Happy New Year, I wish all of you all the best in 2010. This prescription was offered by a friend as one of the best ways to achieve a happy and fulfilled life.
Let me know what you think.
Health:
1. Drink plenty of water 2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar 3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants, and eat less food that is manufactured in plants 4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy 5. Make time for prayer 6. Play more games 7. Read more books than you did in 2009 8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day 9. Sleep for 7 hours 10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day ---- and while you walk, smile
Personality:
11. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 12. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment 13.. Don't over do ; keep your limits 14. Don't take yourself so seriously ; no one else does 15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip 16.. Dream more while you are awake 17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.. 18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness. 19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others. 20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present 21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you 22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime. 23. Smile and laugh more 24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
Community:
25. Call your family often 26. Each day give something good to others 27. Forgive everyone for everything 28. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6 29. Try to make at least three people smile each day 30. What other people think of you is none of your business 31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick... Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.
Life:
32. Do the right things 33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful 34. GOD heals everything 35.. However good or bad a situation is, it will change 36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up 37. The best is yet to come 38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it 39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.
In my quest to stay healthy I have routinely turned to taking vitamins. But, I haven't always taken the time to research exactly what it is that I am putting in my body in the name of good health.
According to a recent NY Times article: Americans love vitamins. About half of adults take a daily multivitamin, according to industry data. And according to some theories, the economic downturn has inspired them to fortify themselves by swallowing more.
Sales over the last decade had been growing by about 4 percent annually. But this year, as more people are taking their health into their own hands, perhaps hoping to stave off doctor bills, vitamin sales are expected to grow by 8 percent to a total of $9.2 billion, according to Nutrition Business Journal, a market researcher and publisher.
About 42 percent of shoppers purchase their vitamins at natural and specialty retail outlets, like GNC and Whole Foods, according to the journal, while only 23 percent take the discount approach and buy their bottles at supermarkets and club stores. The other 35 percent buy through mail order or from a health care provider.
Of course, it’s controversial whether we should be taking vitamins at all. Recent studies have indicated that taking a multivitamin won’t protect you from heart disease or cancer. And experts maintain that if you eat well, you don’t need vitamin supplements.
“The evidence shows that a healthy diet and exercise are the best way to ward off disease; a vitamin cannot replace those benefits,” says Eric Rimm, associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
But what if you don’t eat well or are chronically stressed out? Then, Professor Rimm says, there may be some benefit from taking a multivitamin.
As for the matter of cost: If you take only a daily multivitamin mainly as a medical insurance policy, it certainly won’t hurt your health — as long as you do not already eat a lot of fortified food. And it could help. But it will require spending some money. And if you take a multivitamin and a few individual vitamins and minerals, it’s even more worth your while to make sure you’re not paying more than you need to.
Here’s how to get the most vitamin for the least money.
USE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED Popping too many vitamin pills is not only a waste of money but can be bad for your health. Talk to your doctor about what added vitamins or minerals you might require; you can ask for a blood test to learn what you might be lacking.
For example, if you don’t get enough vitamin D — many people who live in the northern states or who wear sunscreen everyday are low on this crucial vitamin — then buy just a D supplement. Standard multivitamins will probably not have the levels of D you require (many doctors suggest taking 1,000 to 2,000 international units a day).
If your doctor recommends a specific supplement, like omega-3, ask in what form you should be taking it.
FIND A REPUTABLE SOURCE Vitamins and minerals are commodity items, and every manufacturer has access to the same ingredients. For that reason, researchers and scientists say paying more for a name brand won’t necessarily buy you better vitamins.
“When we measure levels of vitamins in the blood, we find the levels are the same whether the person was taking a generic brand or a name brand,” says Dr. Rimm, who has been studying the effects of vitamins for 20 years.
That said, don’t be too cheap. Purchase your vitamins from well-known retailers that do a brisk business and restock frequently, whether that’s Costco or Drugstore.com. Vitamins lose their potency over time and must be stored at, or below, room temperature. If bottles are sitting on a shelf in warm room or in direct sunlight, they may degrade even before their expiration date.
PRICE MAY NOT MEAN QUALITY While the Food and Drug Administration regulates vitamins as part of the nutritional supplement industry, it does not test them before they are put on the shelves. The F.D.A. places the responsibility on the manufacturer to ensure that its dietary supplement products are safe before they are marketed. All of which means that no matter what the price, quality is not assured. ConsumerLab.com, a company based in White Plains that tests hundreds of vitamins each year, finds that 30 percent of multivitamins have a quality problem: the pills might have more or less of a stated ingredient, or they might not dissolve properly.
“We haven’t found any brand with a broad product line that makes every product well,” says Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of the company.
Taking exception to such assertions is the vitamin industry’s trade group, the Council for Responsible Nutrition. In response to questions, the council released a statement from Andrew Shao, a vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs.
Mr. Shao said that the F.D.A. allowed for “a reasonable amount of variation” — which he characterized as up to 15 percent more of an ingredient than the label might indicate. Mr. Shao said that manufacturers frequently add slightly more of an ingredient to ensure that the amount is at least at the level claimed on the label as the product nears the end of its shelf life.
In any case, ConsumerLab.com says it has found a few patterns that consumers may find helpful. Products sold by vitamin chains tend to be more reliable than drugstore brands, and Wal-Mart and Costco’s vitamin lines are usually worth considering. In a recent test of multivitamins, ConsumerLab.com found that Equate-Mature Multivitamin 50+ sold by Wal-Mart was just as good as the name brand Centrum Silver, but at less than a nickel a day is half the price.
Puritan’s Pride, a catalog and online retailer, also has very good prices, and Dr. Cooperman says that its products are generally good.
Curious consumers can subscribe to ConsumerLab.com for $30 a year and learn how other supplement brands fare in the lab’s tests.
CERTIFICATION SYMBOLS One quality check you can make, although it is not a perfect screening, is to see whether a product is certified by one of several nonprofit organizations that check supplements for purity and quality.
The two most commonly used groups are the United States Pharmacopeia (www.usp.org) and NSF International (www.nsf.org), according to Mr. Shao. Manufacturers voluntarily submit a product for review and, if it passes, the product can bear an approval seal, such as USP or NSF. Because the process is voluntary, Mr. Shao points out, the absence of the seal does not necessarily mean the product is of poor quality.
But at least the seal should mean you know what you’re getting. And with vitamins, anything beyond that simple assurance may not be worth paying for.
I was heading home the other evening on the orange line of the Metro when the woman in the seat next to where I was standing in the crowded car, begins sneezing and sniffling. To her credit the woman did sneeze into the crook of her arm, just like the President showed us to do, but I still wasn’t liking the fact that I was standing so near to her.
I shifted on my feet for an uncomfortable for a few seconds, trying to figure out my course of action. Maybe I have an overabundance of the polite gene in my makeup, because I was hesitant about bolting and thereby calling attention to the sneezing woman. But when the lady sneezed again and followed it with a cough, I knew I had to book.
I slowly shouldered my way through the bodies pressed against me and worked my way to the far end of the car, as far away from Swine Flu Sue as I could get.
The sneezing woman shot me a dirty look, obviously taking offense at my retreat. I’m sure she didn’t appreciate me acting as if she were contagious. Hey, but you can’t fault a brotha for being cautious, particularly with all the buzz about H1N1.
That was a few days ago. Today, my head is throbbing and I’m sneezing. I’m hoping it is just a cold and nothing more.
To ease my suffering I resorted to the old school remedy of honey, apple cider vinegar and lemon, with a bit of a twist–whiskey. I’ve been downing spoonfuls of the elixir all morning long. And although I’m still sneezing, I’m feeling mighty good.
Getting the runaround Originally uploaded by van heland
By Carl Chancellor
I’m lifting weights. I’m burning up the miles on the treadmill. So why aren’t the pounds just melting away?
The reality is that without changing your diet and monitoring your caloric intake you are not going to shed those extra pounds.
Thinking that you will be able to gorge yourself at the kitchen table and then jog off the after effects of over indulgence is just not going to happen.
Researchers have found that people who exercise don’t necessarily lose weight. A study recently published in the The British Journal of Sports Medicine documents that disappointing but very real fact.
The study followed 58 overweight people as they underwent 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The results: the group lost an average of around seven pounds. Some of the study subjects lost less than four pounds.
How can that be? Hard exercise for 12 straight weeks and barely shed a few pounds. I mean, doesn’t exercise burn calories?
The quick answer is, yes. The problem is that most people only burn 200 to 300 calories in a typical 30-minute exercise session. You will put almost that many calories right back into your body when you reach for that bottle of Gatorade to cool off.
The only way to lose weight is through a combination of exercise and diet.
Push-ups ain’t going to help if you don’t push yourself away from the table first.
That fact comes across like an uppercut square to the chin in the new biography Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson, byWilHaygood.
The book captures the elegance, grace, pride and determination of one of the all time great boxers as it chronicles a life framed by the brutality of the ring and the turmoil of 20th century America.
Haygood, who is as artistic with the pen as Robinson was with his fists, crafts a lyrical biography that excites and enthralls as surely as Sugar Ray did in his many professional and amateur bouts. Robinson literally punches his way off the pages of Sweet Thunder to step away from mere facts and statistics–174-19-6 record; welterweight and 5-time middleweight champion–to become a flesh and blood character as real as a favorite uncle.
The prose of Haygood’s detail-rich book not only evokes the rage and fury of the ring but depicts the cultural upheaval of the 30s, 40s, 50s and early 60s.
Sweet Thunder is populated by iconic figures, who orbited around Robinson’s sun–Miles Davis, Lena Horne, Jake LaMotta, Langston Hughes, Sammy Davis, etc....The book faithfully paints a picture of the man and his times.
Be warned the book is a page-turner. Once you crack it open and start to read you will be down for the count.
That was a question a female friend posed to me the other evening while having drinks. She just couldn’t understand why her boyfriend constantly puts off going to the doctor.
“He’s always complaining about this ache, or this pain, yet he won’t go to the doctor to have it checked out,” she said between sips of wine, the frustration clear in her tone.
Several of my male friends said they don’t go to the doctor because they are afraid that the doc might find something wrong. Then there is the attitude-- “Hell, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
But how do you know it ain’t broke?
Hey, we black men aren’t alone when it comes from shying away from the doctors office. According to a recent survey by Men's Health magazine and CNN, one-third of American men have not had a checkup in the past year. Nine million men haven't seen a doctor in the last five years.
An American Medical Association study in 1990 found that men, regardless of their race, don't go to the doctor because of fear, denial, embarrassment and threatened masculinity.
* Each year, men make 150 million fewer trips to doctors than women (the disparity occurs in every age group, not just the years some women have prenatal checkups.) p * One in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, yet few will have the easy and painless digital rectal exam and prostate specific antigen blood test to detect it (women, facing similar odds of breast cancer, are much more likely to examine their breasts regularly and have a mammogram). * Men are at greater risk of stress-related illnesses than women, yet only 20 percent of the people in the typical stress-management program are men. Men are 30 percent more likely than women to have a stroke. * One out of three male strokes occur before age 65. Each year, over 50,000 men die of emphysema, one of the most preventable diseases. It has been estimated that more than 3 million men are walking around with early type II diabetes, a disease with major complications, and don't know it.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone bemoan the fact that they didn’t see a doctor earlier–“Doc, said if the problem had been detected earlier, my chance would be better.”
We black men have bought into that macho myth, maybe more so than other groups. We were told to “suck it up and be a man”; “roll with the punches”; “take it like a man”; and, worst of all–“Boy, those better not be no tears I’m seeing.”
Everything we hear tells us that to be a man is to be bulletproof.
Well, guess what–You ain’t no Superman.
It usually takes no more than 20 minutes to get a basic physical–less than a half-hour for a physician to declare you healthy or detect potential problems.
If you are suffering from chronic sinus problems try out this simply daily remedy that my sister recently turned me onto. Believe me the results have been wonderful.
The Neti Pot is a tried and true method of nasal irrigation that has been around for centuries. It is a ceramic pot that looks like a cross between and small teapot and Aladdin’s magic lamp. (Some drug stores sell a plastic version of the pot, which I use and is very effective, but I imagine will have to be replaced every few months or so.) The Neti pot is a therapy that uses a salt and water solution to flush out the nasal cavity.
Ear, nose, and throat surgeons recommend nasal irrigation for their patients who've undergone sinus surgery, to clear away crusting in the nasal passages. Many patients with chronic sinus symptoms from bacterial infections, allergies, and environmental irritants also have begun to regularly use the Neti pot or other nasal irrigation devices, claiming that these devices alleviate congestion, facial pain and pressure, and reduce the need for antibiotics and nasal sprays. Research backs up these claims, finding that nasal irrigation can be an effective way to relieve sinus symptoms when used along with standard sinus treatments.
The basic explanation of how the Neti pot works is that it thins mucus to help flush it out of the nasal passages. A more biological explanation has to do with tiny, hair-like structures called cilia that line the inside of the nasal and sinus cavities. These cilia wave back and forth to push mucus either to the back of the throat where it can be swallowed, or to the nose to be blown out. Saline solution can help increase the speed and improve coordination of the cilia so that they may more effectively remove the bacteria, allergens, and other irritants that cause sinus problems.
This following excerpt from the WebMD site explains more about the use and effectiveness of the Neti Pot.
How Do You Use the Neti Pot?
There aren't any official medical guidelines, but Neti pots usually come with an insert that explains how to use them. You might also want to ask your family doctor or an ear, nose, and throat specialist to talk you through the process so you can get comfortable with the Neti pot before trying it on your own.
Typically, to use the Neti pot you would mix about 16 ounces (1 pint) of lukewarm water with 1 teaspoon of salt. (Some people add 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to buffer the solution and make it gentler on the nose, but there isn't any real proof that this improves the experience.)
Once you've filled the Neti pot, tilt your head over the sink at about a 45-degree angle. Place the spout into your top nostril, and gently pour the saline solution into that nostril.
The fluid will flow through your nasal cavity and into the other nostril. It may also run into your throat. If this occurs, just spit it out. Blow your nose to get rid of any remaining liquid, then refill the Neti pot and repeat the process on the other side. How Often do You Need to Use the Neti Pot?
In studies, people with very severe sinus symptoms found relief from using the Neti pot or other nasal irrigation system daily. Three times a week was often enough once symptoms subsided. Is the Neti Pot Safe?
Research has found that the Neti pot is generally safe. About 10% of regular users experience mild side effects, such as nasal irritation and stinging. Nosebleeds can also occur, but they are rare. Reducing the amount of salt in the solution, adjusting the frequency of Neti pot use, and changing the temperature of the water appear to reduce side effects.
To prevent infection, it's important to properly care for your nasal irrigation device. "People use these devices over and over again. They have to be clean," says Jean Kim, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Either wash the device thoroughly by hand, or put it in the dishwasher if it's dishwasher-safe. Follow by drying the device completely after each use.
Where Can I Find a Neti Pot?
Neti pots are available over-the-counter at many drug stores, health food stores, and online retailers. They cost between $10 and $20.
I am a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a keen observer of the human condition. I have written and published a collection of short stories--Soul Songs.
