H5

Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

Speak Up

A LITTLE BEND, A LOT OF BENEFIT

These days, yoga gets more love than whomever's starring in 'American Idol.' And for good reason: It increases three relax-it's-OK compounds in your body, and brings you a whole host of body benefits. Best of all, you can get its rewards even if you're about as pliable as a two-by-four. Talk about a natural high. Yoga boosts blood levels of serotonin, dopamine AND endorphins - three natural feel-good substances. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that makes you feel cheerful and content. Dopamine is a brain chemical closely tied to the pleasure centres of the brain. And endorphins? Those are the opiatelike compounds that produce a sense of well-being. Get all these from a single yoga exercise, such as the Sun Salutation, or a full-fledged class. This ancient practice may boost mood even higher by preventing middle-age weight gain. One study found that it helped adults between the ages of 45 and 55 maintain or lose weight when they practised regularly for four years or more, as opposed to the pound-a-year gain that happens to most people. And the effect of yoga on overweight people was especially dramatic: They gained 18.5 pounds fewer than those who did not practise. We recommend that you do a few minutes every morning to get you in a good mood for the day. So down-dog it: You've got nothing to lose - except maybe some mental and physical weight.

WALK FASTER, LIVE LONGER: CAN YOU HIT THIS SPEED?

There's a way to figure out whether you'll be around to see the next economic boom or the next five of them, and it doesn't involve a crystal ball or a blood test. Just see how quickly you can walk a mile. Gait speed - how fast you can walk when you're really trying - may very well be another important "vital sign," like heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. That is, it may help predict how long you'll live. The magic number for staying young is 3.6 kilometres per hour. Why? If you can walk that fast, you are better able to bounce back from an illness. That's why zippy over-65 walkers in a recent study enjoyed lower mortality rates. So, time yourself (or your mom or dad) on a treadmill or around the track. If you don't hit even a 3.2-km-per-hour mark, don't despair. You'll get faster with practise, and even seemingly small improvements boost your longevity, too. Get your speed up by intermittently picking up the pace for a short distance on a walk (do this on smooth, level stretches) or a treadmill (if you feel stable on one). One easy way to increase your pace is to do it by the clock: For the first 10 seconds of every other minute, walk faster. Each week, keep up the faster pace longer. Once you've got your walking mojo going, add some strength training, which will help you get faster as well as stronger. And walk every day.

GOT A COLD? GET OVER IT

If you come into contact with people, you're going to spend time sneezing, coughing, blowing and sniffling. There's simply no way to avoid catching the occasional cold. You can't really cure a cold either, but there are ways to get rid of it faster. Three things have a real effect on speeding it up, and they may reduce the average time a cold lasts, from roughly five days to three. Do any of these the minute you start feeling cold symptoms: 1. Chicken soup: Have one cup four times a day. Ingredients in Mom's favourite remedy have anti-inflammatory properties that prevent certain white blood cells (neutrophils) from migrating to your airways and contributing to the inflammation that causes annoying cold symptoms. Chicken soup also contains compounds that help inhibit mucus production, and its heat and steam may help open nasal passages. 2. Vitamin C: Wash down 500 milligrams of the vitamin with plenty of water four times each day. It's not clear why this works, but research has shown that it does. 3. Zinc lozenges: Take one every six hours. Your immune system needs zinc to function. Just don't try taking zinc lozenges every day as a preventive step: Taking more than 100 mg of zinc daily over a long period actually hurts, not helps, your immune system.

THE HEALTH REASON TO BITE YOUR TONGUE

Most of us think that as long as you don't pollute your body with cigarettes (or secondhand smoke) or put your face in front of the car's exhaust pipe, then your lungs will function fine. But that fight you had with your spouse or the feelings you have for that son-of-a-rhymes-with-witch who cut you off on the freeway may keep you from breathing easy. And that prevents your body from getting the fuel it needs to support all of your other systems. Yes, getting angry is annoying enough, but you pay twice, as anger hurts your lungs. Although lung function naturally declines as you age, it may slip faster in perpetual hotheads. In one study, men who scored highest in hostility performed poorly on lung function tests, both at the beginning of the study and years later. Strong negative emotions seem to provoke inflammation and alter hormone function, which can knock the wind out of your lungs' sails. Also, the kind of bad feeling that piggybacks anger often goes hand-in-hand with smoking and inactivity, two of the biggest known breath-takers around. Each of these - anger, unnatural hormone levels, smoking and inactivity - goads the others to make lung function worse.

EAT LESS MEAT WITHOUT MISSING IT

A little less meat (red meat like beef, pork, veal, lamb, elk, luncheon meats, sausage, et cetera) on your plate could mean much less meat on your bones - and less weight on your shoulders about how many more resources are used by livestock than plant-based crops. People who eat few or no animal products are less likely to be overweight or obese than people who eat meat. Not enough to scare you out of the steakhouse? Consider this: Dropping meat lowers your risk of diabetes and heart disease - in fact, postmenopausal women who substituted vegetable protein for their usual red meat lowered their coronary heart disease death rates by a whopping 30 per cent (compared with those who didn't change their eating habits). So how do you cut the meat without missing it? Go halfway. You don't have to go cold, uh, tofu. Instead of nixing meat entirely, just choose appropriate portion sizes and low-fat cooking methods. A serving of meat is equal to 85 grams, about the size of a deck of playing cards. Limit red meat to one serving per week, and don't cook it so it dries out or chars. Get all the nutrients. It's easy to miss out on important dietary compounds when you cut back on a major food source. So when you trim the meat, fill the nutrition hole with enough protein, vitamins B-12 and D, calcium, iron and zinc. Get them with soy products such as tofu or soy burgers; legumes, lentils or garbanzo beans; low-fat dairy; dark green, leafy vegetables; nuts; and whole grains.