AHEAD OF THE CURVE AT MIDLIFE » Healthy Living

Soft Drinks and Midlife Bones Are Not a Good Mix

Kathleen Daniel — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:46:21 +0000

Of the many things I can thank my mother for is that she never let her girls develop a taste for (read: addiction to) soft drinks. Back in the 60s when Coca Cola began coming out in 6 oz bottles, two was our weekly limit. Raised on a large farm in northern Hungary, she didn’t need a health department to tell her that sodas aren’t real food, low in nutrients and high in empty calories. Or, as a naturally thrifty immigrant, that they were a colossal waste of food dollars – especially when the best thirst quencher was as close as the kitchen sink. (Note: only filtered water please!) I like to think she would be pleased today to see this poster of soda being poured from a plastic bottle into a tumbler … and transformed into globby, yellow-orange human fat on the way – especially if it’s a first strike in stigmatizing soda as the next cigarettes. While the New York Health Department wants to show how easy it is for 16 tbsp sugar per 20 oz to sneak up into obesity, midlife women need to be aware of the tomes of evidence linking soft drink consumption to osteoporosis and bone fractures. And for you ladies thinking you are safe with diet drinks – this is not about the sugar. .

Read more from Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D., authors of the Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine:

“Many general dietary factors have been suggested as a cause of osteoporosis, including: low calcium-high phosphorus intake, high-protein diet, high-acid-ash diet, high salt intake, and trace mineral deficiencies. It appears that increased soft drink consumption is a major factor that contributes to osteoporosis. A deficiency of vitamin K leads to impaired mineralization of bone. Boron deficiency may contribute greatly to osteoporosis as well as to menopausal symptoms.”

“Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphate content of soft drinks like Coca -Cola and Pepsi is very high, and they contain virtually no calcium.”

“The United States ranks first among countries in soft drink consumption. The per-capita consumption of soft drinks is in excess of 150 quarts per year, or about three quarts per week.”

And this is why I thank my mom: “Soft drink consumption in children poses a significant risk factor for impaired calcification of growing bones.”

Soft Drinks: America’s Other Drinking Problem

Take New Zero Calorie Sweetener with a Grain of Salt

Women Doing It for Themselves: 8 Steps to Building Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality

Build Strong Bones Prevent Osteoporosis: New Program Begins April 22

Kathleen Daniel — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:38:27 +0000

Women Doing It for Themselves: 8 Steps to Building Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality

Master the essentials and become your own most powerful ally in safeguarding and building your bone vitality for life

A drug-free and natural way to reverse or prevent osteoporosis and osteopenia without side effects

If you are one of the millions of women diagnosed every year with low bone mass – osteoporosis or osteopenia – please know that losing some bone mass with age is normal. However – while you want to be informed and proactive in protecting your bone health – you don’t have to rely on risky drugs for the rest of your life. They are not your only option. You are not powerless, but – like many women – you may not have all the facts about what you can do to take control of your health. Find out more …

A Role for Yoga in Heart Disease, Breast Cancer Recovery and Diseases of Aging

Kathleen Daniel — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:32:27 +0000

“We know that inflammation plays a major role in many diseases …and yoga appears to be a simple and enjoyable way to add an intervention that might reduce risks for developing heart disease, diabetes and other age-related diseases … [it's] an easy thing people can do to help reduce their risks of illness.” This was the conclusion of the lead author of a study reported in the Journal Psychosomatic Medicine showing that women who routinely practiced yoga had lower amounts of the cytokine interleukin-6in their blood, an important indicator of the body’s inflammatory response implicated in heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, arthritis and a host of other age-related debilitating diseases. In addition to having lower levels of inflammation before they were stressed, expert practitioners in the study demonstrated lower inflammatory responses to real-time stress.

In a follow up study, also funded in part by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, women “undertaking a ten week program of 75 minute Restorative Yoga classes gained positive differences in aspects of mental health such as depression, positive emotions, and spirituality (feeling calm/peaceful) compared to the control group.” The study, published Psycho-Oncology, focused on physical activity, and showed that women had a 50% reduction in depression and a 12% increase in feelings of peace and meaning after the yoga.

Overlooked in the Calcium Equation in Osteoporosis: Magnesium

Kathleen Daniel — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:56:52 +0000

A reminder from Christiane Northrup, M.D., in our continuing series on bone health and preventing osteoporosis: Healthy bones need magnesium as much as they need calcium and vitamin D. Without enough magnesium, too much calcium gets inside cells and can cause cramping and constriction. While calcium is emphasized to mineralize bones, magnesium controls the entry of calcium into every cell, and today’s diets contain about 10 times more calcium than magnesium. And yet, living without enough magnesium, she says, is like “trying to operate a machine with the power off. And like a machine, it’s likely to malfunction.” Constriction from magnesium deficiency is also associated with conditions ranging from anxiety and panic attacks, to asthma, constipation, heart disease, hypertension, nerve problems, and general aches and pains. Dr. Northrup suggests it’s easy to become magnesium deficient,, as food processing, farming practices, and many medications – including antacids, which many women take as a source of calcium – can interfere with the body’s ability to use magnesium.

She recommends supplementing with calcium and magnesium in a 1:1 ratio as optimal, though a 2:1 ratio (i.e., 800 mg of calcium to 400 mg of magnesium) of magnesium oxide or chloride, or chelated magnesium, is adequate.

She offers additional recommendations to ensure particularly active or stressed women get enough magnesium, including taking it in divided doses, like calcium, throughout the day, and to add Epsom salts to your baths, which is essentially magnesium sulfate.

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Women Doing It for Themselves: 8 Steps to Building Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality

Next program begins April 20, 2010

While there is plenty of information on bone health available, finding help that’s specific to your lifestyle and your body’s own metabolic needs – and putting those recommendations into practice – isn’t always that simple.

If you are one of the millions of women diagnosed every year with low bone mass – osteoporosis or osteopenia – please know that you don’t have to rely on risky drugs for the rest of your life. They are not your only option. Join veteran nutrition educator, Dr. Judith Valentine and a support group of other women doing it for themselves to take charge of your bone health.

With a step by step program of assessments and action steps, you don’t have to fear osteoporosis – or the recommended drug therapies to treat it. This unique bone building program helps you to cut to the chase in choosing foods and supplements that meet your own body’s individual metabolic needs – and your lifestyle. Find out more.

The Heart in the Brain: Shift Your Perceptions, Manage Your Emotions and Reduce Stress to Prevent Heart Disease

Kathleen Daniel — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:49:09 +0000

Many wisdom traditions around the world speak of the heart as harboring its own Intelligence. Though I suspect many of us intuited a spark of truth in it, given the image of the mechanical pump we grew up with, it’s a notion we’ve tended to view metaphorically. Well, we were right! Over the last two decades it’s become clear that the heart is immensely more complicated – in constant communication with, and regulating the functions of the body and brain. What’s revolutionizing our view is a better understanding the role of emotions as reflected in our heart rhythms. Called “Heart Rate Variability (HRV), these rhythms respond instantly to stress – especially the stress of unmanaged emotions. A precursor to hormonal cascade of the ‘fight or flight’ response, HRV monitoring is quickly becoming a routine screening tool to predict many forms of heart disease. Here’s what we’ve learned – as well as a device that helps promote mindfulness, tapping into your heart intelligence to reduce stress and stabilize your heart rhythms.

* With its own nervous system, the heart can sense, learn, remember and make functional decisions independent of the brain.
* The heart communicates electromagnetically, so that an EKG signal can be picked up anywhere on the body, and the field permeates around us, radiating outward up to several feet, affecting the fields of those around us.
* Reclassified as an endocrine gland, the heart sends messages to the brain and the rest of the body through hormones that influences our emotional responses in and play a decisive and a pivotal role in how we feel and think, and especially in how we respond to stress.

Remember the definition of stress: It’s a reaction to a perceived threat, coupled with the perception that we have no control. It’s all perception.

Measuring How Emotions Affect Physiology

When we feel relaxed and emotionally balanced – ‘at home’ – heart rhythm patterns, measured electrically, show up as coherent. Neural information sent to the brain heightens mental clarity, improves decision-making ability, and can increase creativity. Positive emotions like appreciation, awe, gratitude, joy, curiosity, and love increase heart coherence.

Negative emotions like anger, anxiety, worry, and fear lead to disordered and incoherent patterns. These incoherent patterns correspond to the increased cortisol levels associated with stress response, putting us at increased risk for heart disease, loss of bone mass, fat buildup in arteries and redistribution of fat to the waist and hips. What’s new – and amazing – is the ability to measure the influence of emotions – mediated by the heart and recorded in our heart rate variability.

The Power of Emotion

Emotions give meaning to our lives, and, for better or worse, drive many of our decisions and actions. They come and go, faster than the speed of thought, showing up in brain activity before we even have time to think. We evaluate everything emotionally as we perceive it and think about it afterward.

Unfortunately we’re often at the mercy of our emotions, reacting to events rather than consciously choosing how to respond. Fortunately, you can decide to do something about it. You can learn to shift your perception.

Consciously shifting your perception shifts your physiology into a state of heart coherence – balancing your heart rhythms, nervous and electrical systems, and hormone levels – and allows you to consciously choose non-reactive responses, that can, not coincidentally – increase everyone’s coherence.

These two powerful tools move you from chaos to coherence. Use them when you need to slow down and reframe a situation causing you stress. Developed by the Institute of Heart Math, leading researchers in the field, the freeze-frame technique was studied in police using it to restore their heart rhythms after shooting incidents. Using the technique immediately after the shooting, they restored their heart rhythms within minutes, rather than the two hours it otherwise took when they took no deliberate action.

Freeze-Frame Technique

Perform the freeze-frame on-the-spot to shift your perception and access a more intuitive guidance when under stress. Beyond positive thinking, it’s a heartfelt shift in how you view a situation, a person or yourself.

1. Shift your attention out of your head, and focus on the area around your heart. Keep your attention there for at least ten seconds. Breathe normally.
2. Recall a positive time in your life or a positive feeling, and put yourself back into it so that you re-experience it. Don’t simply visualize it, but rather feel it fully by engaging all your senses.
3. Ask a question from the heart: “What can I do in this situation to make it different?” or “What can I do to minimize stress?”
4. Listen to the response of your heart.

You’ll likely feel calmer, confirm something you already know, or experience a shift in perspective, seeing the moment with more balance and perhaps a creative insight to resolve it. You may not be able to control an event but you can control your perception of it.

em Wave Desktop

Heart rhythm coherence is akin to the body/mind’s operating system. Learning what chaos and coherence feels like, and how to reestablish coherence, is a skill you can learn.

The emWave Desktop heart coherence training program also developed by the Institute of Heart Math, teaches you how to recognize – and recreate – feelings of coherence. When you become conscious of what an in-sync, balanced state of heart, mind and emotions feels like, you can recreate it instantly. The pulse sensor plugs into your USB port and displays your heart rhythms in real time while you play interactive games. The emWave Personal Stress Reliever is a portable device you can slip into your purse and take with you anywhere.

People use the portable device to “become coherent” and calm before a meeting and perform at their best, or before a family encounter they know will push hot buttons.

You’ll reduce stress and anxiety, build emotional resilience, increase your energy and focus, be more relaxed, improve your sleep and your long term ability to manage stress. You can even us it to break reactive habits of emotional eating, to heighten your creativity, to experience positive emotion at will, and facilitate access to meditation and prayer states.

More on Positive Emotions Plus a Tool to Increase Happiness and Benefit Your Heart

Kathleen Daniel — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:24:54 +0000

In light of just having shared the benefits of happiness and positive emotions on heart disease, we’ll share a resource and reprint an excerpt from our monthly newsletter about research on positivity. (Commercial pause: sign up to stay current on cutting edge research on body, mind, emotion and spirit health and vitality.) How negative are you, really? Can you name ten positive emotions you’ve experienced today? Can you name ten positive emotions? In this interview ground-breaking researcher Barbara Frederickson, Ph.D suggests that a 3 to 1 ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions, experienced on a regular basis, is the tipping point beyond which you naturally become more resilient to adversity and neutralize the damaging effects of negative emotions, like anger or scorn. You’re able to see new possibilities, bounce back from setbacks, connect with others and achieve what you want with less effort. Use the Positivity tool regularly to track your positivity ratio. To understand its basis in chaos theory, read her book, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive.

The Benefits of Happiness and Positive Emotions in Reducing Risks of Heart Disease

Kathleen Daniel — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:01:03 +0000

In a ten year study seeking to understand more attitudes affect our health, a team of researchers from Columbia University has found that, just as negative emotions such as anger, depression, and hostility are risk factors for heart attack and stroke, feelings of happiness seems to protect the heart. Specifically, the study examined the impact of positive personality traits like happiness, contentment, and enthusiasm on heart disease risk. While previous studies show that negative emotions are predictive of heart disease, researchers wanted to find out if positive affect is protective. They found that the happiest people were 22% less likely to develop heart disease than people in the middle of the scale, that those with the most negative emotions had the highest risk for heart disease, and people who scored highest for happiness had the lowest risk. The protective effective of happiness persisted even when naturally happy people were experiencing transient depressive symptoms.

While they are not suggesting this proves happiness protects the heart, they do suggest the belief that people are hardwired to be naturally happy or not has been replaced in recent years by studies in the science of happiness, or the field of positive psychology. There are numerous strategies that can help naturally negative people become happier, including

* A daily schedule of at least 15 – 20 minutes doing something enjoyable
* Express gratitude on a regular basis.
* Practice being optimistic.
* Engage in frequent acts of kindness.
* Visualize one’s best self.
* Savor joyful events.
* Practicing forgiveness.
* Regular exercise, sex and sleep

Long Periods of Sitting Is Harmful for Your Health – Even If You Work Out

Kathleen Daniel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:54:20 +0000

What fresh hell is this? It seems that the ante has been upped for couch potatoes, people who drive or who sit in front of computers for a living. Specialists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden are finding that prolonged periods of sitting are more harmful than what we’ve heretofore thought of as simply a ‘sedentary lifestyle.’ Their new model of “inactivity physiology” suggests that sitting, or non-muscular activity is in a class by itself – it’s not the same as simply ‘not exercising’. Actually, being sedentary – a normal day at home without exercise, carrying groceries, washing dishes, pulling weeds – is looking pretty good by comparison. From the New York Times: It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

Indeed, if you consider only healthy people who exercise regularly, those who sit the most during the rest of the day have larger waists and worse profiles of blood pressure and blood sugar than those who sit less. Among people who sit in front of the television for more than three hours each day, those who exercise are as fat as those who don’t: sitting a lot appears to offset some of the benefits of jogging a lot.”

P.S. Since I sit a LOT more than I’d like to admit I use a balance ball chair when I’m at my keyboard. It does keep my spine straighter and more flexible so I feel more energized and light on my feet vs glued to my chair. Just rolling around on it while I write – like I am now – gets my blood and muscles moving, and I’m much less tired at the end of the day.

While there are no studies as far as I know on this particular activity yet – research does indicate that using balance balls regularly does increase core stability – a key element in strengthening the spine and reducing lower back pain. So this might be a good time to add these six simple stability building exercises to your regimen between bouts of rolling around at your desk or in front of the TV. (It’s actually fun!)

Live Online Course with Carolyn Myss & Norm Shealy: The Science of Medical Intuition

Kathleen Daniel — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:57:28 +0000

This is a special post for our special intuitives and Carolyn Myss fans. She is offering an online audio course with Dr. Norm Shealy, The Proven Power of Medical Intuition: Self-Diagnosis and Healing with Your Body’s Energy System beginning on March 16. I attended this course live with these two pioneers in energy medicine and medical intuition years ago, and can tell you that they are a fabulous and potent duo. They are focused and specific in describing energetic anatomy, guiding you through exercises to access intuition, offer perspectives on what may be blocking you, and they do it with trademark humor and compassion. Most of you know Caroline Myss as a legend in the field of intuition and energy healing, but it was neurosurgeon and first president of the American Holistic Medical Association, Dr. Shealy, who pioneered alternatives to treating back pain over the last 40 years, that pretty much ‘discovered’ Carolyn Myss by allowing her to test her gifts on his patients in her early days, before she’d written any of her books.

The course takes you through a: chakra-by-chakra self-diagnosis, and healing with imagery, to the scientific evidence from medicine and physics, how our past lives affect our present health, and decoding archetypal information. You also learn to:

* Develop an intuitive rapport not just with your body but with your entire life
* Work with archetypes, imagery, and symbols—the language of the psyche
* Use “spiritual alchemy” to engage your struggles as a source of transformation and wisdom
* See how your personal history gets encoded in your chakras
* Focus on the higher powers of your own “jewel of potential”—the seventh chakra
* Cleanse and “rewire” your own energy system
* Control—or even reverse – the single cause of 75% of all illness in two 20-minute sessions a day

Skip the Botox, Do Facial Yoga Instead

Kathleen Daniel — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:04:42 +0000

For some common sense about face lifts we turn to the ancient art of yoga to discover that your facial muscles are like any other muscle – exercise tones them, and regular practice can keep sagging jowls at bay, your forehead smooth and eyelids in place. Who knew! Well, I jest, but I was happy to find this simple routine of facial exercises laid out within easy reach of a bookmark for an on-the-spot workout. And they do double duty by relieving tension in your face, jaws, neck and shoulders. And speaking of relaxing, my cosmetician tells me that the main benefit of a facials is usually from the 20 minute massage, which, like exercise, increases blood and lymph circulation in the skin to stimulate nutrient transport and flush toxins from the skin. At my local salon I can opt to only do a 30 minute face (lifting) massage, which includes a light cleansing, peel and a good quality facial cream. It’s always instructive how much moisturizer your skin will absorb with massage helping drive it in. Try it for yourself.