We’ve all heard the news about the potential heart-health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption. It’s no wonder such stories grab headlines. They’re the nutritional equivalent of the classic media formula of “man bites dog.” As for the rest of us, we celebrate by raising a glass to our health.

But whenever I hear one of these reports, I wonder whether it actually ends up doing more harm than good. Most fail to mention the health risks of excessive alcohol consumption, which will do a body far more damage than moderate consumption will do it good. And they leave the impression that health benefits apply to men and women alike. Not so.

Most of the research regarding alcohol’s effects in raising good cholesterol, or HDL, levels looks at men and post-menopausal women. Very little, if any, evidence suggests that alcohol consumption in younger women is beneficial. Even worse, other studies associate younger women’s alcohol consumption with increased disease risk.

Up to 4 percent of breast cancers can be attributed to alcohol. According to a recent study in the British Journal of Cancer, every drink increases a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer. In a recent summary of 63 published studies, 65 percent of the studies found an association between alcohol consumption and increased breast cancer risk.

It’s tempting to dismiss these health risks by pointing to more obvious ones, like excess weight and inactivity. In fact, 54.3 percent of women age 20 to 39 are obese or overweight. But if you’re one of them and you’re trying to lose weight and increase fitness, drinking alcohol will hardly help you achieve your goals.

Add that much-ballyhooed glass of red wine a day without making any other changes in your diet or exercise, and you’ll gain nearly 15 pounds per year. In four years, you’ll be 60 pounds heavier, which won’t do much to help your heart.

Counting calories from alcohol can be doubly difficult. Not only are these calories less satisfying than those from food, these days they’re likely to come in super-sized martini glasses the size of swimming pools. Alcohol sabotages your diet in other ways as well. Lowered inhibitions can lead to overeating, while even one drink can dampen your metabolism for up to 24 hours.

Bottom line: Be honest with yourself. Don’t use health claims about spirits as an excuse to justify excessive drinking which endangers your life, liver, looks and limbs. Keep in mind that plenty of other, better ways to improve heart health are out there. Start by getting and staying fit. Exercise at least five times each week. And eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whose antioxidants may reduce the risk of heart disease by reducing the oxidation of cholesterol in your arteries.

Most of all, remember that less is more. And get all the facts before you go looking for your health at the bottom of a glass of booze.

Jennifer Grossman is the director of the Dole Nutrition Institute. – NU

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but so can other fruits and vegetables, whole grains and certain antioxidants. So which foods should you add to your shopping list? Doctors say answering that question could be key to protecting your heart health.

Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., with up to 2,500 Americans dying from the condition each day. Doctors say people can control their risk of heart disease by exercising regularly, getting regular checkups and eating a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol. That’s where the right shopping list comes in.

To help people select heart-healthy groceries, the American Heart Association now has an online grocery list builder. The free, innovative tool helps people save time by making it easier for them to select products certified to be low in saturated fat and cholesterol and conveniently identified by the American Heart Association’s red-and-white heart-check mark.

You can access the easy-to-use tool at heartcheckmark.org. Once there, click on “Create your list today,” then browse through the more than 850 products and click “Add to list.” A box called “Your Grocery List” shows your list of foods. When you’re done, just print the list and take it with you when you go shopping.

You can select items by product manufacturer or these categories:

• Beverages

• Breads

• Breakfast foods

• Canned soup

• Dairy case

• Deli meats

• Desserts

• Frozen foods

• Fruits and vegetables

• Meat and poultry

• Pasta, sauces and grains

• Seafood

• Snacks

A separate category, called “My Items,” allows you to add other household items, such as spices or bottled water, to your list.

“With all the messages in grocery stores, consumers are bombarded with information,” said Penny Kris-Etherton, R.D., Ph.D., professor of nutrition at Pennsylvania State University. “The simple heart-check mark from the American Heart Association makes it easy for them to cut through the clutter and reliably find the nutritious foods they’re looking for.” The online tool, she added, makes healthy shopping even faster.

For more information about the American Heart Association’s Food Certification Program and the heart-check mark, visit heartcheckmark.org.

A new online grocery list builder can help people shop for heart-healthy foods.

Note to Editors: Although this story is evergreen and may be used at any time, it may be especially appropriate during March, which is nutrition month.

There is a lot said about health care these days. With costs rising and no end in sight there is a bigger need than ever for everyone to have the coverage of a health care plan. Health car plans are basically like insurance that helps you cover medical costs. Like any insurance they are sometimes difficult to understand.

There are many types of health care plans available. Each type breaks down into two basic groups: group or individual. Group plans are the least expensive option. They are provided through an employer. Individual plans are offered through private companies and can cost much more than group plans because there are no group discounts to the provider. Within each group there are a few different type of health care plans.

Fee for service plans are the most common and traditional forms of health care coverage. With a fee service the covered individual gets many choices of doctors and hospitals. The insurance provider pays for a portion of your costs while you pay a fee. You pay both a monthly fee for coverage and fees based on the care you receive. Many times there is a deductible that must be met before the insurance provider pays anything. Most plans also have a maximum amount you will pay out of pocket. Once this figure is reached your costs are covered 100%.

Health maintenance organizations or HMO’s are another type of health care plan. HMO’s charge a monthly fee. You are required to use certain doctors who are signed up with the HMO. You pay a fee for any costs you incur called a co-payment. The total costs of any medical care is negotiated between the doctor and the HMO so the costs are lower.

Preferred provider organizations or PPO’s are a combination of the fee based plan and an HMO. There are limits on the doctors and hospitals you can choose, you make a co-payment for each service and you may have a deductible. You can, however, use a doctor that is not part of the PPO. You will still get coverage but you may end up paying a larger fee.

There are other forms of health care plans. The government offer two plans: Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is a plan for people over age 65 or disabled. The coverage provided by Medicare often changes and can be confusing. There are different types of Medicaid. There is a free type and a fee based type. Medicaid is another government offered plan. It is based on income. With Medicaid all of your expenses are covered. New changes have made it so some care requires a very small fee. There are also variations in Medicaid. To find out information a person should contact their local government human services agency.

Health care plans can be very confusing. Talking with your provider will help ensure you completely understand how your plan works and what coverage is provided.

Yoga is not only a set of physical exercise; it is deep Vedic conceptual philosophy that is based on practical aspects of spirituality and strength of one’s soul. You can expand your knowledge about yoga postures, Asana and advanced variations of yogic exercises that are not taught in common and basic yoga training classes.

Yoga teacher training in India is not only a mere training in yoga, rather it is training for teachers of yoga so that they may attain specific skills to spread the good effects of yogic exercises in the common masses through their pupils. It is an international chain of institutes for yoga training that is devoted to provide you excellent training in yogic skills. Yoga Teacher Training programs are held regularly and you can check out for the dates of the upcoming Yoga teacher training programs in relevant newsletters. The prices for the special training are very reasonable and the package includes many other facilities such as:

• Pick up from New Delhi, Indira Gandhi International Airport with travelling facility to the Ashram.
• Proper healthy accommodation at the ashram with full facilities
• Pure Ayurvedic vegetarian meals that will let you learn the importance of Ayurveda while learning the Yoga
• Proper training period of 4 weeks
• You will be respectfully dropped at the Indira Gandhi International Airport back at New Delhi.

Join the Yoga retreat in India and learn a whole set of new skills that will enlighten your knowledge base to further brightness.

A good health and fitness program needs to focus on factors that prevent us from becoming unhealthy. One factor that has definitely a correlation with unhealthiness is obesity. The health consequences for being overweight or obese are vast and may include high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and some cancers to name a few.

Losing weight and becoming healthy for obese and overweight people is imperative and well designed fitness software can support this. One way it can be helpful is to calculate a person’s calorie balance and correlate these numbers to their body measurements and vital signs. It is very encouraging and motivating to see yourself lose weight and in the same instance your blood pressure and cholesterol levels go down.

Weight loss all boils down to your calorie balance. If your intake is higher then you spend, you gain weight. In part 1, we talked about the calorie intake side of the calorie balance equation. Part 2 describes the requirements for the calories spent module.

Let’s start out with the assumption that the calories spent will significantly vary between people and can not be generalized between high, medium and low activity level. We need a more precise method than that. If we look just plainly at the factors that influence our energy spending, we can conclude the following:

Larger people will spend more energy than small people. It makes sense that when you move more weight it costs more energy. Younger people will spend more than older people. Males will spend more than females. Tall thin people will spend more energy than short stocky with the same weight. The tall thin person has more body surface and loses more heat. Lean muscled people spend more energy than the average or overweight person with the same weight. Muscles use more energy than fat cells. Active people will spend more energy than sedative people.

During a day we execute many activities all with a different length of time and intensity level. Between activities there can be huge differences in intensity level. For instance fishing is way less intense than rowing a boat. Also within the same activity different intensity levels exist. For instance 30 minutes running will cost more energy then 30 minutes jogging or walking. Executing an activity with a high intensity level will spend more energy per unit of time.

When calculating the calorie balance, the fitness software should take all the above factors into its formula and adjust the variables automatically. For instance if somebody loses weight, this should be immediately reflected in the outcome. Let’s say I weigh in on Monday and the system calculates 2500 calories spent and two weeks later I weigh again and provided my daily activities were exactly the same but I lost two pounds, the system should automatically calculate the new calories burned taking the 2 pounds lost into account.

You should have the ability to create multiple activity plans in the system, individualized per person. Most people repeat their daily activities on a weekly basis, if today is Tuesday, next Tuesday my activities will be pretty much the same. From Monday till Friday the activities may be similar, but they can differ significantly from weekend to weekend.

In order to calculate the calories spent during the day precisely, you will need to record all activities, the length of time for each activity and the intensity level it was executed. Doing so could mean a lot of time behind the computer entering all this data. To circumvent this problem, the software should allow you to create a plan that is repeated on a weekly basis with default values. Now you need to only to copy this plan and update the differences from what actually occurred. The actual activities with their time length are noted on an activity worksheet that can be printed on a daily basis. This way your data can be recorded within 30 seconds.

Next we need to be able to compare our calories spent with our calorie intake. This can be done in the form of a chart that displays the calorie balance per person over time. See the following example: calorie analysis. This chart makes abundantly clear what your calorie balance is and consequently shows the reason why you lose weight or not lose weight.

In the next article I will talk about body measurement and vital sign readings and how they correlate to your work outs, supplement intake etcetera