Category Archives: Health

Ways to Stay Connected (And Check On Seniors) While Social Distancing

(NewsUSA) – You know we’re all going a tad stir-crazy when a parody of the title song from Broadway’s “Oklahoma!” (“Oh, Corona!”) gets almost 1.7 million views on YouTube. But it’s far worse for seniors: Not only can’t even their kids and grandkids visit them, but there’s the extra stress that comes with the nagging suspicion that they’ll be advised to remain on lockdown long after younger people begin trickling back to work.

Whenever that is.

In fact, the AARP Foundation has even come up with this dire comparison: Prolonged social isolation, for those aged 50 and older, “is the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” Fortuitously, some of the niftiest technology offers solutions both to keep us connected and protect against some of the miscreants taking advantage of the situation.

* Health Checks. If you are worried that all the anxiety is harming your loved ones’ overall well-being, the machine-learning algorithms that analyze activity data as part of Alarm.com’s Wellness solution can provide you with the very details you’ve suddenly found yourself obsessing about.

Did they open their medicine cabinet when they should to take their prescription? Have their sleeping, eating, and (yes) bathroom patterns changed? Are they up and about during the day?

All that and more is done by connecting their home to yours via smart-home technology, with real-time smartphone alerts to let you know if something’s amiss. “You don’t even know it’s there, but it’s here to protect you and let someone know if something does go wrong,” said Margarete Pullen of Dallas, Texas, whose son had the system installed by an authorized service provider for her and her husband along with a Wellcam video camera with two-way voice capability.

* Movie meet-ups. Most of us are just trying to find novel ways to cope with a situation that Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and physician at Yale University, told Science magazine “calls on us to suppress our profoundly human and evolutionary hard-wired impulses for connection.”

Google’s new Netflix Party extension lets friends and family watch – and video chat their way through – a movie together on their computers. You’ll need a NetFlix subscription, but then you’re free to debate whether all the hype about Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” say, was justified. Plus, unlike in real theatres, not many people (if any) are physically there to complain if you’re making too much noise eating popcorn.

* Apps! Apps! Apps! No NetFlix subscription? With apps like FaceTime, Skype, Houseparty and Zoom comes more proof that social distancing needn’t mean social disconnecting. Mass virtual dinner parties. Mass virtual “happy hours.” Mass virtual gym classes. They’ve all become quite the rage, with one Vermont couple in their eighties even touchingly using Apple’s FaceTime to see and talk to each other after the husband had to be put in a nursing home that bars visitors during the pandemic.

And, oh, you say you want to be a hero in your neighborhood? Use an app like Instagram to share a video of someone that Alarm.com’s doorbell cameras caught swiping one of the many, many packages you’ve been having delivered.

Coronavirus: Time to Rethink the Handshake

handshake. A light kiss on the cheek. Rubbing noses. All are ways people greet each other in the workplace and elsewhere, depending on culture and country. But with communicable diseases such as the novel coronavirus, the flu and colds circulating, it’s a good idea to shake off such practices.

Since December, when the coronavirus was identified in China, there have been 90,893 reported cases around the world and 3,110 deaths—including 11 deaths in the U.S. Although 48 countries outside of China have reported cases, 80 percent of the latest cases are from three countries—Korea, Iran and Italy—the director-general of the World Health Organization said March 3.

People everywhere are being urged to rethink how they greet each other to contain the spread of the virus, also known as COVID-19.

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The age you feel means more than your actual birthdate

Imagine, for a moment, that you had no birth certificate and your age was simply based on the way you feel inside. How old would you say you are?

Like your height or shoe size, the number of years that have passed since you first entered the world is an unchangeable fact. But everyday experience suggests that we often don’t experience ageing the same way, with many people feeling older or younger than they really are.

Scientists are increasingly interested in this quality. They are finding that your ‘subjective age’ may be essential for understanding the reasons that some people appear to flourish as they age – while others fade. “The extent to which older adults feel much younger than they are may determine important daily or life decisions for what they will do next,” says Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia.

Read the whole article : http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180712-the-age-you-feel-means-more-than-your-actual-birthdate

Top Tips For Good Nutrition This Thanksgiving

To many, good nutrition and thanksgiving dinner seem to cancel each other out. However it should be possible and even easy to make a nutritious meal that is a pleasure to share with friends and family. Here are a few tips to help you make your holiday meals healthy ones too.

Prepare a wide variety of foods. Traditional thanksgiving stories tell us of meals that contained wide varieties of dishes reflecting the backgrounds of the many people who came together for these meals and to give thanks. The nutritional benefit of eating from a wide variety of foods is you gain a wider variety of nutrients. Also, you are less likely to overload on a single type of food. If you don’t have time to prepare a large number of dishes, many grocery stores sell prepared dishes that you can add to the variety of dishes you’re cooking yourself. Gourmet grocery stores often prepare these dishes on site.

Try some simple recipes. Instead of making the obligatory green bean casserole with mushroom soup and fried onions, how about a simple green bean dish with a dash of sea salt? Substitute yams, cooked in butter with marshmallows and brown sugar, with a more simple preparation of yams. You may be surprised at how much people enjoy the taste of the original ingredients.

Be careful of portion sizes. An ideal meal is derived from all of the food groups and should include a wide variety of individual foods. Instead of loading up your plate with mashed potatoes, start with smaller portions of everything that has been prepared. If you would like a second helping, follow the same procedure. By eating from a wider variety of foods you will be providing your body with a more complex array of nutrients and you’ll be able to enjoy the many flavors as well.

Pace yourself. Unless you’re on call for surgery, you probably have a little time. Instead of jumping right into your second helping, consider a short intermission and burn some calories by helping out with the dishes. By eating more slowly, your body will give you signals when you are full. If there are leftovers you can always eat them later.

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for all of the things that we have. It is a time for us to remember and reflect on the things that are important in our lives that we so often take for granted. The sharing of a meal with friends and family is a wonderful event and is cherished by nearly all cultures. So take pleasure in the eating and the sharing of food but also consider the nourishment that food gives you and be thankful and give honor to the abundance which you have to share.

About the author

Dave Saunders is a professional lecturer, and certified nutritional educator. This article can be found, with an audio edition, at http://www.glycoboy.com/nutrition-articles/111/top-tips-for-good-nutrition-this-thanksgiving/

13 Health Benefits of Coffee, Based on Science

Coffee Lovers, good news for you: Coffee is actually very healthy! It is loaded with antioxidants and beneficial nutrients that can improve your health, and studies show that coffee drinkers have a much lower risk of several serious diseases.

Here are the top 13 evidence-based health benefits of coffee, that have been confirmed in actual human studies.

1. Coffee Can Improve Energy Levels and Make You Smarter

Coffee can help people feel less tired and increase energy levels. This is because it contains a stimulant called caffeine, which is actually the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world.

After you drink coffee, the caffeine is absorbed into the bloodstream. From there, it travels into the brain. In the brain, caffeine blocks an inhibitory neurotransmitter called Adenosine.

When that happens, the amount of other neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and dopamine actually increases, leading to enhanced firing of neurons.

Many controlled trials in humans show that coffee improves various aspects of brain function. This includes memory, mood, vigilance, energy levels, reaction times and general cognitive function.

Bottom Line: Caffeine blocks an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, which leads to a stimulant effect. This improves energy levels, mood and various aspects of brain function.

2. Coffee Can Help You Burn Fat

Did you know that caffeine is found in almost every commercial fat burning supplement? There’s a good reason for that… caffeine is one of the very few natural substances that have actually been proven to aid fat burning.

Several studies show that caffeine can boost the metabolic rate by 3-11 percent.

Other studies show that caffeine can specifically increase the burning of fat, by as much as 10 percent in obese individuals and 29 percent in lean people. However, it is possible that these effects will diminish in long-term coffee drinkers.

Bottom Line: Several studies show that caffeine can increase fat burning in the body and boost the metabolic rate.

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Tip For Healthy Eating

Healthy eating is a way of balancing the food you eat to
keep your body in great health.
With healthy eating, you’ll have energy all day, get the vitamins
and minerals you need, stay strong for activities you enjoy,
and maintain a healthy weight.
Below, you’ll find tips designed to help you with healthy eating.

Read more… →

Do You Have dimples in Your Back? Well, Congrats!

Perhaps you’re one of the few individuals that have small holes at your lower back. Have you wondered what those are? Not all people have these, so consider yourself special if you have one!

Curious to find out what they mean? Well you’ve come to the right place! Those dimples located at your lower back are actually called Venus holes or dimples. While for men, they are called Apollo holes. The name comes from the Greek gods and goddesses, signifying beauty and great physical appearance.

People who have these body characteristics tend to be more attractive to other people’s eyes in which experts believe they possess the allure and charm of the gods mentioned above.
Interestingly enough, it also makes you more sexier when people see your lower back having these prominent dimples! They are located above the Posterior Superior Iliac Spine. You’re very lucky and special if you have this prominent feature in your back, as most people do not have these.

There is a possibility that some individuals may possess this interesting characteristic by trying different workouts that build the muscles at the lower back to show the dimples and make them appear.

So take a look at the mirror and see if you have these dimples in your lower back! Do you have Venus or Apollo holes in your body?

 

 

 

Adult Acne

You breezed through your teenage years with a zit or two and never thought about it. Now you look into the mirror in horror. What happened? How is it possible to develop acne in your mid 30’s, isn’t this supposed to happen to teenagers? You find yourself embarrassed and confused.

The unfair fact is that adult acne will affect 25% of men and 50% of women in their adult lives. We know that teenage acne is due to hormonal changes which causes an increase in oil production. The causes of adult acne aren’t as clear. There isn’t just one cause. Acne in adult women can be linked to cosmetic use and some hair products. It can be brought on by the hormonal fluctuations associated with pregnancy. Certain types of prescription medications can cause adult acne. Acne vulgaris which is the type of acne that affects adults generally doesn’t happen after the age of 40. Unlike teenage acne that starts on the forehead and cheek area adult acne tends to show more on your chin, jaw and neck area.

The treatment you receive for your acne will be based on the severity of the acne outbreak. Mild acne outbreaks can be treated with topical and over the counter products that contain benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid or glycolic acid, the same creams that teenagers use. If you acne is more severe your dermatologist may prescribe oral antibiotics. These antibiotics treat the bacteria causes of acne.

Micro dermabrasion and acid peels can be used to help diminish any scarring that might occur with adult acne.