Family Meals Play Important Role In Children’s Health

 

family-mealSolitary dining has become more common as busy families are finding it more challenging to carve out time for family meals, particularly when all adult family members work outside of the home.

Traditionally, family meals have represented much more than just communal eating—they’re a time for good conversation and genuine family bonding…

08 May 2015

What Is Squash Good For?

 

squash-nutrition-factsWith names like buttercup, banana, turban, Hubbard, along with various crook-necked and green and white striped varieties, squash is technically a fruit, belonging to the pumpkin family.

Squash varieties include butternut (pale orange and keyhole-shaped), acorn (green and squat), Hubbard (green and taller with tiny surface bumps), delicata (pale orange with thin, green horizontal stripes). When selecting…

07 May 2015

3 Reasons You Should Eat More Spicy Food

 

chili-peppersI love spicy foods and typically enjoy 1-2 habanero peppers a day. If you like spicy food, there’s good reason to indulge your cravings, as the spicy chemical in peppers – capsaicin – and other compounds in spicy food can improve your health.

Chili peppers, one of the main sources of capsaicin, are regarded as a staple in Central America, Asia, and India, but even in the US there are many devotees to spicy food whose mantra is “the spicier the better.”…

07 May 2015

Essential Oils Support Physical and Emotional Well-Being

 
Aging

Aging

Your sense of smell is your most primal sense and exerts surprising influence over your thoughts, emotions, moods, memories, and behaviors. Scents are experienced long before words.

This is why it’s nearly impossible to describe them with language. Olfaction is different from your other senses, processed through different pathways in your brain…

07 May 2015

Do You Really Need to Take Testosterone?

 

testosteroneTestosterone is an androgenic sex hormone produced by the testicles (and in smaller amounts in women’s ovaries) that is typically associated with “manhood.” Beginning around age 30, a man’s testosterone levels begin to decline, and continue to do so as the years go on.

A wide range of chemical exposures, including prescription drugs like statins, can also have an adverse effect on your testosterone production…

07 May 2015

Synthetic Fabrics Host More Stench-Producing Bacteria

 

polyester-shirtsSynthetic polyester workout wear has become popular because it’s lightweight and fast-drying. But there‘s a downside to opting for synthetics over cotton, especially for those working out around you…

Certain fabrics will make you stinkier than others, although it’s not the fabric itself that’s to blame. It turns out that Micrococcus bacteria prefer the open-air lattice of synthetic fibers over cotton, according to new research by Chris Callewaert (aka “Dr. Armpit”) and colleagues…

07 May 2015

What Are Blueberries Good For?

 

blueberries-nutrition-facts (1)Blueberries are distinctive in so many ways. Not only are they the only blue food, but there are also more blueberry species native to North America – the main ones being highbush, lowbush, and rabbiteye – than any other continent.

They’ve been abundant on the North American continent since the dawn of time, and were a staple in the Native American diet. When the first colonists arrived, they were shown how to gather blueberries, dry them in the sun, store them for winter, and perpetuate their growth.

06 May 2015

Fantastical World of Hormones

 

HormonesThe Fantastical World of Hormones is a compelling new film exploring the history and discovery of hormones, including enormous advances in this area of medical science that have occurred over the past 10 years.

Recent discoveries about how the endocrine system works have transformed our understanding of the critical roles hormones play in health and disease…

06 May 2015

America’s Most Sleep-Deprived Cities

 

sleep-deprived-cityEarlier this year, the Labor Statistics Bureau released data that stated Americans get an average of nearly nine hours of sleep per night.1 This seems high, considering most other surveys suggest Americans are largely sleep deprived.

And if the data relied on Americans’ notoriously inaccurate self-reporting their sleep time each night, it is seriously flawed. Most people calculate their sleep time by counting…

06 May 2015

The Exercise Mistake Proven to Damage Your Heart

 

long-distance-runner-3-22Not long ago, researchers studied the heart health of a group of very fit older athletes — men who had been part of a national or Olympic team in distance running or rowing, and runners who had completed at least a hundred marathons. The results were unsettling — half of these lifelong athletes showed evidence of heart muscle scarring…

06 May 2015