The Health Blog

The labels on a lot of foods in the supermarket are very deceiving, and help to maintain a lot of misconceptions the public have about what is a healthy food and what isn’t. No matter what the advertising on the label states you must always read the ingredients list at the back and look at the nutrition panel. This will give you a true representation of what is really in the food you are eating.

The ingredients list will tell you exactly what is in the food, arranged in order by weight from most to least. The nutrition information panel will give you specific details on the nutrient content of the food. This can be quite confusing because everything is measured in grams. Most people cannot relate to grams unless they are a nutritionist or cocaine dealer! It will be easier to remember that one teaspoon holds an average of five grams. Therefore, if a breakfast cereal contains 10 grams of sugars per 30 grams, you will know that there are two teaspoons of sugar in a 30 gram serve. Most people eat much more than the tiny serving sizes stated on the label. A sugary breakfast cereal like this may be extremely low in fat, but eating it will still make you fat and raise your risk of diabetes and heart disease significantly.

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Since the egg can only survive for up to 24 hours and the sperm can live for seven days in alkaline mucus, there is only a short window of time each month in which you can conceive.

Some women only produce fertile mucus for a day or two a month so it is vital to know when it is happening. It is all too easy to have intercourse at the wrong time of the month or not frequently enough at the right time. Here’s how you can identify your crucial fertile period for yourself:

Warning

Note that you will not be able to use this test if you have thrush or some other vaginal discharge because it will not be possible to see the changes in your cervical mucus. Any such problems should be treated before you try for a baby.

•     After passing urine, blot your vaginal mucus with white toilet paper.

•     Lightly apply a finger to the mucus on the toilet paper and then pull gently away to test its ability to stretch.

•     If it feels slippery, like raw egg white, and can stretch between your thumb and first finger up to several inches before it breaks, then it is fertile mucus. If it is sticky or crumbly (a bit like ’school glue’) then it is the more acid, infertile mucus. As the mucus changes to fertile mucus, this is a sign that ovulation is about to take place.

•     Meanwhile, your cervix is also changing. To feel these changes, empty your bladder and wash your hands. Then place your right index finger in your vagina until you can feel your cervix.

•     As your period ends, your cervix is located low in your vaginal canal and the opening is closed, giving the feeling of touching the tip of a nose or a small rubber ball. As ovulation approaches and oestrogen levels increase, the cervix moves higher into the vaginal opening, making it more difficult to reach. It also begins to soften and opens, resembling parted lips. This opening and rising helps the sperm to travel into the womb. After ovulation, the cervix lowers again and closes and is blocked with mucus to stop sperm entering.

The best way to take advantage of this window of time is to have intercourse on the first day when you feel wet vaginally and notice that the discharge is stretchy. Intercourse should continue every other day while the mucus stays wet and stretchy. Taking a break of 48 hours between intercourses allows time to maximize sperm volume. This is very important.

However, it is also important that this method or the use of ovulation kits (described below) does not take over your lives. For example, I know of a man who was phoned at work by his wife because she had found fertile mucus and wanted him to come home straight away! In situations like this, spontaneity can be lost, the man can feel that he is just viewed as a breeding stud, and both partners can lose the enjoyment of love-making.

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Fortunately, we’re finally beginning to get smarter about safety, says Jeffrey Sacks, M.D., medical epidemiologist at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, division of unintentional injury prevention, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “There has been a proliferation of safety devices in our lives,” Dr. Sacks says. “But honestly, we can still be pretty dumb about using them. And way, way too often, alcohol and drugs are a factor in our lack of judgment.”

It’ll be of little surprise to anyone that one place we exercise the worst judgment and pay for it the most is on the road, where more fatal accidents happen than anywhere else. But we also do quite a number on ourselves at the workplace and-even worse-in our own homes. Here are the top types of fatal accidents and steps that safety experts say you can take to avoid bumping into your maker before your time.

Motor-vehicle crashes. “About 85 percent of fatal traffic crashes are caused by human error and could have been avoided had the person been driving defensively,” says Tim Kennedy, program manager for Highway Traffic Safety at the National Safety Council in Itasca, Illinois. “People can lower their chances of being involved in a car crash dramatically by not speeding, by not driving after drinking, and by leaving appropriate space between themselves and other cars,” Kennedy says.

Falls. Each year more than a million folks get a trip to the hospital for a trip down the stairs. Aside from exercising caution, experts say that regular exercise-especially exercises that emphasize balance, such as tai chi-can help you maintain your coordination and stay on your feet throughout your life.

Poisonings -solids and liquids. We tend to think of poisoning as something that happens when little kids get into medicine cabinets, but people ages 25 to 44 are actually six feet under everyone else when it come to this brand of accidental death-with twice the death rate of toddlers. If you suspect that you or someone else has “overdosed” on drugs or medication or has swallowed something poisonous, call your local poison control center. More than 70 percent of poisonings can be treated through instructions taken over the phone, says Alton Thygerson, Ed.D., professor of health science at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and technical consultant to the National Safety Council’s First-Aid Institute in Itasca, Illinois.

Drowning. About 85 percent of all drowning victims are men, says Dr. Thygerson. Drowning kills about 4,500 people a year. When the victims are adult men, alcohol is a factor most of the time, Dr. Thygerson says. “We can’t seem to get it through to people that drinking and boating and swimming are deadly combinations. Save it for the shore.”

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As with anorexia nervosa, the symptoms of bulimia nervosa might appear in a number of other physical and psychiatric conditions.

Take, for example, the problem of overeating, technically known as hyperphagia. The urge to consume excessive quantities of food can arise when the hypothalamus becomes damaged due to a head injury, tumor, or some other cause.

Endocrine disorders, such as diabetes or hyperthyroidism, can disrupt metabolism, causing the patient to burn energy at an abnormally high rate. When energy stores are depleted, the body, in a kind of metabolic panic, turns on the hunger drive to compensate.

Prescribed medications and illicit drugs also affect eating behavior. Some antidepressants and antipsychotic medications may increase appetite and lead to weight gain. Marijuana is a well-known cause of binge eating. In some patients, frequent abuse of marijuana contributes heavily to the bulimic cycle.

The congenital defect known as Prader-Willi syndrome causes ravenous appetite with poor ability to feel full; the eating thus continues unabated and leads to massive obesity. Abnormal eating occurs in the Kleine-Levin syndrome, which is also marked by periods of extreme sleepiness.

In most of these cases, it’s easy to spot the cause of overeating. Sometimes, though, the cause is more subtle. One of my patients, a sixteen-year-old named Sarah, suffered from a form of epilepsy that produced certain kinds of brain seizures. Two years before, she had started dieting to become thin. She developed anorexia and later became bulimic as well. During a seizure she flew into a rage at any object that happened to be in sight at that moment-a lipstick container, a telephone, whatever.

Sometimes the focus of her rage was the food on her plate. Because food enraged her so much, she stopped eating, eventually losing so much weight that she had to be hospitalized. Specialized brain-wave recordings revealed that her seizures occurred in the part of the brain that controls emotional states, rather than in the part responsible for muscle activity. In Sarah’s case, an anticonvulsant drug played a vital part in treating her eating disorder.

As in anorexia, the distorted attitudes and bizarre behavior caused by bulimia may be confused with other psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia. In rare cases, a patient may indeed have both an eating disorder and schizophrenia. Recognizing the presence of both conditions is crucial, since therapy designed to correct one problem may have no effect-or an adverse effect- on the other.

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As an attorney for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Sarah Yerger’s day is jam-packed with meetings and other appointments. But she always saves her final appointment for herself: She heads for the gym. Scheduling her workout time in this way has enabled her to melt 55 pounds off her 5-foot-4-inch frame.

Like everyone else in her family Sarah had always been over- t weight. “I believed that I was destined to be that way so I didn’t pay much attention to my food choices or exercise as much as I should,” explains the 31 -year-old Elizabefhtown, Pennsylvania, resident. And it showed: Over the years, her weight crept toward 200 pounds. j

Then Sarah’s mother developed health problems because of her excess weight. Shaken by her mom’s poor health, Sarah felt that her own weight might put her at risk for illness in later years. So she decided to do something about it.

Her first step was to join a local gym. But with her hectic work schedule, she had a hard time keeping her promise to go every day. That’s when she came up with the idea of adding her workouts to her appointment calendar.

Keeping those exercise appointments isn’t always easy. “But even on the busiest days, I make every effort to get to the gym,” Sarah says.

Sometimes, special occasions—like a party for a friend’s birthday or a coworker’s promotion—coincide with Sarah’s scheduled workout time. On those days, she simply plans her workouts for the morning. She arrives at the celebrations feeling good that she didn’t shortchange her health.

But when she receives a spur-of-the-moment invitation to join her coworkers for an after-work happy hour, Sarah politely declines. “I always say no without feeling guilty,” she says.

Her commitment to exercise, combined with a healthy diet, has paid off: Sarah lost 55 pounds within about a year, and she has maintained her weight at a trim and toned 145 pounds for more than 2 years. She has even won gym-sponsored fitness contests for the most pounds and inches lost.

S WINNING ACTION

Schedule your exercise as you would a meeting. If you’re busy like Sarah, pencil your exercise on your calendar just like other important things you must do. And don’t cancel!

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