How Healthy is Your Grocery Cart?

It is difficult to know what is healthy in today's society. According to most major processed food manufacturer's advertisements, you could live to be 120 eating nothing but cereal out of a box, dried fruit 'snacks' and 'juice cocktails'. Unless you specifically buy from a store that focuses on all-natural ingredients, and really goes above and beyond the call of health (a great case in point is the Mt Capra whole food vitamins), even smart people are often completely misled. Today we look at some more common supermarket health fallacies.

Products 'free' of a bad ingredient

Just about every product on the supermarket shelves makes some sort of health claim. There are sugary gelatine lollies that are '0% fat!', cereals that are sugar free, and ice-cream that has 'no cholesterol'. These claims are technically true - but don't let them blind you to the fact that the overall product is probably not is one of the essential layers of the food pyramid.

Made with 'real' ingredients

Nobody wants to be eating fake food! But claims like 'Made with real chicken' that can found on packets of kids nuggets need to be evaluated critically. Look at the ingredients and see how far down the ingredient list the 'real' ingredient comes. Ingredients are always listed in order from most plentiful to least plentiful - so you might find that your 'real chicken' nuggets are actually 50% textured soy protein, 5% chicken.

'Flavored'

There are quite a lot of products on the supermarket shelves that piggyback on traditional recipe names, like 'guacamole', to con you into thinking they're made the same way you would do it at home. This is rarely true. Check the label … always! Even a wonderful selection of whole food multivitamins won’t save you from the dangers of 'guacamole-flavored dip'.

Zero grams of trans fats

If a product has less than 0.5g of trans fats per serving, the FDA allows manufacturers to make this claim. However, they may make serving sizes artificially small to be allowed to do so. Check the label … again!

Top Food Tips for Great Health!

There is a lot of information available to the average you and the average me nowadays about what to eat. Kid's sugar-laden morning snacks are actually advertised as health food, the internet has a hundred different opinions on a single health subject, and while some people say you should never eat meat, others say that it's all you should eat. Today we look at some great, overall rules to remember to create a wonderfully healthy body for yourself. These mostly go back to the whole food supplement ideal - keep it as close to nature as possible.

You should eat…

· Anything that your great-grandmother would have been able to recognize and name: In many cases, new food is not good food. We don't eat liver or brains regularly anymore, we eat cereal bars and soy hot dogs … and we get cancer. This also includes margarine!

· Check the ingredient list: If there are ingredients in the list that have names that you can't pronounce, don't recognize, or have more than 5 words in them, keep these foods to an absolute minimum. There's no point in getting the highest quality natural Garden of Life vitamins if you end up putting poison over the top of them. The same applies for high fructose corn syrup.

· Does your food tell you that it is healthy? If it does, then it is probably one of the least healthy foods in the supermarket. Apples don't come with health claims, neither do carrots. Foods that are truly healthy won’t usually try to convince you to buy them for their healthy benefits. Of course, the rules vary for health supplements like goat protein powder, etc.

· Eat plants, leaves more than seeds: Bread is made from the seeds of a plant. However, when we look at bread in nutritional terms, it just doesn’t have the same value that spinach does. The same goes for potato chips! Potatoes might be a plant, and they might be cooked in 'vegetable oil' … but the only person you’re cheating if you call chips a vegetable is yourself.

· Eat until you're not hungry - not until you’re full: If you eat until your are full, you've overeaten. Remember that your satiety response takes a while to kick in.

· Be a fringe-dweller: That is, stick around the edges of the supermarket, where all the fresh food is kept.

· Have real meals and revel in your food: Being 'mindfully aware' of the process of eating is a key step in preventing overeating.

Heart Health for Chicks!

Heart attacks are often seen as a man's disease. Sadly, heart disease is also the leading killer of women. The statistics are pretty much even for guys and girls when it comes to heart health -- and they are certainly not good. Women might think that breast cancer is their top concern - in fact, if you are over 25, you need to watch out for a heart attack more than anything else. So, what whole food supplements can you take, and what lifestyle changes can you make, to help keep the center of your womanly emotions in great health?!

Understanding risk factors

Understanding what puts you at greater risk of having a heart attack is the first step in reducing that risk! Here are the top risk factors for heart disease development, and heart attack death, for women.

• Age
• Family predisposition

You can't change either of these factors. But you can be aware that if you are over 55 or have a history of bad heart health in the family, you'll need to pay extra attention to these next factors.

• Smoking cigarettes
• Having high blood pressure
• Not doing enough exercise
• Having diabetes
• Being overweight
• Having metabolic syndrome
• A waist measurement of 35 inches or more
• Being under overwhelming, or long-term, low level stress.

The answers

For most of us, the answer is in the question. Look at the risk factors that apply to you … and reverse them. You can also help yourself get more energy for exercise, support your quest to stop smoking, and help yourself lose weight with organic vitamins and supplements like Garden of Life's Diet 360.

Symptoms of a heart attack

These can be very vague - but if you experience more than three of them simultaneously, take yourself to the hospital.

• Fullness, discomfort, or tightness in the chest
• Being short of breath
• Pain in the upper abdomen
• Feeling a fluttering in your chest, or a pounding sensation
• Nausea and digestive upsets like vomiting
• Sweating heavily for no reason
• Being very weak and dizzy

Are You Sabotaging Your Sleep?

Around two thirds of Americans have problems with sleeping a few nights a week. And what that adds up to in real terms is a lot of avoidable arguments with partners and children, a lot of hours in lost productivity, a lot of mistakes that didn’t need to be made, and a lot of grumpy days that could have been happy ones! Today we're looking at some bedtime habits that can boost your quality of sleep, and some of theNew Chapter organic vitamins that can also help you switch off fully.

1. Set a schedule - stick to it!
   It's actually really hard to go to bed earlier than you are used to, and when you get to bed later than normal, you often find that you can't sleep in to make up for it. Create a sleep schedule that you can stick to as closely as possible.
2. DON'T bring books to bed
   This one sounds counter-intuitive. For many of us, reading is the only way we can get to sleep. However, when you don't have a book handy or you're travelling, this will increase insomnia.
   
3. Upgrade your mattress
   Going from a $1000 mattress to a $2000 mattress might not make a difference to your sleep … apart from keeping you awake at night thinking about your credit card statement! However, if you're sleeping on a decades-old mattress, one that is exceptionally worn or exceptionally cheap, the discomfort could be seriously harming your sleep.
4. LED lights
   The glare of LED lights can actually be a sleep destroyer for many of us, that even New Chapter Tranquilnite and organic vitamins can't fix! If you have an extra bright alarm clock, a night light, a VCR or stereo that stays on all night, start switching off at the wall.
5. Late exercise
   It's important to get exercise. But if you exercise late at night you’re making a health trade-off … not a health improvement. The chemicals that your body creates when exercising are NOT conducive to sleep! Go to sleep earlier, then exercise in the early morning instead of late at night.
6. Don't persist too long
   If you have followed all the checklists for good sleep and still just can't nod off, don't stay in bed. You'll just frustrate yourself. Hop up and balance a checkbook, read by a lamp or play Sudoku.

Your Tongue and Your Health!

So many health conditions lay hidden under the surface for quite a while, before they erupt in spectacular fashion. Heart disease is probably the best known of these (many seemingly healthy people have died of sudden heart attacks), but there are actually many more conditions. However, there is a sneaky way to check on your body's general health, without spending the cash for a full checkup with the doctor. Simply stick out your tongue and have a look in the mirror! Here we look at how your tongue can tell you which organic vitamins you need to take.

White coating on your tongue

If your tongue is covered in white pasty stuff, it's usually an indication of candida overgrowth. Sometimes your diet actually contributes to candida overgrowth (too many refined carbs, too much sugar). It could also be a symptom of an autoimmune disease, such as multiple sclerosis or HIV. However, you would most likely have other prominent symptoms in conjunction with one of these serious diseases.

Brown or black tongue

This isn't a sign of sickness in itself … but does tell you that you’re drinking too much coffee, too much tea, or chewing/smoking too much tobacco! The papillae on the surface of your tongue can become stained easily. If your tongue looks black or brownish, your nutritionist will tell you to cut out the ciggies and caffeinated drinks.

Sore spots

If you've been drinking more citrus juice than usual or have a cold, then you are more predisposed to mouth ulcers. Having sore spots on your tongue usually tells you that your immune system is run down in general - take an immune boosting supplement like Probiotic Immune Support by New Chapter.

Bumps that hurt

Keep an eye on any bumps on your tongue, or the inside of your cheeks, that start hurting, and don't heal within a few days or a week. They could be signs of oral cancer.

Dark red, painful tongue

This may be caused by an extremely rare (nowadays) nutritional deficiency called pellagra, in which you don't get enough niacin. Since the introduction of breakfast cereals fortified with whole food vitamins, it hasn’t really been an issue in the Western World, though.

The Nutritionist's Take on: Depression

It has only been comparatively recently that depression has begun to be accepted as a 'real' disease … and in some circles it hasn't even come that far. So it is unsurprising that there is little information available about the link between nutrition and depression. Treatments to date have focused almost exclusively on cognitive behavior therapy or on drugs affecting neurotransmitters. Both of these treatments have their places, but will be less effective if not supported by proper nutrition. Additionally, researchers are finding that depression can be prevented from developing, or from worsening, by maintaining a healthy diet with organic whole food vitamins. Today we look at the nutritionist's take on depression.

Depression and a balanced diet

When we become depressed, it is rare that we think of our problem as being within the body. Most of the time we tell ourselves that if our job was different, our spouse was different, or our finances were different we'd be fine. So it is difficult to recognize that it might be your diet that is causing or worsening the depression.

The key thing to remember is that if your body and brain were healthier, you would probably feel completely differently about your challenges in life. You would take an active rather than defeatist role when you come up against a problem. The peaks and crashes that many foods and drinks cause in our bodies only contribute to feelings of helplessness and not being able to cope. So, to change the way you feel about your problems:

• Avoid caffeine: You'll first feel wound up and nervous, and then the crash will give you headaches and create a loss of focus. Wean yourself off coffee with tea, then switch to water.
• Never skip a meal: The blood sugar crashes that this creates also affect your other hormones. And, as women especially know, hormones have an enormous role in creating your moods.
• Cut out alcohol: Especially if you're also undergoing cognitive behavior therapy. Alcohol completely changes your 'cognition' - this is not something we generally have control over. If you are trying to be positive, alcohol usually doesn’t help.
• Fruits and veg, or whole food multivitamins: These have all the nutrients that your body needs to create the levels of neurotransmitters and hormones you need to feel good.

Medication and proper nutrition

If antidepressant medication is recommended (though it usually is only for cases of moderate to severe depression), it often becomes difficult to maintain a good nutritional regime … and the lack of vital nutrients and swings in blood sugar will then counteract some of the benefits of the medicine. If you do need to take antidepressants and find them affecting your appetite, you should also take whole food multivitamins to help make sure your body has bioavailable nutrients.

The Nutritionist's Take on Menopause

Menopause will happen to a significant percentage of the world's population … almost half of us! It is a time where women are often left to fend for themselves, information-wise. There are no friendly Health and Human Development teachers available to answer questions, and truthfully, some people seem to be a bit uncomfortable with the end of the reproductive stage of a woman's life. Today we look at menopause from anutritionist's perspective … what favours can you do your body during the second major change of life?

Take calcium

The lack of estrogen freely available in your body is linked to a sharp decrease in bone mass as we age, and it is critical that we have enough calcium freely available in our bodies that we are able to build bone mass up to an ideal point.

Vitamin D

Calcium without adequate vitamin D is almost useless -- vitamin D is needed for proper absorption of the calcium from the foods you eat. However, do check all of your multivitamins to make sure that you aren’t doubling up on vitamin D -- high does have been linked with adverse affects like kidney stones and abdominal pain.

Take ginger

Research from several countries around the world emerging recently suggests that the symptoms of menopause can be managed with a daily dose of ginger whole food supplements, like New Chapter's Daily Ginger. Ginger has been found to modulate prostoglandins, which has a stabilizing effect on your hormones during menopause.

Replace your fats

This is good advice from nutritionists at any stage of life, but particularly important at menopause, when the lack of sex hormones has quite an impact on our metabolism. So, replace saturated fat with unsaturated, animal fat for vegetable oil, etc.

Don't forget your fiber

Fiber is important after menopause because of the increased risk of developing colon cancer. Fiber adds bulk to the foods we eat and helps your bowel work properly. It's best to get your fiber from vegetables and fruits, as well as whole grains. You'll need around 30 grams of fiber per day.