Feed Your Brain?

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By Lynn Difley
Since the days of Hippocrates folks have been looking for ways to improve their health through foods. While the popularity of this notion comes and goes with the times, the basic premise of paying attention to food intake with a mind to optimal value for health remains valid. Most of our current studies have established the power of a healthy diet to improve cardiovascular health and decrease the risks of cancer; diet also has a profound effect on the health of your gray matter.
Giving your brain the right kinds of foods can boost its endurance levels, thought processes, acuity and cognizance, as well as all over mental function. Isn’t it handy that experts tell us that what is good for the heart is also good for the head? If you follow the heart-health recommendations you help preserve cognitive skills while decreasing the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
The brain depends on a vast network of blood vessels to provide adequate nutrient, energy and oxygen supply to its cells. Transportation of these supplies depends on the health of the cardiovascular system. The cardiovascular transportation system is critical to both the heart and the brain. Elevated cholesterol levels contribute to clogged arteries in both. Diets high in saturated fats, cholesterol and trans fats increase risk of arterial disease. Studies have also established a connection between brain health and vitamin B. Many health experts recommend taking a daily multi-vitamin tablet to cover all bases. Maintaining a healthy body weight is also just as crucial to the brain as it is to the heart. Excess weight increases risk of vascular disease, cognitive problems and dementia. A heart healthy diet, in addition to regular physical activity will promote weight loss and arterial health while decreasing the risk of cognitive decline.
The best way to protect the brain from degenerative disease is to reduce the damage of free radicals by consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables– the antioxidant supply house. A study on aging in Chicago found that eating 2.8 servings of vegetables per day (far less than the recommended minimum 6) slows the rate of mental decline by roughly 40% compared with eating less than one serving daily. Green leafy vegetables produce the strongest benefits–so Popeye was right!
While the consensus is that a multivitamin is a good way to get your necessary minimum quantity of vitamins and minerals, experts declare that the best source of antioxidants and vitamin E is your food. Consuming a variety of foods–trying to include a “rainbow” of color hues in the veggies you eat is superior to taking a pill. Consuming the vitamins in their natural form provides the broadest range of complementary nutrients, photochemical and oxidants to maximize brain health. The best place to find the source for maximal protection to your gray matter is in the produce section, and the best weapon for ultimate brainpower and heart health is your daily exercise practice.

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Heart Attack: Lowering the Risk

By Lynn Difley

The Risk of Heart Attacks: What We Can Do Before They Happen

We just read in the papers that Tim Russert, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and the American network’s Washington bureau chief, died on Friday of a heart attack. Russert collapsed and died at work in NBC’s Washington bureau after returning from a trip to Italy with his family, and despite resuscitation efforts, died. His death is a sad reminder that cardiac arrest can strike anyone without warning—and that when it does, it is often fatal. The first warning of heart problems is often the heart attack itself.

Sudden cardiac arrest accounts for 310,000 deaths in America every year, or 850 a day—more than those caused by breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke, and AIDS combined. But despite how common the condition is, doctors know little about what predisposes one person to it and not another.

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A Healthy Breakfast is Good for You

Hooray For Some Good News

By Lynn Difley

Well, it’s about time we heard some good news and I can’t wait to pass it on. Yes, you and your mother and your grandmother were right, it is good idea to start the day by eating breakfast. There may be a change in menu selection, the bacon, eggs and hash browns have gone the way of the fourteen hour manual labor on the farm day, but the practice of beginning your day with nourishment has now been recommended by all the nutrition and health experts. I’m astounded that we are finally told to go ahead and eat, after so many admonitions about what not to eat.

The reasons we need to gather around the dinette before taking off are numerous. Our body requires a steady supply of energy to function well. The brain especially needs nutrients to function well, since it has no storage units (such as spare tires, love handles, etc) to draw from. If you do not have an ongoing supply of food supplies, the body interprets the lack as a famine and sets the metabolism dial on a fasting mode. This enables you to survive should there be no food sources, but in our day of abundant supply, it means our body conserves every available calorie as a savings supply, and that we don’t want. The first meal of the day helps keep the metabolism switch on burn mode, which means the calories we consume will be used for body functions and not hoarded in unsightly storage units. Studies show that one of the common factors in successful weight loss is eating breakfast. Hooray for breakfast!

What is the perfect morning meal? We know that for optimal nutritional value whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, fish, dairy and healthier sources of fat are the best choices. You may not want to go for fish, beans and veggies first thing in the morning, but you can concentrate on the complex carbohydrates, fiber, fruits and low fat dairy.

Our tradition of cereals (thank you Dr Kellogg) serves us well, but it can be loaded with dangerous pitfalls.

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The Road to Fitness

Well if anyone knows about traveling, it would be those of us who participate in the RV lifestyle. We dedicate as much of our lives to traveling as we can afford, and may even go into overdraft situations just to spend a little more time on the road.

Picture yourself trying to travel from Texas to Maine as quickly as possible. Now imagine taking a turn towards California. You’re way off course, right? It’s very similar when you realize you want to start taking the healthy lifestyle path.

The road to good health is very much like traveling the freeways and highways. It seems like a straight shot- exercise, eat healthy foods, stop smoking, stay away from too much liquor and drugs, deal with stress effectively, treasure family and friends, etc. Not a problem, until we get started. We spend a few days without a hitch, maintaining course and making good time (with sensible stops for stretching and relaxing of course). But suddenly, before you know it, you are headed off down a bumpy side road, with little understanding of how you got there. The best thing to do is backtrack and find just where you veered off the road so you can get back onto the straight and narrow.

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Fitness Advice: Start a Streak!

No I don’t mean as in take off all your clothes and run through a public place, although with the heat wave we’ve had here in Santa Cruz this week, it is a tempting idea. I mean a streak as in establishing a habit and maintaining it on an ongoing basis. Success in exercise and nutrition depends on consistency. More than anything else, making the changes you desire in your fitness requires creating and breaking habits through small actions maintained over time.

Keeping a streak going can be challenging as well as motivating. When you look at the success, be it every day for a week, month or year, it boosts your power; momentum and determination to stay on top of your desired goal. Some people gravitate toward streaks. They get a rush out of seeing how long they can go without drinking soda and a sense of accomplishment from exercising for 60 days in a row. If you are one of these you probably use the practice to achieve desired changes. Other people are a little more wary of streaks. It might seem overwhelming to set off to do something everyday. The streak can be modified to fit a more flexible concept, such as, “I will walk 3 times a week”, or drink water instead of soda every other day.

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$4 Gas? What Next? $20 Steaks

Last week’s post on this subject raised some responders’ temperatures and stimulated a spirited discussion, so let’s throw some more fuel on the smoldering coals of soaring food prices and see where it takes us. First, the dire future for meat eaters.

One respondent took me to task for talking about beef eating in India: “Dude, they don’t eat beef in India, remember? Cows are sacred.” It is not just India where meat–including beef–eating is rising (India’s middle class is estimated at 350 million, the size of the entire US population, and consumes 2.8 kg–6.16 lb–per person per year, not a great amount per person but still amounting to a total of 6.16 billion pounds of beef per year). Brazil’s meat consumption has doubled since 1980 (now 197 pounds per person per year), China’s has quadrupled to 109 pounds (most of it pork), and in the US from 234 pounds in 1980 to 273 pounds per person in 2007 says the USDA–despite the trend toward more healthful and vegetarian food choices. Read more

Artificial Sweeteners: Saccharine fails the grade

The Bitter side of Sweet

Just when we think we have it figured out, another government study comes along to bust our bubble and destroy our self-confidence and our sanity. In an attempt to lose weight, or maintain weight loss, which is fast becoming our number one health concern, many people have decided to listen to the advertising claims and switch regular for no-cal sweeteners.

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Mealtime Madness

So, its Saturday afternoon, the only time I have that I can work on articles and research and prepare this blog and I’m deciding what to write about this week. Last week’s story about pushups didn’t elicit a flurry of comments, as did the one about treatment of calf cramps, how is it that most of you are not of strong opinion when it comes to pushups?

So, as I’m considering what you are really interested in reading about, I come across an article with suggestions for breaking habits, in this case mindless eating. So I read along, thinking, this is a good idea, many experts would say that mindless eating is responsible for our obesity epidemic, and I would agree that it is certainly a big factor. So what kinds of things can we do, to bring our eating habits under control?

The first suggestion is to eat a meal without sitcoms blaring in the background, as this may distract you from how much you’re eating. A study done by Harvard School of Public Health found that children who watched more television ate more calories, that adults who watched more than 2 hours of television daily were twice as likely to be obese, and typically, couch potatoes ate nearly 200 calories per day more than those who did not watch more than an hour of TV a day.

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Push Ups

Drop and give me fifty. If this phrase doesn’t make you cringe and trigger an urge to flee you were never in the military or in junior high or high school physical fitness classes. Here is a factoid for those of you who love such things, Paddy Doyle of the UK currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most push-ups done in one year. In 1988-1989 he dropped and pushed up 1,500,230 times!

While most of us will be lucky if we can perform 10 full body push ups, these old fashioned moves still remain one of the best ways to strengthen the upper body and increase muscle tone and endurance capability in the chest and shoulders. They are a great upper body exercise, no need to join a gym or buy expensive equipment; you can do these at home or in your rig, any time you want to increase your upper body strength.

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The Squeeze on the Food Dollar

As if $4 gas and diesel didn’t dig deep enough into your RVing budget’s pockets, now it appears that we are in the spiral of a major upward shift in food prices. Much of the upward price pressures come from the increase in the cost of fuel, running tractors and other farm machinery, as well as transporting food to markets.

But that’s not all. With the government subsidies on corn, wheat, and soybeans, farmers have been switching over from radishes, scallions, and tomatoes that have no subsidies. Fruit and nut growers also receive no subsidies, and in growth areas where suburban development is crowding fields and orchards, farmers are throwing in the towel and selling out to developers and retiring, rather than take the financial risk of planting and harvesting just to barely squeak by. So with farmers producing less non-subsidized crops, lower supply translates to higher prices.

The farmers that persist say they have to make greater profits to survive, that we Americans not only have the cheapest fuel among the non-oil rich nations, but we also have the cheapest food. They’re right, of course. The Texas Farm Bureau says that 81 cents of every food dollar goes off the farm–only 19 cents goes to the farmer.

But the disparity lies rather with the government’s agricultural policies, that enrich the wealthy farmers (most of the subsidies go to corporate mega-farms) instead of to organic and small family farmers.

We RVers have three major expense categories, unless you’re also into recreational drugs or collecting French wines: fuel, food, and campgrounds.

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