The Health Blog

The benefits of good health cannot be overemphasized for those who wish to lead a happy lifestyle. While good health does not guarantee happiness it is certainly a key building block for a future of well being, contentment and serenity.

What are the basics of good health?

Like most events in nature, development and maintenance of good health and a healthy lifestyle are simple in concept but take some work and dedication to achieve.
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• Healthy diet

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• Exercise
• Minimize stress on a daily basis

Almost all of the common diseases that threaten us today can be avoided to a great degree by eating right, adopting a program of regular exercise, and stress reduction through techniques like meditation.

A clinical trial conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public concluded that daily zinc supplements reduced the risk of death among children aged 12 to 48 months by 18 percent. However, the researchers did not find any significant reduction in mortality among children 1 to 11 months of age. The study is published in the March 17, 2007, edition of The Lancet.

Zinc is one of the most plentiful trace elements in the body, second only to iron. It mediates many physiological functions and is believed to be essential for maintaining a healthy immune system. The trial examined whether zinc supplementation would benefit children living in areas where malaria is prevalent. Pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria account for 45 percent of the 10 million child deaths worldwide each year.

A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise.

“For weight loss to occur, an individual needs to maintain a difference between the number of calories they consume everyday and the number of calories they burn through metabolism and physical activity,” Dr. Leanne Redman of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, explains in a press release.

“What we found was that it did not matter whether a reduction in calories was achieved through diet or burned everyday through exercise.”

It has been proven that exercise is the best way to lower your blood cholesterol. However, not many of people have ample time to hit the gym. The Harvard HealthBeat Newsletter provided tips on how to lower your blood cholesterol through dietary techniques.

• Cut down on saturated fat in cooking. You can use of liquid cooking oils rather than butter or margarine. Use nonstick pans. Instead of frying, bake, broil, roast, steam, or stew. Discard drippings.
• Avoid trans fats. Because trans fats increase your LDL and decrease your HDL, the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board says there’s no safe level of trans fat intake, and the National Cholesterol Education Program urges people to eat as little as possible. Avoid or eat only very small quantities of foods that list shortening, partially hydrogenated oil, or hydrogenated oil among their first ingredients.

Some 600 primary schools across Thailand have vowed to ban sugary drinks from the playground and classroom in an effort to curb soaring child obesity rates in the kingdom, AFP reports.

This campaign is a response to the growing cases of obesity and tooth cavities among children in Thailand. In a recent survey, it was found out that Thai children were consuming an average 20 teaspoons of sugar a day, when they should be limiting their intake to six a day.

Chantana Ungchusak, a dentist in charge of the campaign, said the project aimed to educate children from kindergarten up to primary school about limiting their sugar consumption.

Now, we all have a valid excuse to sneak on the fridge for a bar of chocolate. In a recent study, scientists found out a specially formulated type of cocoa that may boost brain function and delay decline as people age.

Flavanols are said to be responsible for this new found benefit. Flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans, can increase blood flow to the brain.

In tests given to young women who were asked to do a complex task while their brains were being studied with magnetic resonance imaging. It was shown that those who have taken flavanol-rich cocoa drink has improved brain blood flow.

A study on Cuna Indian tribe in Panama, who drink cocoa exclusively, revealed similar health benefits. Those who live on native islands do not have high blood pressure. Further, when tribe members move to cities, their blood pressure rises. A major difference is the consumption of their own prepared cocoa, which is high in flavanols. In native areas, that is all they drink; in cities they adopt the local diet. In addition, there were no reported cases of dementia among the native Cuna.

Numerous researches have been done to prove that a healthy diet leads to a healthy life. A healthy diet can lower your risk for the most serious diseases. Healthy eating can prevent possibly 80% of cases of heart disease and dia­betes and help ward off hyperten­sion, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer.

So switch to healthy eating and start the healthy life now:
- instead of butter, solid margarine, or lard, try olive oil, canola oil, or margarine without trans fats
- instead of cream-based sauces, try tomato-based sauces.
- instead of corn flakes, special K, or other refined-grain cereal, try cheerios, wheaties, or other whole-grain cereal
- instead of white pasta, try whole-wheat pasta
- instead of smoked, cured, salted, or canned meat or fish, try fresh or frozen meat or fish, without added salt