Health Promotion: December 2006 Archives

This article was excerpted from The Entrepreneur Diet. Buy it today from EntrepreneurPress.com.

Living the life of an entrepreneur, it's easy to get lost in the cerebral side of your existence. By throwing yourself into the business, you may have lost touch with the simple joy in movement. We've come up with reality checks for the most popular excuses people have for not staying in shape.

Myth #1: I'm not athletic, so even if I wanted to become more active, I can't do it.

Reality Check: There are many ways to incorporate more physical activity into your day.

HealthDay News -- This holiday season, give yourself the gift of a healthier heart.

Limiting your alcohol consumption is one important step, said Dr. Ajit Raisinghani, director of the non-invasive cardiac lab at the University of California, San Diego.

He said that every year during the holidays, emergency rooms at hospitals across the United States see patients with heart palpitations and light headedness. Many of these patients have an abnormal heart rhythm caused by drinking too much alcohol -- a condition called "Holiday Heart."

"Usually the patient experiences palpitations accompanied by a sensation of light-headedness. When the patients come into the ER, we learn they've usually spent the weekend drinking. Most often, they're college kids who are otherwise healthy," Raisinghani said.

Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant. 

• In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
• 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)

The age groups that include young children to adolescents witness so many advertisements, medical experts now fear for their health. Reports show that 40,000 ads each year from television alone may be boosting obesity, poor nutrition, cigarette use and alcohol consumption among U.S. youth.

According to a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which appears in the December issue of Pediatrics, there should be calls for more media education to counter some of advertising's negative effects.

Dr. Donald Shifrin -- chairman of the AAP Committee on Communications -- said "We're pleading with pediatricians and parents to become aware that consumeristic tendencies are being fed right from birth … we have to understand that youngsters under a certain age cannot differentiate between a commercial and a program. To them, it's real. There should be some effort on the part of parents to point out that this is a commercial."

Minnesota is the healthiest state in the U.S., and Louisiana is the least healthy, according to a new ranking.

The list was produced by the nonprofit United Health Foundation in partnership with the American Public Health Association and the Partnership for Prevention.

Leading the list are:

1. Minnesota
2. Vermont
3. New Hampshire
4. Hawaii
5. Connecticut

"This study may help explain the link between dietary fat consumption and inflammation and could be one of the critical links between metabolism and immune responses," says senior author Professor Charles Mackay, Director of Sydney's Garvan Institute's Immunology Program.

Our intake of fats (fatty acids) has changed dramatically over the last thirty years. At the same time there has been an increase in inflammatory diseases in the western world - especially asthma, atherosclerosis, and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. "We have shown that a subset of white blood cells, called dendritic cells, which initiate immune responses, rely on the fatty acid binding molecule aP2 for their function. It is possible that different fatty acids or their total levels will affect aP2 function in dendritic cells, and hence affect immune responses," explains Mackay.