High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a common yet serious health condition affecting about 1 out of every 3 adults in the U.S.

It is often called the “silent killer” because it greatly increases the risk of heart attack and stroke yet many people with hypertension do not have the classic symptoms of high blood pressure: sweating, nervousness, or trouble sleeping.

With this being National High Blood Pressure Education Month, we thought we would help dispel harmful misconceptions surrounding this condition.

Myth 1:  High blood pressure runs in my family so I will get it too.

While a family history of hypertension does increase your risk of developing it, that doesn’t mean you can’t avoid it. These healthy lifestyle factors can help prevent high blood pressure:

• Eat a healthy diet that consists of fruits and vegetables, lean protein and whole grains. Limit unhealthy saturated fats, sodium and fast carbs (sugar and processed flour)
• Get regular physical activity – about 30 minutes a day
• Maintain a healthy weight
• Manage stress
• Avoid tobacco and limit alcohol consumption to 1 drink per day for women and 2 for men.

Myth 2: I feel fine. I don’t have to worry about high blood pressure.

Even if you feel good and have no family history or other risk factors for high blood pressure, that doesn’t mean you are safe. Many people don’t have symptoms. Be sure to get your blood pressure checked at least once every two years.

Myth 3:  If my blood pressure is 119/79 (considered normal) then I’m in good shape.

Not so fast. Normal blood pressure for a healthy person may be 119/79 (or below) but if you have other health conditions such as diabetes, excess body weight or high cholesterol, then your doctor may want your blood pressure even lower.

Myth 4:  Kosher and sea salt are low sodium alternatives to table salt.

Like table salt, both kosher and sea salt contain 40% sodium and count the same toward total sodium consumption.

Myth 5:  I was diagnosed with high blood pressure but I have it under control now so I can stop taking medication.

High blood pressure can be a life-long disease. Don’t stop taking your medication, but do speak with your doctor about your concerns and prognosis.

Take Control

For more ways to lower your risk of hypertension or keep it in check try these 10 Top Ways to Manage Blood Pressure Naturally.

Sources:

American Heart Association

Prevention

Whether you’re concerned about eating a balanced diet or maintaining a healthy weight, managing portion or serving sizes is key. Unfortunately, we may not always have access to measuring cups, spoons or scales, but there are some tricks you can use to visualize the proper amount to put on your plate.

Everyday Objects

Dieticians and nutritionists often use common everyday items to help you gauge serving sizes. For example:

• Serving of protein – (chicken, beef or pork) is about 3 oz or the size of a deck of cards.
• Serving of vegetables – is usually 1 cup or about the size of a baseball for green vegetables (non-starchy) vs 1/2 cup for starchy vegetables like corn or beans.  One-half cup is about the size of a light bulb (old fashioned incandescent type bulb)
• Serving of Fruit - varies by type. Dried fruits are denser so the portion size is smaller—around ¼ cup or about the size of a golf ball. For apples, pears and oranges, a serving size is generally one medium sized piece of fruit about the size of a baseball. A serving of small berries like blueberries, raspberries and blackberries is 1/2 cup. Larger whole strawberries is a full cup.
• Serving of carbohydrates – (potatoes, pasta, rice) A serving of potatoes should be about the size of a computer mouse, and a pile of pasta should be about the size of a can of tuna or hockey puck. A serving of rice or couscous is roughly the size of a light bulb.
• Serving of dairy – ½ cup of ice cream or frozen yogurt is about the size of a light bulb as well.
• Serving of fats – (butter, mayonnaise, cheese) – an ounce is equivalent to about two dice.

Visit WebMD for downloadable wallet- and fridge-size guides to portion sizes.

Other Tools

The new USDA “My Plate” guidelines can also help you visualize what the proper proportions of each food groups should look like on your plate.

According to this tool, half of your plate should consist of vegetables and fruit with protein and grains making up roughly the other half.

Just remember that these proportions are based on a 9” dinner plate or smaller. Over the years plate sizes and portion sizes have increased both at home and in restaurants.

ChooseMyPlate.gov provides many resources to help you eat a balanced diet, including sample menus, recipes, tips for parents, and budget friendly shopping advise to get more nutritional bang for your buck.

Sources:

WebMD

Choose MyPlate

For most people food is associated with all things positive—birthdays, graduations, weddings, holidays—so it’s no wonder we often turn to so called “comfort food” to feel better when we’re down, stressed or bored. Though you probably don’t need a researcher to tell you, a new study says comfort food doesn’t improve mood. In fact, it often makes you feel worse.

Penn State researchers analyzed responses from college-age women who reported that if they were in a negative mood before indulging in comfort foods, that mood only got worse after the episode. However, if they were in a positive mood beforehand, that mood didn’t change.

Emotional Eating

Turning to food for emotional reasons is not only an ineffective way to change how we feel, it is one of the major reasons why many of us struggle with maintaining our weight. Emotional eating often leads to eating too much, especially too much of high-calorie, sweet, fatty foods.

But if you're prone to emotional eating, you can take steps to regain control of your eating habits and get back on track with your weight-loss goals.

Try These Tips:

Self Assessment – Keep a food/mood journal of what you eat, how much you eat, how you were feeling (mood and hunger level) each day. This will help you understand your personal emotional triggers and responses.

Tame Triggers – Try to reduce or eliminate the situations that trigger emotional eating. For example, reduce stress through yoga, meditation, relaxation or other healthy lifestyle change. If you engage in mindless eating when you’re bored, find an activity to keep you occupied—take a walk, play with your dog, listen to music or surf the internet.

Gut Check – Ask yourself: Am I really hungry? If you just ate and your stomach isn’t growling, you’re eating for a reason other than hunger. Drink a glass of water, divert your attention to another activity and give the urge to eat time to pass.

Find Balance – The trick to managing comfort food cravings is finding a healthy balance. You may not want to eliminate these foods entirely as this may only increase cravings. Instead, slowly reduce the amount and frequency of their consumption and replace them with healthier options like: fresh fruit, vegetables, lite popcorn, non-fat yogurt or lower calorie/fat/sugar versions of the same foods.

Learn and Adjust – Changing behaviors takes self-awareness, time, and patience. If you get off track, learn from mistakes and determine how to avoid them in the future. Give yourself credit for making changes that will improve your overall health and wellness.

When to Get Help

If you've tried to gain control over emotional eating on your own without success, consider therapy with a professional healthcare provider. Therapy can help you understand the motivations behind your emotional eating and help you learn new coping skills. Therapy can also help you discover whether you may have an eating disorder.

Sources:

Third Age

Mayo Clinic

In addition to eating a balanced diet and exercising regularly, getting enough good quality sleep is essential to maintain good physical and emotional health.

As part of National Sleep Awareness Week, we want to dispel a few damaging myths about sleep and provide some tips to improve the quality of your sleep—just in time for the switch back to daylight savings time on Sunday, March 10.

Get the Facts:

Myth: I can “make-up” lost sleep.

FACT: Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night for optimum performance, health and safety. (Children and teens need even more.) When we don't get adequate sleep, we accumulate a sleep debt that can be difficult to "pay back" if it becomes too big.

The resulting sleep deprivation has been linked to health problems such as obesity and high blood pressure, negative mood and behavior, decreased productivity, and safety issues in the home, on the job, and on the road. For school age children and teens, lack of sleep affects growth and development and learning and behavior.

Myth: The older you get, the fewer hours of sleep you need.

FACT: While sleep patterns change as we age, the amount of sleep we need generally does not. Older people may wake more frequently through the night and may actually get less nighttime sleep, but their sleep need is no less than younger adults. Because they may sleep less during the night, older people tend to sleep more during the day. Naps planned as part of a regular daily routine can be useful in promoting wakefulness after the person awakens.

Myth: Daytime sleepiness is nothing to worry about.

FACT: Persistent daytime sleepiness in which an individual feels very drowsy during the day and has an urge to fall asleep is not normal. The condition, which can occur even after getting enough nighttime sleep, can be a sign of an underlying medical condition or sleep disorder such as narcolepsy or sleep apnea. These problems can often be treated, and symptoms should be discussed with a physician. Daytime sleepiness can be dangerous and puts a person at risk for drowsy driving, injury, and illness and can impair mental abilities, emotions, and performance.

Occasional Sleeplessness

Many of us occasionally have trouble falling asleep for a variety of reasons: stress, shift work, travel, or the start/end of daylight savings time. In those instances, there are natural (drug free) ways to help your body relax and sleep soundly. We offer a complete checklist with: Sleep Tips to Improve Your Waking Health.

Helpful Supplements

One of our best-selling supplements is Melatonin, a hormone that your body produces but often declines with age. Melatonin has two known benefits: it helps regulate your sleep/wake cycle and in higher doses, it is also a potent antioxidant. When taken just before bedtime, it promotes sound sleep without the persistent grogginess or “hangover” feeling that sleep medications can cause. Another traditional remedy that many find helpful is Chamomile tea or the herb Valerian.

5HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan), also known as oxitriptan, works in your brain and central nervous system by promoting the production of the chemical serotonin.

Source:

National Sleep Foundation

Sure, there are lots of little ways to use less and recycle more of our natural resources, but which actions will make the biggest impact on safeguarding our planet? According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, here are 10 things you can do that will really make a difference.

1. Avoid Waste: Recycle - For every trash can of garbage you place on the curb, about 70 trash cans of waste were generated in making that trash. To reduce the amount of waste you produce, buy products in returnable and recyclable containers and recycle as much as you can. The energy saved from recycling a single aluminum can will operate a television for three hours!

2. Bring Your Own Bag – Use reusable shopping bags whenever possible. Twelve million barrels of oil were used to make the 88.5 billion plastic bags used in the U.S. last year. Keep a collection of reusable bags in your car and be sure to wash them regularly (especially those used for groceries). If you forget your reusable bag, your answer to the question, “paper or plastic?” should be based on which you are more likely to reuse and recycle.

3. Nix Bottled Water – for the cost of a reusable BPA-free stainless steel water bottle, you can keep hundreds (if not thousands) of plastic bottles out of landfills. Not only that, it takes 26 bottles of water to produce a one liter plastic bottle.

4. Reduce Junk Mail – If you’re like most people, you receive many catalogs that you didn’t request and don’t want. In the U.S., all these unwanted catalogs add up to 19 billion catalogs each year. All those catalogs require more than 53 million trees and 56 billion gallons of wastewater to produce. Then there’s the environmental cost of fuel to deliver them. But you can stop the deluge with a visit to Catalog Choice.org.

5. Change Laundry Habits – Switch to natural “green” detergents, use cold water, and re-think how you dry laundry. Today’s plant-based, earth friendly detergents are concentrated, biodegradable and just as effective as conventional detergents—even in cold water. By using cold water on the wash and rinse cycle you can save 90% of your electrical usage to wash clothes. For heavily soiled clothes, use warm water instead of hot and still save over hot water.

The dryer can be a huge energy hog unless you remember these tips:

• sort clothes by weight and do not over dry
• clean the filter after each load
• dry only full loads
• Or, skip the dryer altogether. Be retro chic and hang a clothes line!

6. Fix Leaky Toilets – Most toilet leaks are silent so you might not be aware that anywhere from 30 to 500 gallons of water may be going down the drain every day. To check for leaks, add a few drops of food coloring in the toilet tank. If after 15 minutes or so you see dye in the toilet bowl, then you have a leak. Luckily the problem is usually an old or ill-fitting flapper valve—an easy and inexpensive DIY fix.

7. Choose Recycled Toilet Tissue -- If every household in the U.S. purchased just one four-pack of 260-sheet recycled bath tissue, instead of conventional tissue made from new fiber, it would eliminate 60,600 pounds of chlorine pollution, preserve 356 million gallons of fresh water and save nearly 1 million trees. And, you won’t pay a hefty price for being green--recycled toilet paper costs about the same as regular toilet paper.

8. Pass on Paper Towels – Try reusable microfiber towels instead of paper towels. When you are finished with them, toss them in the wash and reuse them again. When you must use disposable towels, look for recycled products. If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of regular paper towels (70 sheets) with 100 percent recycled ones, we could save 544,000 trees.

9. Use Kitchen Appliances Wisely – If you have a dishwasher, using it can save more water than washing by hand provided you don’t pre-rinse dishes before placing them in the washer. Simply scrape large pieces of food off the dishes and let the washer do the rest. You can also cut your electricity use in half by using the air dry setting instead of heat dry. As for the refrigerator, clean the condenser coils twice a year and keep the refrigerator set between 38 and 42 degrees for maximum efficiency.

10. Adjust the Thermostat – In the winter, set your thermostat to 68 degrees during the day and 55 degrees before bedtime and when you are going to be home. In the summer, set the thermostat to 78 degrees or more.

Sources:

National Resources Defense Council

The Daily Green

If you find yourself having more pain or stiffness in your neck and shoulders and wondering what’s causing it, chances are it has something to do with tech—as in computer monitors, laptops, tablets and e-readers.

Most of us are familiar with basic ergonomic rules governing working at a desk with the typical PC/monitor/keyboard arrangement. But newer, smaller devices like tablets and readers present a whole new set of ergonomic challenges.

Here are a few tips from experts on using these devices comfortably:

• Avoid holding tablets, laptops or E-readers in your lap. This is too low and puts a strain on the back of your neck. Instead, prop the device on a table or other surface that will allow you to keep you head as straight as possible.
• Take frequent breaks every 15-20 minutes to adjust your position or stretch (roll your neck and shoulders).
• Using an external keyboard may help prevent shoulder or elbow pain by allowing your hands and wrists to be in a more natural, ergonomic position closer to your waist.
• Your arms should hang naturally from your shoulders, close to your body, with elbows level or slightly higher than the keyboard.  
• As with a PC, make sure you sit in a good chair with lumbar support (or wear good shoes with ample cushion if you’re on your feet).

While we’re on the subject of tech gadgets and your health, you may want to read this post about the importance of protecting your vision from computer vision syndrome. It’s a growing problem in our tech age that can cause serious damage to your eyes.

To learn more about preventing computer-related aches, read Ergonomic Tips to Prevent Pain and Injury.

Source:

Harvard Medical School

Playing sports can be a wonderful experience for kids, but in the back of every parent’s mind is always the thought, “but what if my child gets hurt?”

Statistically speaking, parent’s fears are not unfounded. Last year there were nearly 2 million sports-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms and doctors offices—and that’s just the tally for three fall sports (football, soccer and volleyball).

As a parent, do you take the “no guts, no glory” attitude and hope for the best? Or do you just cover your eyes when your son gets steam-rolled by a burly middle linebacker twice his size?

Fortunately, there are a few steps that parents and young athletes can take to minimize the risk of injury. The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and the STOP Sports Injuries campaign offer the following tips:

• Have a pre-season physical examination and follow your doctor's recommendations.
• Always wear the appropriate protective gear, such as helmets, mouth guards, pads or fitted cleats.
• Take time to warm up and cool down properly with low-impact exercises that gradually increase or slow heart rate.
• Make sure to do strength training and stretching.
• Never play through the pain. If you have an injury, seek medical help.
• Check the weather report in order to avoid heat illness or wet, slippery conditions that can lead to injuries.
• Drink enough to stay hydrated. If you wait until you're thirsty, it may be too late to hydrate properly.
• Don't overtrain. If you develop pain or discomfort, decrease your training time and intensity. This will lower your risk of injury and help you avoid burnout.
• Minimize overuse injuries by playing multiple positions and different sports during the off-season.

With any luck, you’ll enjoy the fall sports season with little more than a few bumps and bruises.

Source:

Health Finder