Blog – Fit Healthy Well

Jul

2022

Cure Poor Eyesight

People tend to think that better eyesight always relate to eye surgery or glasses. Eye surgery is very risky and could lead to irreversible damage. Glasses maintains vision problem and do nothing in order to cure it. Yet, there are healthy natural treatments which cure poor eyesight symptoms. The only problem is that these methods are being hidden and disregarded by doctors and optometrists who wish people will continue to buy glasses and risk their eyes with laser eye surgeries. It is better to avoid the risks and try these basic simple exercises first. They could improve your eye vision dramatically.

Eye chart

Its purpose is to exercise the eye to a healthy behavior of shifting instead of central fixation. Hang the eye chart and move to a distance where you can read the first 4 lines. Look at the first letter carefully close your eyes and try to visualize it in your imagination. Try to create a clear picture of it. Instead of static letter try imagining it slowly swinging. Repeat this with the rest of the letters in the four first lines you can read.

Covering

This is a very important exercise. People think that their eyes rest when they sleep. Actually, on the dreaming stage they keep moving and work as if the person is a wake.

Therefore, proper resting is crucial. For best performance you need a quite and comfortable place like your favorite couch. Cover your eyes with your hands, and try to feel as pleasant as you can. Listen to the music you like best, or try to imagine your favorite view. The eyes need about 10-15 minutes to reach full relaxation, the longer the better. It is recommended, to perform it daily for 15 minutes or a few times a day for 5 minutes.

Reading

Reading is a very important task for the eyes as it is performed on daily basis. It is important to adjust natural way of reading which will reduce eye tension and will educate the eyes for better, healthy vision habits. Healthy eyes read a sentence by focusing on each letter and then moving to the next one. A tensed eye will jump from word to word and will try to read the complete sentence in a few eye glances. Reading large areas instead of focusing on central vision, letter by letter, lead to increased eye tension. It is best to move slowly from letter to letter as a practice. At the end of each page focus on a point a few meters a way. This will ease the tension on the eyes from the reading.

Tiny writing

This exercise requires the eye to use its central vision. The eyes and the mind should be very relaxed to avoid over pressure on the eye when reading the tiny writing. Get text and print it from and word processor in size 4 or 3. It should be black text on a white paper. Hold it against your eyes and read it in a slow and relaxed mode. Make sure you keep blinking often and look at a distanced point once in a while.

Physical exercises

It is important to understand that the aim of these exercises is to make eyes muscles more elastic and avoid tension. First try to feel your eyes: are they tensed? If so try to feel exactly where, and relax that area. Look at an object not far from you, and move your eyes: ten times up and down and ten times left to right, then in circles for 5 times. Take a piece of paper with a dot at its top edge. Bring it as close as 5 CM from your nose and then move it away as far as you can. Concentrate on the dot all time, do it for about tem times. Hold the piece of paper close to your nose, look at for a few seconds and then look at a distant point for a few seconds. Again do it for ten times.

“Just pray for your health and strength, hearing and eyesight, and an active mind.”

~ June Brown

Jul

2022

Coping With Hearing Loss

Coping With Hearing Loss

Oddly enough, I’ve come to think that losing my hearing was one of the best things that ever happened to me, as it led to the publication of my first novel. But it took a while for me to accept that I was losing my hearing and needed help.

I believe that no matter how tough things get, you can make them better. I have my parents to thank for that. They never allowed me to think that I couldn’t accomplish something because of my hearing loss. One of my mother’s favorite sayings when I expressed doubt that I could do something was, “Yes, you can.”

I was born with a mild hearing loss but began to lose more of my hearing when I was a senior in college. One day while sitting in my college dormitory room reading, I noticed my roommate get up from her bed, go to the princess telephone in our room, pick it up and start talking. None of that would have seemed strange, except for one thing: I never heard the telephone ring! I wondered why I couldn’t hear a phone that I could hear just the day before. But I was too baffled–and embarrassed–to say anything to my roommate or to anyone else.

Late-deafened people can always remember the moments when they first stopped being able to hear the important things in life like telephones and doorbells ringing, people talking in the next room, or the television. It’s sort of like remembering where you were when you learned that President Kennedy had been shot or when you learned about the terror attack at the World Trade Center.

Unbeknown to me at the time, that was only the beginning of my downward spiral, as my hearing grew progressively worse. But I was young and still vain enough not to want to buy a hearing aid. I struggled through college by sitting up front in the classroom, straining to read lips and asking people to speak up, sometimes again and again.

By the time I entered graduate school, I could no longer put it off. I knew that I had to buy a hearing aid. By then, even sitting in front of the classroom wasn’t helping much. I was still vain enough to wait a few months while I let my hair grow out a bit before taking the plunge but I eventually did buy a hearing aid. It was a big, clunky thing, but I knew that I would have to be able to hear if I ever wanted to graduate.

Soon, my hair length didn’t matter much, as the hearing aids got smaller and smaller. They also got better and better at picking up sound. The early aids did little more than make sounds louder evenly across the board. That doesn’t work for those of us with nerve deafness, as we may have more hearing loss in the high frequencies than in the lower ones. The newer digital and programmable hearing aids go a long way toward improving on that. They can be set to match different types of hearing loss, so you can, say, increase a particular high frequency more than other frequencies.

Once I got my hearing aid and was able to hear again, I could focus on other things that were important to me–like my education, my career and writing that first novel! I didn’t realize it then, but that first hearing aid actually freed me to go on to bigger and better things.

I had long dreamed of writing a novel, but like others kept putting it off. As I began to lose more and more of my hearing, it was a chore just to keep up at work, let alone doing much else. Then once I got the hearing aid, I no longer had to worry about a lot of the things I did before, and I began to think that writing a novel would be the perfect hobby for me. Anyone can write regardless of whether they can hear. I was also determined to prove that losing my hearing would not hold me back.

My first novel was published in 1994 and my fifth in the summer of 2005. Writing turned out to be much more than a hobby, as I’ve been writing full-time for more than 10 years. I’m now hard at work on my first nonfiction work, a photo-essay book to be published in 2007. I honestly believe that I would never have sat down at the computer and banged out that first novel if I hadn’t lost so much of my hearing. Instead, I’d probably still be an editor somewhere and still dreaming about someday becoming a novelist. That’s why I sometimes think that losing my hearing was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

“The handicap of deafness is not in the ear; it is in the mind.”

~ Marlee Matlin

Jul

2022

The Importance of Calcium in a Woman’s Diet

Recently I published an article about the importance of exercise in fighting against the bone-brittling disease osteoporosis.

There are actually 3 primary factors that may put someone at risk for osteoporosis-–women in particular:

lack of calcium
hormonal deficiency (estrogen in particular)
lack of physical activity

So in addition to exercise and hormonal factors, a woman’s diet is extremely important in guarding off this very debilitating condition.

One of the reason’s why we do not recommend most traditional diet plans and programs is because the over-restrictive eating guidelines often eliminate or seriously limit the consumption of some very necessary vitamins and minerals that keep the body healthy and strong.

You never want to get to a point where you are sacrificing health merely to lose weight. In fact, any weight loss program
worth half its salt will make sure that the recommendations made for your daily diet intake are well balanced and full of all the nutrients that you need.

The most important time to get an appropriate amount of calcium is between the ages of 14 and 24, when peak bone mass is obtained. Then after that bone continues to develop until about age 35 to 40, at which time the bone mass that a woman has will strongly determine how much at risk she may be
for bone fractures in her later years.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends that women intake 1,000 mg (1g) of calcium daily, and then increase their daily dosage to 1,500 mg (1.5g) post menopause.

Sadly, only an estimated 25% of women in any age group consume the recommended daily amount of calcium to guard against osteoporosis. And when they go on diets and weight loss programs, they tend to consume even less.

Lowfat dairy products such as milk (skim milk is a better option), yogurt, and cottage cheese are all excellent sources of dietary calcium. For those who are lactose intolerant or who wish to generally stay away from dairy products, non-dairy alternatives fortified with calcium will do as long as they continued the recommended daily allowance (RDA). The nondairy product Lactaid added to lowfat and nonfat milk may also work to help you meet your desired goal.

In your efforts to lose weight, make sure that the weight loss program that you use includes calcium-rich food choices. And if it does, you will need to add them yourself. No matter what weight loss program you are on or what other means you use to lose weight, here are some good ideas recommended by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) that you may add to your daily diet in order to get the amount of calcium you need while you lose the weight.

Prepare canned soup with skim milk instead of water
Add nonfat dry milk to soups, stews, and casseroles
Add grated lowfat cheese to salads, tacos, and pasta dishes
Eat yogurt as a snack, or use it to make low-calorie dressings
Choose calcium-rich desserts, suhc as lowfat cheese and fruit, frozen nonfat or lowfat yogurt, and puddings made with skim milk
Drink hot chocolate in the winter made with skim milk

“A ‘healthy diet’ includes meals rich in whole grains, vegetables, nuts and fruits.
Lean protein such as fish and chicken are recommended.”

~ Margaret Cuomo

Jul

2022

Some Useful Vitamins That Lower Blood Sugar

Some Useful Vitamins That Lower Blood Sugar

Certain vitamins and minerals have been found beneficial in lowering blood sugar and thus useful in the treatment of diabetes.

Vitamin B complex – Vitamins of the B group are valuable in the treatment of diabetes. Despite and adequate intake of these vitamins, diabetics often have abnormally small amounts of vitamin B in their blood because of high urinary loss of exhibit symptoms of vitamin B deficiency. Marked clinical improvement has been reported in patients of diabetes with only 16000 units of daily supplements of vitamin B complex. Because these vitamins help reduce blood fat and cholesterol, they should be generously supplied at all times.

Thiamine or Vitamin B1 – Of the various vitamins of the B group, thiamine or vitamin B1 and pyridoxine or vitamin B6 is of special value in diabetes. Diabetic diet inadequate in vitamin B1, often leads to the development of neuritis, which is relieved as soon as large amounts of this vitamin are given. Vitamin B1 is said to be particularly valuable in preventing damage to the brain during diabetic acidosis. The greater the insulin requirement, the higher is the requirement for vitamin B1, pantothenic acid or vitamin B5 and biotin or vitamin B8.

The primary natural vegetable sources of thiamine are wheat germ, brewer’s yeast, the outer layers of rice, wheat and other whole grain cereals, pulses, nuts, peas, lime, legumes, dark green leafy vegetables, banana and apple.
Those of pantothenic acid are wheat germ, whole grain bread, green vegetables and peanuts.
Biotin is found in brewer’s yeast, rice bran, rice germ, rice polishing and peanut butter.

Pyridoxine or Vitamin B6 – When diet is inadequate in vitamin B6 or pyridoxine, and essential amino acid tryptophan, is converted into a substance known as xanthurenic acid. It has been shown in laboratory experiments that xanthurenic acid tends to damage the pancreatic tissue.

Diabetics who have been given 50 mg of vitamin B6 daily have shown a rapid and marked decrease in urinary xanthurenic acid. In one case, the quantity dropped almost 97 percent the first day. Total absence of urinary xanthurenic acid amongst those who continued with a daily dosage of 10 to 20 mg of this vitamin indicated that none was being formed in the body. Diabetics are thus greatly helped by a liberal intake of vitamin B6. The main natural sources of pyridoxine are milk, brewer’s yeast, cereals, legumes, green leafy vegetables and carrot.

“Popeye was right about spinach: dark green, leafy vegetables are the healthiest food on the planet.
As whole foods go, they offer the most nutrition per calorie.”

~~ Michael Greger

Jul

2022

Weight Loss And Nutritional Myths

“Myth: Becoming a Vegetarian insures weight loss and healthiness.

Truth: Research has proved that those who follow a vegetarian diet plan eat less fat and fewer calories than those who are non vegetarians. Vegetarians also tend to have lower body weights because choosing a vegetarian diet plan with low fat content is helpful in weight loss. However vegetarians can make poor food choices that contain high amounts of fat and calories with little or no nutritional value.

Myth: All dairy products are unhealthy.

Truth: Dairy products contain many nutrients your body needs including protein to build muscles and help organs work properly. Dairy products also contain calcium to strengthen your bones, and fortified with vitamin D to help your body utilize the calcium. Fortunately low-fat and fat-free milk, yougurt, and cheese are just as nutritious as whole milk products.

Myth: Eating after 8:00pm is a sure way of weight gain.

Truth: Your weight loss or gain is determined by what and how much you eat and how much physical activity you do during the day. It really doesn’t matter what time of the day you eat, your body will store any extra calories as fat. If you down 500 calories over your daily value right before you goto bed obviously your not going to burn them while you are sleeping so your body will store it as fat.

Myth: Skipping meals is a great way to save calories and lose weight.

Truth: Many studies have shown that those who skip meals (especially breakfast) and eat fewer times during the day tend to be heavier than those who eat a healthy breakfast and eat five small meals a day. Eating many small meals throughout the day helps you control your appetite and keeps your metabolism going. Those who skip meals tend to feel hungrier later on and end of over eating.

Myth: Fat-free means no calories.

Truth: Fat-free foods are often lower in calories than the same size portion of the full- fat food. Many processed fat-free foods contain just as many, if not more calories as the full fat version of the same food. Fat-free processed foods can contain added sugar, flour, or starch thickeners to improve flavor and texture after fat is removed.

Myth: Herbal weight-loss products are safe and effective.

Truth: Weight-loss products that claim to be herbal are not necessarily safe. Herbal products are not usually scientifically tested to prove they are safe or effective. A great example of this type of unhealthy herbal product is ephedra. Ephedra is an herb that is now banned by the United States Government because its products have been known to cause serious health problems and even death. Products that claim to be ephedra-free are not danger-free because they contain harmful ingredients similar to ephedra.

Myth: Weight training isn’t a good idea if you are trying to lose weight.

Truth: Weight training or doing strengthening activities such as push-ups and stomach crunches on a regular basis will actually help you lose or maintain weight. Activities that build muscle are great because muscle burns more calories than body fat. Its recommended to do strengthening activities two or three times a week. Only intense strength training can build very large muscles.”

“Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower.”

~~ Phil McGraw