percent from 1990 to 2000. Another study by the Band Corporation, based in Santa Monica, California, predicted that within 20 years obesity-related diseases will cancel out health strides made through medical advances.

With about 65 percent of Americans overweight, some denominations were already working to get clergy and congregants to lose the fat. For example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hired a physician as a consultant three years ago. Dr. Gwen W. Halaas, dm ELCA’s director of ministerial health and wellness, found that its ministers and lay leaders were more overweight than the average American and were more prone to he under stress, depressed and less physically active. Teaming with the Mayo Clinic, the ELCA created a Web site and newsletter focused on healthy living.

Welcome to The Lean Plate Club, hosted by Washington Post health and nutrition writer Sally Squires . Share your tips on healthy recipes, meal plans, sugar alternatives and resisting overeating with other readers.

Now that the school bell is ringing for many kids, there’s a morning time crunch at home that often leaves little time for breakfast. How do you entice your kids to the table — and make sure that they eat the food that will help boost their performance in school? And what can you eat in the morning to feel sharper on the job? During today’s discussion, Sally will share tips to keep your family well nourished as school starts and life goes from the lazy days of summer to the fast pace of fall.

On Tuesdays at 1 p.m. ET , Sally, who has a master’s degree in nutrition from Columbia University, leads a lively discussion for readers looking for new ways to eat smarter and move around more throughout the day. The Lean Plate Club is dedicated to healthy living — whether you’re trying to whittle your waistline or simply maintain it.

We want to hear your tips, strategies, meal plans, successes, setbacks and more. Of course Sally will be happy to answer questions and turn others over to the Club. None of this, however, is a substitute for medical advice.

Squires is a veteran health reporter for The Washington Post. She is co-author of “The Stoplight Diet for Children” and author of the upcoming “Secrets of the Lean Plate Club” (St. Martin’s Press; 2006).

Sign up for the free Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter . The Lean Plate Club column appears weekly in the Washington Post Health section and is nationally syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group .

As part of a strategic plan to strengthen its healthcare presence across the United States, the Syska Hennessy Group has acquired Caretsky & Associates Consulting Engineers.

Founded in 1959, Caretsky, an award-winning consulting engineering firm, has provided mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection and commissioning services from offices in New York City and Houston, Texas. Clients include prominent architectural firms, hospitals and healthcare networks, corporations, governmental agencies and academic institutions. Some of the firm’s recent major projects include Maimonides Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center, New York University Medical Center, Queens Hospital, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, and Union County College.

“Caretsky has a 46-year history of innovation and technical excellence,” commented John Magliano, CEO of Syska Hennessy Group. “Their track record within the burgeoning healthcare design market and expanding presence in the Texas region dovetail with Syska Hennessy’s strategic goals for continued growth within focused markets.”

Caretsky’s managing partner, Bill Caretsky, has been named a senior vice president at Syska Hennessy Group and will be responsible for major health care projects, as well as the growth of the Houston market. Caretsky’s partners, Jan Gasparec and Tim Krawetz, have also joined the firm. On the East Coast, Caretsky staff will become part of Syska’s New York operations under the direction of G. Venkata Ramu, the Syska Hennessy Group regional director of healthcare.

Caretsky’s Houston operations will now operate as a regional office of Syska Hennessy, under the direction of Lance McKnight, a healthcare design expert who has managed Caretsky’s Houston office since 2003.

“The merger is a natural reinforcement of Syska’s national healthcare practice,” said Bill Scrantom, Syska Hennessy’s national healthcare director. “We look forward to combining the respective strengths of our national healthcare teams, allowing us to better serve clients in Texas and throughout the Southwest.”

Healthy Heart Recipes

The evidence on the tremendous benefits of fiber in reducing chronic diseases continues to mount. Recently, French researchers found that in a study of 6,000 men and women, the higher the participants’ fiber intake, the lower their risk of being overweight or having elevated blood pressure or cholesterol levels–powerful risk factors for heart disease.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, underscore the well-established long-term rewards of consuming adequate fiber from a variety of sources. Unlike other food components such as fats, proteins or carbohydrates–which the body breaks down and absorbs–fiber isn’t digested, so it passes through your stomach and small intestine and into your colon before exiting the body. Fiber–particularly soluble fiber-can also slow the absorption of sugar, which lowers the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and helps improve blood sugar levels for those who have diabetes.

According to Dr. Denis Lairon, lead researcher of the French study, adults should consume a minimum of 25 grams per day–preferably more–to reap the significant health perks of fiber found in their study. Current recommendations advise that adults consume 20 to 35 grams of dietary fiber daily, yet the Harvard School of Public Health notes that the average American eats only 10 to 15 grams of dietary fiber a day. The French team found that each five-gram increase in dietary fiber was linked to a greater decrease in the risk factors for heart disease.
In December, the FDA ruled that companies can begin advertising how cereals, breads and other products containing whole or milled barley grain can reduce the risk of heart disease. To qualify, barley-containing foods must provide at least 0.75 grams of soluble fiber per serving.

Experts advise gradually increasing the fiber content of your diet to reduce the potential of associated intestinal gas, abdominal bloating, and cramping. Soaking beans overnight or lightly steaming vegetables helps break down gas-producing components, as do over-the-counter products, such as Beano, that contain a natural food enzyme that works with your body’s digestion to break down the complex sugars in gassy foods.

Rituals and routines involved in family meal times contribute to the mental health of children, says a new study of 75 families.

They also establish a sense of family identity and provide a positive environment for problem-solving by both parents and children. Syracuse professor Dr. Barbara Fiese distinguishes between routines and rituals; routines are directly observable behaviors, like the habit of scheduling meals at a specific time each day; rituals are acts more closely linked to emotional or symbolic aspects of family life, such as using nicknames or enjoying a traditional family recipe. Both help families connect and function on a daily basis, and bond by developing strong memories. Fiese offers these tips: set a goal of having a family meal four times a week; make one meal a week “children’s choice” night (have dessert first, eat all blue foods, etc.); keep marital spats away from the dinner table; have everyone identify one good thing and one not so good thing that happened to them during the day; and keep track of “inside jokes,” nicknames, special foods, etc., those things that make your family different from other families you know.

You call it living on the edge. We call it sloppiness. Whether you’re driving on underinflated tires, leaving the copier lid up, or tearing your beer open with your teeth, being reckless can have serious repercussions on your health.

BAD HABIT #1: Not washing tour hands before eating

That wad of bills you use to buy your lunch isn’t just dirty–it’s disgusting. Studies show that 94% of dollar bills are contaminated with some form of bacteria. “Put a finger in your mouth after touching money, and you’re depositing germs into the perfect moist environment they need to take off and make you sick” says Ajay Verma, M.D., Ph.D., a D.C.-based neuroscientist.

BAD HABIT #2: Opening a beer bottle with your teeth

Being macho may leave you maimed for life. “I’ve seen dozens of guys wind up with lacerated cheeks and gums–as well as tearing up the tendons in their hands–all because they didn’t want to look for the bottle opener,” says Tom Umemoto, M.D., an emergency-medicine physician at the Jacobi Medical Center in New York.

BAD HABIT #3: Looking into the light (without protection)

Exposing your eyes to direct bursts of light can destroy your retinas and corneas–even the ocular nerves leading from your eyes to your brain. That burst of light when you’re making copies can be just as damaging, says Terranee O’Brien, M.D., director of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins.

BAD HABIT #4: Flabby tires

Driving on underinflated tires may be just as deadly as not fastening your seat belt. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that nearly 30% of cars in the U.S. have one or more partially deflated tires. To stay safe, have your tires checked at the garage. And if you’re maintaining them yourself, use the pounds-per-square-inch (PSI) listed on the inside of your driver’s-side door–not the one printed on the tire. (Because vehicle weights vary, they may require more or less PSI from the same kind of tire.)

BAD HABIT #5: Wearing disposable contacts too long

The longer you wear your contacts, the more dirt, mucous, proteins, and minerals build up. Besides blurring your vision, that gunk also hurts–leaving your eyes dry and raw. In fact, studies show that up to 30% of people who develop ulcers and infections from their contacts think they’re following the maker’s directions correctly. Better reread those directions while you can.

WHAT EVERY PARENT NEEDS TO KNOW NOW Could a vaccine harm my baby? Does my adolescent have ADHD? These are just a few questions you may have asked yourself, your friends, your mother or your child’s doctor. What’s frustrating is that the answers often vary, depending on whom you ask. With this in mind, we offer this guide full of essential advice. Use it in good health!

asthma When you think of asthma, you might picture a panting child reaching for his inhaler during an attack. But the symptoms of and best treatment for asthma, a respiratory condition that has been on the rise in recent years, are not always so obvious. Approximately 80 percent of asthmatics also have allergies, says Juan C. Celedon, M.D., a doctor of public health and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. A recent study led by Celedon found that African-American and Puerto Rican children with asthma are more likely than Whites to be allergic to outdoor allergens such as tree and grass pollens. These common substances can trigger asthma symptoms like frequent coughing, shortness of breath and wheezing.

Pollution and inferior housing conditions–peeling paint, leaky pipes, water damage–can increase our exposure to allergens. Combine these with everyday indoor triggers such as dust and molds, and you’ve got a toxic mix that can make an asthmatic child susceptible to serious attacks.

To minimize that possibility, have your child tested for allergies, then take steps to lessen your child’s contact with allergens. Follow pollen counts and close windows during high-pollen days. Remove carpets and stuffed animals from your little one’s room; use allergyproof covers on mattresses and pillows; wash bedding frequently in hot water using mild detergents; keep rooms clean and dust-free; wash furry pets weekly or give them away. And for your kids’ sake, don’t smoke or clean with harsh chemicals in their presence.

Eyesight

+ Now may be a good time to reschedule that LASIK-surgery appointment. According to a new Wake Forest University study, guys who get LASIK in the summer are up to 50% less likely to wind up with perfect vision than those who get laser surgery in either the fall or winter. The reason? When it’s humid, your eyes store more water, making it harder for the laser that smoothes out the cornea, improving your vision, to do its job correctly.

+ Next time you need a sugar fix, drop and give yourself 20–pushups, that is. Japanese scientists report that exercise can help reduce cravings for sweets. In the recent study, researchers found that rats were much less likely to drink the sugar water they normally loved after “working out.” Even in humans, the report notes that exercise appears to cause an increase in the production of craving-busting compounds called opioid-receptor antagonists.

+ Quick quiz: Where do you think it’s better to eat your lunch at work–your desk or a bathroom stall? If you picked number two, you may be on to something. A new University of Arizona study warns that most office desks contain up to 400 times the amount of bacteria found on an average toilet seat. Dirtiest of all are telephones, with 25,000 germs per square inch. Next come the keyboard and mouse, with each keystroke and click putting you in contact with between 1,500 and 3,000 germs.

+ Another reason to be extra careful in the bedroom: In a new University of Michigan study, researchers found that guys who’ve had gonorrhea are up to 12% percent more likely to develop, prostate cancer than men who haven’t had the disease. Your best means of protection against this STD? Wearing a condom.

Obesity

* Paris and Nicole may be wafer thin, but they’re making the rest of us fat. According to a new Greek study, if you watch 21 hours of TV or more each week, you have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming clinically obese. While 21 hours may sound like a lot, it’s not. We’re talking about just three hours of TV viewing a day. (Now, what did you say you were doing last night between the hours of, oh, say 8 and 11?)

AFTER BANDAGING a stranger’s wounds, the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ famous parable instructs the innkeeper to provide whatever further care is needed–he will foot the bill. Such an action, Jesus tells us, defines what it is to be a neighbor.

This part of the parable might inform reflections on health care in the U.S., where 44 million of our neighbors lack health insurance and as a result do not receive adequate care. The uninsured miss out on routine, preventive medical care that others enjoy. They live constantly on the verge of economic disaster–one serious illness or hospital stay will send them into bankruptcy.

Americans are not so callous toward their neighbors as to let them die in the streets. At least, hospitals don’t turn away the people who show up at the emergency room. In this respect, we don’t “pass by on the other side.” But unlike the Good Samaritan, the medical system all too often does not consider what happens after people’s wounds are bandaged–after they leave the emergency room–or how they might have been prevented from getting sick. It doesn’t stick around to provide continuing care. Such a system is inefficient, inadequate and unneighborly.

Both presidential candidates have laid out plans to address the gap in health insurance. George Bush would give people tax credits for health insurance payments and allow “health savings accounts” by which people could set aside tax-free funds to use for medical care. John Kerry would increase the number of those eligible for Medicaid and direct the government to pick up the cost of catastrophic health bills, with the aim of driving down the cost of ordinary insurance premiums.

This is not the place for a detailed comparison or evaluation, but it can be noted that Bush’s plan would reduce the number of uninsured by 1.8 million, Kerry’s by 27 million. (Kerry would pay for his reforms by repealing Bush’s tax cuts for those earning over $200,000.) Given the 44 million who need help, both plans are inadequate.

That’s how many strides on her pedometer Dr. Lorraine Cole takes every day. She takes the strides because as the president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Black Women’s Health Imperative, she knows that every step toward good health–and away from the medical problems that have plagued Black women for generations–counts.

Dr. Cole’s mission is extremely personal, and her motivation is strong. Leading the nation’s only not-for-profit organization solely dedicated to improving the health status of Black women worldwide is a daunting challenge, but one that she is uniquely prepared for.

When she talks about the health of Black women, she doesn’t mince words, and she speaks straight from her heart. Historically, Black women have had the worst health on nearly every health index when compared to other groups of women. “We collectively don’t know how poor our health is,” she says. Black women’s health has remained the same over the last 20 years or gotten worse, even with continuous advances in medicine.”

She says that the poor health of Black women can be attributed to high rates of risk factors, such as obesity, drug dependence, tobacco use, depression, sexually transmitted diseases, low immunization rates, and abusive relationships. The lack of health insurance also contributes to health problems Black women face.

She knows the problem firsthand. Her mother died of breast cancer, which is one of the reasons she is so passionate about the national breast cancer campaign.

When, in 2000, Dr. Cole joined the organization, which was founded in 1981 by activist Byllye Avery, she took dramatic steps to increase membership. First, she eliminated dues, and pushed to increase membership, which stood at 6,000. Today, the organization has about 150,000 members, or about 1 percent of all adult women. Cole’s goal is 1.4 million members, which is 10 percent of the adult Black woman population. “My goal is to broaden the scope of the organization and to expand our reach,” she says. “We want to reach all Black females. Our mission here is to promote optimum health for Black women across their lifespan.”

I’M as guilty as the next Sister. Putting off what I know I need to do. Staying busy on the job and elsewhere to avoid dealing with personal issues. Procrastinating shamefully while hoping a bad situation will get better or just go away. It never does.

As we prepared this special issue on women’s health, I’m reminded of missed and cancelled doctors’ visits, the dental appointment I haven’t made, the nutritional review I’ve been meaning to undertake and my on-and-off fitness regimen. Walking 4 miles a day, taking those necessary 10,000 steps several times a week, is still a dream. I’ve just got to keep moving to make it a reality.

I can’t blame anyone but myself. I alone am responsible for the fact I’ve gained weight and my clothes fit more snugly than I care to admit.

Yet, I’m still hopeful that I’ll get myself together and do the right thing. Join me. Let’s make a vow to eat more sensibly, exercise more diligently, make and keep those doctors’ appointments.

There is no reason for so many Sisters to be overweight–make that obese. Fifty percent of us are obese, compared to 40 percent of Mexican-American women and 30 percent of White women.

So it’s not surprising that many of us are afflicted with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, arthritis, back problems–and a slew of other ailments that are worsened or caused by poor diets and obesity. Too many of us die unnecessarily because we abuse our bodies, then don’t seek treatment early enough.

Yes, good health care is elusive to many Sisters, but others are just lazy, trifling or clueless. Case in point: The new young mother who resumed smoking the day her baby was born, despite the fact that her deceased mother and grandmother both had breast cancer.

One Sister expressed frustration that her mid-20s daughter won’t get her weight under control. Mom, age 50, is health-conscious and, I must admit, looks fabulous. “I keep telling Cicely that she must lose weight now to avoid all the ills that run in the family,” the concerned mother said. “This lack of respect for one’s body is why many young women have trouble keeping men.”

HEART disease is the No. 1 killer of American women, with 1 out of 2 women losing their lives as a direct result of heart complications–complications that sometimes aren’t identified and treated in women as quickly as they are in men. According to the American Heart Association, every year about half a million women die of heart disease. And it has claimed the lives of more women than men each year since 1984. African-American women are at special risk; they are 60 percent more likely than White women to die of coronary heart disease.

Some new, experimental treatments that are being explored include inserting healthy muscle cells into the failing heart and using stem cells to grow new heart cells. There may soon be drugs available with multiple functions to improve the pumping ability of the heart, open clogged arteries, or prevent tissue damage from free radicals. Free radicals are often oxygen molecules that have lost or gained an electron. These molecules tend to become involved in chain reactions with other, less reactive molecules and can cause cellular damage. Other avenues of research include transplants from animals, and the development of an improved left ventricular assist device, which can help the functioning of the damaged heart.

Different surgical techniques are also getting attention. Advances are being made in less-invasive bypass surgery, which does not require the use of a heart/lung bypass machine. One technique, which may, for certain people, be an alternative to standard coronary artery bypass surgery, involves making a small incision on the left-hand side of the chest, and can be used to bypass one or two vessel. The procedure may be combined with balloon angioplasty.

There are also special techniques designed to immobilize the part of the heart that needs the surgery, making it easier to see and access the coronary artery to be bypassed. This type of surgery is performed through an incision that runs the length of the breastbone.

While these procedures are a long way from being commonplace, findings so far suggest that patients make a speedier recovery with fewer complications such as bleeding, pain and breathing problems. These techniques may offer an earlier return to work and other activities than conventional surgery.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll last fall, 62 percent of the respondents favored a universal, government-run medical insurance program. Such surveys reflect a widespread frustration with a health care system that is too expensive, too uncertain, and too complicated.

The answer proposed by John Kerry and John Edwards is to continue the creeping socialization of medicine that Americans have been experiencing since the 1960s. That course would mean the end of private health care in the U.S., and with it the unparalleled medical progress that has benefited patients in this country and throughout the world. It would have a disastrous impact on medical innovation and the quality of care.

The Bush administration, for its part, has failed to offer a coherent alternative to piecemeal nationalization of health care. But the increasingly successful campaigns to privatize Social Security and expand school vouchers suggest a way out: mandatory private health insurance. Under this system, in effect, purchasing health insurance would be not much different from buying car or homeowner’s insurance today. As a result, we could preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion.

Why Worry

The current system poses three main problems. First, it’s expensive. In 2003 total spending on health care was $1.7 trillion, some $5,800 for every man, woman, and child in the nation, accounting for more than 15 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (and up from 14.1 percent of GDP in 2002).

Second, despite all the spending, many Americans don’t have health insurance. A May 2003 Congressional Budget Office study estimated that 59 million Americans are uninsured at some point in the course of a year, while 21 million to 31 million are uninsured for the whole year. According to a June 2003 report from the Institute of Medicine, the U.S. loses between $65 billion and $130 billion annually as a result of poor health and early death due to lack of insurance. The uninsured impose costs on the rest of us, too: A 2003 Kaiser Commission report to the Urban Institute estimated that uninsured Americans each year receive about $34.5 billion in uncompensated health care while paying $26.4 billion out of their own pockets.

Employers, employees and self-employed individuals facing escalating health-care costs now have a groundbreaking new health savings option that, combined with a high-deductible health plan, has lower premiums than traditional plans and at the same time does much more than just pay claims.

Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, offer individuals with high-deductible health plans the opportunity to put pretax money aside, spend it tax-free on qualified health expenses, earn interest tax-free, and even save the money for health-care expenses in retirement. The employee, the employer and even family members can contribute money to the account, up to the lesser of the health plan deductible or a government-established maximum.

“Employers are looking at HSAs as a way to manage their health benefits costs, trading higher deductibles for lower premiums and tax advantages,” says Chris Hakim, general manager for small group products for Aetna in the western United States. “They can save upward of 40 percent over traditional plans with lower deductibles. Then they have the option of whether to also contribute funds toward the employee’s HSA.” For employers with fewer than 50 eligible employees, Aetna allows members to use any HSA administrator, or it can provide a referral to one. For larger employers, Aetna offers an integrated product that includes both the high-deductible health plan and the HSA.

Once money is put into an HSA, it belongs to the individual, whether he or she switches jobs, retires or later chooses a different health plan. The choice of how to spend or save the money is up to the individual–an innovation that encourages people to be more careful health-care consumers. And that, ultimately, would benefit employers and employees alike by holding down health-care expenses.

I was diagnosed with the deadly three: diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I took my doctor’s advice, went on Weight Watchers, was successful in losing weight and got my medical problems under control. Then I read an article that inspired me to explore vegetarianism. I now consider myself 98 percent vegetarian, though I’m still in a transitional stage. I have great control over my weight, blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. I am completely satisfied.

I used to have serious digestive problems, then a physician suggested I try a meatless diet. It worked, and I’ve been the better for it. There are still people who don’t understand how healthy this way of eating is. However, when I cook a delicious vegetarian meal, many can’t believe it can taste so good and yet not have meat in it.

On the Take: How Medicine’s Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health.

YOUR RELATIONSHIP with your doctor might be more complicated than you ever imagined. Financial conflicts of interest abound among physicians, researchers, insurance companies, professional societies, university medical centers, editorial boards, government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry. Jerome Kassirer, former editor of the venerated New England Journal of Medicine, is quick to point out that conflicts of interest themselves are not immoral or unethical. However, they promote a bias that can affect the type of health care we receive.

Kassirer cites example upon example of financial conflict of interest in his detailed look at the relationship between big business and the medical establishment. Although he often fails to articulate why some of the conflicts he describes are problematic, the ill effects he does cite are sobering.

Kassirer doubts most physicians’ ability to remain unbiased when they receive gilts from pharmaceutical companies. While he acknowledges that the impact of gifts depends on the type of gift given, he asserts that the moral high ground requires elimination of the temptation in the first place–physicians should not take gifts from pharmaceutical companies or be bound financially to them in any way. I was not always convinced that there are problematic conflicts of interest at the same points where he sees them, but it is impossible when reading the book not to be bothered by the extensive advertising of drugs to both physicians and patients. The quality of drugs should speak for itself, as Kassirer points out, and an independent, centralized drug registry for physician access would seem an ideal strategy for reducing or eliminating conflicts of interest.

Kassirer’s illustrations of insurance company policies are often more gripping than the examples from the pharmaceutical industry. Many readers have personally experienced conflict with insurance companies and physicians when services were denied. Physicians often lace ethical dilemmas when they must decide whether to confront insurance companies about limits to treatment or to restrict the care options they offer to their patients.

Starting this year, tax money from California’s wealthiest citizens will be pumped into a fund designated to expand care for the state’s mentally ill,

Proposition 63, also known as the Mental Health Services Act, was passed last November by 53 percent of voters. The novel plan adds an additional 1 percent tax on California millionaires, affecting the pocketbooks of an estimated 30,000 people. The new legislation will provide up to $1 billion in revenue for mental health services within the next few years.

So far, there are no definite plans for how to spend the money. The state government is prohibited from slashing existing mental health funding in response to the new influx of cash. The money will be doled out to counties to expand services and develop innovative programs for mentally ill children, adults and seniors, focusing on prevention and early intervention. One new proposal aims to tackle chronic homelessness among the mentally ill in San Francisco.

The legislation follows on the heels of California’s pioneering Stem Cell Initiative, another publicly funded program that allocates $3 billion for stem cell research.

Women who enjoy a glass of wine daily–or a bottle of beer or a mixed drink–are more likely to remain mentally alert in old age than teetotalers, according to a Harvard Medical School study of 12,000 women aged 70-81. “Low levels of alcohol appear to have cognitive benefits,” says Francine Grodstein, PhD, an associate professor of medicine whose research appears in the January 20, 2005 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The study, which indicates that women who drink daily run a 20 percent lower risk of dementia, is among the first to show that moderate consumption of alcohol is not only good for the heart but also for the mind–and for the same reason: Alcohol appears to improve blood flow.

Shopping for a graduation gift? At a time when fees for a one-day hospital stay can run $3,000, health insurance may be your best bet. Nearly half of high school grads who don’t go on to college and 38 percent of college grads are uninsured at some point during their first year after graduation, according to a 2004 report from The Commonwealth Fund, a New York City-based private foundation supporting independent health research.

“Full-time students can usually get coverage under their parents’ employer policies,” explains Sara Collins, senior program officer at The Commonwealth Fund. “But when young adults leave school, they may be unemployed for a period [of time] or find temporary jobs that don’t come with benefits.”

Fortunately, there are options parents of graduating students can pursue, including:

* DEPENDENT COVERAGE: Company policies or state mandates enable some graduates to extend coverage under their parents’ policies by picking up the premium cost–provided they apply within 60 days of graduation.

* UNIVERSITY HEALTH PLANS: While student plans typically expire a month or two after college graduation, students can often extend policies for several months to a year by contacting their school’s health administrator within 30 days of graduation.

* INDIVIDUAL STUDENT POLICIES: Students who purchase student health policies offered by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Assurant Health, and Chickering Group can typically stay on the plans until age 30.

In the debate over health-care reform in this country, it seems that one vitally important question is too often left out of the equation: Why should we expect the government to be responsible for providing medical care in the first place?

Food, housing, and clothing are no less basic to our daily lives, and yet citizens don’t want government bureaucrats to tell us what kind of cereal we can buy or how much it will cost. When it comes to health care, however, the assumption that government needs to be involved ignores the virtual stranglehold the government already exerts on health-care prices in this country and the failure of that system.

Despite the presence of private insurers in our health-care marketplace, it is the government that to a great extent controls the price of health care. It is bureaucrats who set the reimbursement rates that doctors and health-care providers use to set their pricing, rather than relying on the actual costs and profit margins for their services. The most overt example is in Medicare-covered health services, where bureaucrats set “rates of reimbursement.” Some multiple of these Medicare-determined rates also serves as the basis for a significant percentage of payments by private insurers. And it is the federal control of the health-care dollar that has led to increased costs, delays in patient care, and frustrations for both doctors and patients.

Christopher Conover of Duke University has estimated the cost of excessive regulation in the health-care market to exceed $339 billion, with a net cost of $169 billion-more than U.S. consumers spend every year on gasoline and oil. His figures show that the cost of the medical legal system alone, including litigation costs, court expenses, and defensive medicine, exceeds $80 billion.

Payer National Health Insurance Around the World, by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick, Lanham, Md. : Rowan & Littlefield, 263 pages, $22.95Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer, by Sally C. Pipes, San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 219 pages, $14.95

Science writer Gregg Easterbrook once waxed perplexed over Americans’ anger with managed-care Health Maintenance Organizations. “It’s one thing for the public to loathe an industry whose performance is declining” he mused, “but the health care business is losing stature at a time when its performance is improving. By almost all measures, U.S. public health gets better every year. Americans are living longer than ever before, and heart disease, stroke, hypertension, AIDS, and most forms of cancer are steadily declining.”

Easterbrook suffered from a category error that infects many other eggheads contemplating the hideous tangles of our highly regulated health care system: the conflation of health care with health. Health care becomes vital only for people who aren’t healthy. Contemplate Easterbrook’s list of things that doctors and hospitals don’t prevent but only try (often ineffectually) to cope with after they strike. Generally speaking, the more health care you consume, the less healthy you are. The biggest consumers of health care tend to be people in their dying days, tenaciously and heroically holding on to life, but by no normal standards “healthy.”

As they try to find affordable health coverage for their employees, some business owners are falling victim to fraud. The U.S. General Accounting Office reports that the number of fake health insurance policies being sold to individuals and small businesses is on the rise. In response, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has launched a nationwide awareness campaign called “Fight Fake Insurance: Stop. Call. Confirm.”

“Before you sign a contract or write a check for any type of insurance or medical discount product, call your state insurance department and confirm that the company is legitimate and licensed to do business in your state,” advises Sandy Praeger, insurance commissioner for Kansas, and NAIC’s secretary-treasurer. Signs of fake health insurance include aggressive marketing and high-pressure sales tactics, premiums 15 percent or more under the average price for comparable insurance, and few coverage limitations. The rise in popularity of medical discount cards is also presenting scammers with more opportunities, so research these as you would insurance.

If you suspect you’ve bought a fake policy, immediately report it to your state insurance department. They can begin action against the entity that sold it to you, try to recoup what you paid, and direct you to a legitimate source for coverage.

Sure, you’re vigilant about getting your Pap smear, exercising regularly and avoiding cigarettes and secondhand smoke. You floss, take the pill every day to protect against unwanted pregnancy and see the dermatologist when a mole looks even slightly suspicious. But are you really doing everything you can to protect your health–even your life? You may be surprised to learn about some common but frequently overlooked behaviors that are among the biggest threats to a young woman’s well-being. Read on to find out the shocking reality.

threat not getting enough z’s

Where women go wrong The average woman gets only six hours and 41 minutes of sleep on weeknights, according to a nationwide survey by the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C. That’s up to 139 minutes shy of the seven to nine hours most of us need, says Helene Emsellem, M.D., director of the Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, Md. Young women tend to stay out later and drink more, both of which can interfere with a good night’s rest. Plus, hormonal shifts during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy can throw sleep patterns out of whack.

The payback Shortchange yourself on sleep and you’ll have a hard time coping with the demands of the following day. Concentration and memory are compromised, and efficiency and work performance often suffer.

As for your physical health, sleep deprivation has been linked with high blood pressure, heart trouble, diabetes, impaired immunity and on-the-job and vehicle accidents. In fact, drowsy driving accounts for more than 100,000 crashes a year, leading to 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Sleep may even have something to do with those stubborn extra pounds–recent studies suggest adequate rest may help counteract weight gain by controlling levels of hormones involved in appetite.

Beat the odds Think of sleep as an important part of a healthy lifestyle (and a way to keep your weight in check!) rather than a luxury you can afford only when everything else on your to-do list is checked off. Emsellem recommends embarking on a six-week period of sufficient sleep; once you see how much better you feel, you’ll be more inclined to make sleep a priority.

Whether you like to chug beer at parties or prefer a glass of wine with dinner makes a big difference when it comes to your health, three recent studies confirm. Women with a lifetime of heavy drinking (four or more drinks on days when they had alcohol) are 1.6 times more likely to develop “metabolic syndrome”–a cluster of symptoms, including high blood fats, a fatty abdomen and abnormal fasting glucose levels, that is linked with heart disease and diabetes–than women who have one