A Family Fitness Guide

Colds vs. Allergies

Well, the weather is getting cooler and that means the nasty cold, flu and allergies season is just around the corner.  Do you know the different between colds and allergies?

Many people (10-20%) of the population suffer from allergic responses to allergens. What can you do about it?

• Track the pollen count for your area;
• Stay indoors in central air conditioning with a HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter attachment when the pollen count is high. This will remove pollen from the indoor air;
• Get away from the pollen where possible;
• Take antihistamine medications;
• If medication does not give enough relief, consider immunotherapy (”allergy shots”).

Joint Health

Joints pain any one? Consider these strategies to encourage joint health.

• Strength training. Weight-bearing exercise builds strong bone density and protects joints by strengthening the muscles that stabilize them. Combine strength training and low-impact activities such as swimming or water aerobics.
• Stretch. Regular stretching keeps joints, muscles and ligaments limber and strong, while reducing injury risk, lowering stress and encouraging weight loss.
• Slim down. Every pound of your body weight places four pounds of pressure per step on the knees. Losing 10 pounds translates to 48,000 fewer pounds of pressure per mile walked.
• Glucosamine and chondroitin. Though study results are mixed. Some find glucosamine or glocosamine plus chondroitin helpful and they appear to do no harm. To determine if these supplements are helpful for you, try 1,500 miligrams of glucosamine and 100 miligrams chondroitin, twice a day, then evaluate your pain level after 7 days.

Dash Diet

I get the Hill Health magazine every other month or so. They have some helpful information in this issue and would like to share with my readers here.

“Dash Diet

A recent study suggests the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet - known to lower blood pressure and cholesterol- also might be effective for losing weight and keeping if off. DASH emphasizes fruits, vegetables and fat-free and low-fat dairy and encourages whole grains, fish, poultry and nuts while limiting red meat, sweets and sweetened beverages.

For some， DASH can be hard to follow. If you’re struggling to stick to it, try one small change such as replacing high-sodium snacks for that apple instead of those chips, add more elements of the diet, such as increasing you vegetable intake and choosing leaner poultry and meats.”

Smokers and people with high blood pressure seem to benefit more than non-smokers and people with normal blood pressure with the high-fiber, low-fat DASH diet. You can find the DASH diet food pyramid from “How good is the DASH diet?”

DASH Diet is something women should take seriously, can reduce women’s risk of heart attack and stroke by 24 percent. Click the link below the post for the DASH diet plan.

Hope you find this piece of information helpful.

Kitchen Sponge

Did you know the average kitchen sponge is saturated with mold, bacteria and yeast, giving food pathogens free range to roam on kitchen counter tops, dishes, small appliances and eventually enter your mouth, according to the USDA Department of Agricultural Research? The result is often downright distasteful – stomach pains, cramping, and diarrhea.

The USDA team who investigated different methods to clean dirty sponges found that microwaving sponges for one minute or running them through a dishwasher on a heated dry cycle killed more than 99% of bacteria, yeast and molds. Bleach solutions, lemon juice or deionized water killed an average of 37-87% of these pathogens.

This is probably the only reason Ｉ　ｋｅｅｐ　ｍｙ　ｍｉｃｒｏｗａｖｅ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｇａｒａｇｅ．

Fruity Salsa

My sister made a delicious fruity salsa for our Labor Day picnic. This recipe is loaded with antioxidant like vitamin A, beta carotene, vitamin C and lycopene. Easy to make.

• 1 large mango or papaya, peeled, seeded, and diced
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1/2 cup fresh chopped cilantro
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 small (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies
• Fresh lime juice
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and chill well. Good served with chicken, fish and baked corn chips.

Getting A Stress Test

From Doctor Chet Zelasko

Fitness is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Being fit means that you should have a certain level of muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body fat, and cardiovascular endurance. Let’s define some of these terms:

• Muscular strength is an indication of how strong you are. In other words, how much weight can you lift?
• Muscular endurance is how long you can sustain a muscular effort. For example, shoveling snow or digging in a garden requires that you lift a weight repeatedly, so it combines strength and exertion over time.
• Flexibility is the range of motion in a joint. Touching your toes or not is an indication of lumbar flexibility, while trying to touch your hands behind your back (at shoulder level) is an indication of shoulder flexibility.
• Body fat is the amount of fat you store for energy on a rainy day-or a month or two. It’s no surprise that Americans carry far too much body fat and need to reduce it.
• Cardiovascular endurance is a measure of the fitness of your heart and blood vessels.

While every area is important, your heart is critical to all other areas-if it’s got a problem, your body has a problem. That’s why you need to have a stress test before you begin to exercise strenuously.

A stress test is a maximal-exertion graded-exercise test (GXT). This type of test is usually performed on a treadmill-sometimes a bike-and begins at an easy level and takes you to a maximal effort in 8-12 minutes. During the test, a cardiologist or internist will monitor your heart patterns on an electrocardiograph for any abnormalities. While there are certain limitations to the test, it’s the only way to test how your heart will perform at maximal levels and whether disease is present.

More than identifying whether you have heart disease, a recent study on men who were referred for a GXT demonstrated that the men who were the fittest lived longer than those who were not as fit. The higher the fitness level, the longer they lived-whether they had diagnosed heart disease or not (1).

Who should have a stress test? Anyone who is considering strenuous exercise, such as running a 5K or doing a triathlon. Most professional health organizations, including the American College of Sports Medicine, recommend a stress test performed by an internist or cardiologist if you are a male 40 years and older or a woman 50 years and older. In addition to checking your heart for any signs of disease, the GXT provides a baseline for comparison if problems develop in the future. How would your doctor know what is normal for you if you had never been evaluated?

Getting fit is important, but getting fit safely is even more so. Schedule an appointment with your healthcare professional to discuss when you should have your GXT. Fitness is not an option in this life. Make it a priority for you.