blood sugar and healthy eating

Blood sugar refers to the level of glucose in the blood. The change in blood glucose level in your body from eating foods varies based on the type of food involved. The carbohydrates in certain food items require less energy to be converted into glucose, which results in faster digestion and a quicker increase of blood glucose. And carbohydrates in certain food release glucose slowly or gradually into blood stream.

Scientists have ranked carbohydrates based on their effect on blood glucose level. They call this measure, Glycemic Index. This is measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels.

When the food in your stomach goes though digestion process, carbohydrates that break down slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the blood stream, have a low glycemic index and the opposite situation will have higher glycemic index.

Excess consumption of high glycemic carbo (so-called "bad carbohydrates"), such as the rapidly-absorbed carbohydrates found in foods with a high glycemic index, creates an insulin resistance syndrome—insulin’s inability to properly process sugar.

Most fruits and vegetables except potatoes and watermelon have low glycemic index. Same is true for grainy breads. But whit rice, baked potatoes white breads are considered high glycemic food.

We are encouraged to eat healthy food. Foods of good fats and good carbs. This promotes lower glycemic response, lower insulin demand, better long-term blood glucose control and a reduction in blood lipids. People who follow a low clycemic index diet have lower risk for type 2 diabetes and heart diseases than others. Repeated glycemic spikes following a meal can cause to have system damage.

We all know that it’s not always easy to choose healthy food like a variety of items from the basic food groups: meat and meat substitutes; dairy; fruits and vegetables; grains, such as breads and pasta; and a limited amount of fats and sweets. to get the nutrition you need. You may eat more of your favorite foods from only one food group. This results, to get less of other food groups.

Healthy eating requires some planning and purpose and an effort to include a variety of foods in your meals.

Healthy eating and regular physical activity are important in managing your blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides, as well as help control your weight. One of the tricks to start getting into habit of eating healthy is to read up on good ways to eat healthy. That will gradually put you in the right track.

There are many books and magazines and websites that can give you the information and motivation you need for healthy eating ate every meal. You should also talk to your halth professional.

The US Department of Agriculthure (UDA) has a personalized food pyramid system called MyPyramid. It is your guide to better nutrition.

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Posted for Seesan and Assoicates, LLC: Your-Healthy-Living

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Healthy Living: Shed Body Fat

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People looking to shed body fat might want to follow their workouts with a few capsules of fish oil, if preliminary research is correct.
In a study of overweight adults, Australian researchers found that a combination of exercise and fish oil supplements was effective at reducing body fat and improving cholesterol levels and blood vessel function.

Study participants who took fish oil, alone or with exercise, saw their levels of "good" HDL cholesterol go up, while their triglycerides (an unhealthy form of blood fat) took a dip. Meanwhile, both exercise and fish oil seemed to cut body fat.
The overall benefits, according to the study authors, suggest that a combination of exercise and fish oil may improve overweight adults' cardiovascular health.
Peter R. C. Howe and colleagues at the University of South Australia in Adelaide report the findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Numerous studies have shown that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish may benefit the heart by lowering blood pressure and triglycerides, reducing the risk of blood clots and improving blood vessel function.

There's also evidence from lab studies that fish oil affects metabolism in a way that can reduce body fat, but the little research that has been done in humans has yielded conflicting findings, according to Hill's team.

For their study, the researchers randomly assigned 75 overweight adults to one of four groups: one that took 6 grams of fish oil per day; one that consumed fish oil and walked for 45 minutes three days per week; one that consumed pills containing sunflower oil; and a fourth that combined sunflower oil and walking.

After 12 weeks, the researchers found, volunteers who were taking fish oil showed greater improvements in their blood fats and blood vessel function than those who took sunflower oil.

What's more, exercise and fish oil each helped reduce body fat.
"Increasing intake of (omega-3 fatty acids) could be a useful adjunct to exercise programs aimed at improving body composition and decreasing cardiovascular disease risk," Howe and his colleagues write.

However, they point out, this is the first clinical trial to look at the cardiovascular and weight benefits of combining fish oil with exercise. More research is needed to investigate the long-term effects, the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC: Protect Your Heart with Omega guard: http://www.shaklee.net/nimsee/prodNutOmegaGuard
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Healthy Living: Eat Healthy

Eating healthier foods boosts metabolism. In our busy lives, when it comes to eating healthy food, we all need options and balance. We need to start thinking about balance in food we consume. Healthy eating is accomplished by balance in nutrition. That is by getting the right combination of nutrients our body needs for energy, growth, and health. It is discouraging that people are still unintentionally eating more calories than they think.

Too many people think that good nutrition means eating boring food. Utilize the product labels on most of the packaged and prepared foods. Now it has been the rule to reveal this detail so people can make the right choice. Please make sure you read the labels carefully and take into consideration what impact the ingredients of the food will have on your body. Be aware that many products you get are loaded with ingredients high in saturated fat and hydrogenated oil. Every time you select a food item think whether you really want to put that in your body. Take a closer look at what you're choosing to eat.

When you prepare a particular food and the recipe requires sugar or cream look into the possibilities of substituting with alternatives like fruits or evaporated skim milk. Use meat substitute if your recipe is suggesting ground beef. Instead of deep frying method, bake it with high temperature instead. Use pureed beans, vegetables or tofu, instead of soup with cream.

Try different variations. Experiment with new methods and expand the possibilities. Try new way to make new vegetables as your main course for your meals. When you and your family go out to eat, prefer for substitutes with light versions.

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Posted for Seesan Associates,LLC your-healthy-living

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Healthy Living: Water is a Nutrient!

Water is vital to our health. It’s easy to underestimate the importance of water in our lives. Without sufficient water, of course we would all surely die. The best medicine is clean water, says World Health Organization (W.H.O). For your good health, drinking water is inevitable.

Hydration has to be a daily mindset, so build it into your routine to ensure you are always hydrated.

Water helps to distribute nutrients and remove waste products from your body. Despite its importance, most adults don’t drink enough water on a daily basis. Each person has their own needed level of daily intake of water. This mainly depends on their health condition, and what level of activity they are involved in.

It has been determined that we need a minimum of 8 glasses of water per day. Some of us have higher fluid needs than others. The taller we are and the more we weigh the more fluids we need. More exercise that sweats heavily requires more water.

If you are taking medication, our kidneys will work better with extra water. Some medications may require more water than usual. Not only by drinking actual water, the other source of water comes from the food we eat. Like vegetables, fruits.

The human body has little reserves to store water, making it even more important to replenish your bodily supply each and every day. Our body loses almost three quarts of water every day.

A time may come during the course of your life when you may drink less. The changes in your appetite and fluid intake may be related to your general weakness and slowing metabolism. Some illnesses are associated with swallowing difficulties or nausea and vomiting. It is important to talk to your doctor about this because maintaining sufficient water in your body is vital.

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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC: Healthy Living

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Walking To Keep You Healthy

One of the inexpensive way to help you live healthy is walking. It provides you exercise which stimulates your chemistry that will help you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before. When you exercise regularly, you will also look better. This can boost your confidence, and improve your self-esteem, even reduces feelings of depression and anxiety, and improve several of your sicknesses.

A regular walking program can put you in position to be able to be in control and improve your cardiovascular health, weight loss and other related sicknesses like cholesterol blood pressure a regular. It can do good to numerous diseases that you may have. Along with walking and diet control you will be in your way to healthy living. The trick is to do it and stick with the program.

A thirty minutes a day walking will be good. It is very inexpensive way of taking care of your health.

If you are new to this, at the beginning you take it easy and start slowly. Nothing wrong wit starting slowly, in a mater of fact it will help you in the long run. You can increase the frequency and length of time gradually. As any physical activity, do not over do it especially in the beginning. After consulting with a doctor, make sure you are ready for dong this program.

It will be much better if you can get a walking partner. You can organize a walking group in your neighbor hood. Having a support group will help you stay in the program. Do your walking consistently to make a habit. Try to walk at the same time each day. And make exercise part of your daily routine, it is much better to walk outside as a result getting that fresh air.

Gradually increase the time and distance that you walk. Ma be a couple of block increase a day will go long way by the end of the week. Get a good pair or walking shoes. This is very important not to get hurt your feet and related muscles.
Change the scenery once in a while by switching your walking route. Just walking the same route can sometimes become boring. New look and feel will create freshness and keep the interest in the program. After a month, you will start feeling the change in your health. Your endurance will of course increase, you will feel healthy, and now you can begin to vary your terrain which will allow you to introduce even more variety into your walk.

Along with this walking program you also should have a diet program going. If you can keep up with your walking and diet program, be consistent and make it habit, you can get rid of lot of diseases. Just walking alone will not help you lose weight you will also need to closely monitor your diet. If you can do this in combination you will be able to decrease your cholesterol, diabetics, blood pressure and excessive weight.

Posted for Seesan and Assocites, LLC : Your-Healthy-Living

Health and Wellness: Understanding the danger of mixing

I am talking about the danger from mixing medication with alcohol. This is about your health and wellness. Mixing alcohol with certain medications can not only cause nausea and vomiting, headaches, drowsiness, fainting, loss of coordination but can end up in death. Mixing them is probably the deadly combination.

As a general rule, alcohol should not be used in combination with any other drug, prescribed or not. Alcohol on its own has some effects on health and, used in combination with any of the drugs you are taking, could increase the possible side effects of the medication.

Mot prescription medications, even some medicines that you purchased over-the-counter and even some herbal remedies can have harmful effects when combined with alcohol. Keep in mind that any pain medication can have a deadly interaction with alcohol.

It's really important to be aware of the side effects and risks of all drugs, including prescription medication that you are taking. You can be on the safe side by avoiding alcohol if you are taking a medication and don’t know its effect. Your pharmacist or other health care provider can help you determine which medications interact harmfully with alcohol. Get this information ahead of time, so you can make proper decision. It makes sense to check it out ahead of time with a pharmacist.

If you are in any kind of medication, be wise even if you do a couple of social drinks. At the minimum, medication plus alcohol can cause damage to your liver. The worst scenario is death.

If you think you have an addiction to alcohol, talk to your doctor about whether you need to withdraw from alcohol under medical supervision. With a doctor's help, withdrawal from alcohol is safer.

The danger in blending these deadly things is real.


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Posted For Seesan and Associates, LLC: Healthy Living

Focus To Become Healthy

More than two million people in the United States die each year from major complications from- Heart disease, cancer, stroke, tobacco use, unbalanced nutrition and a lack of physical activity.

How much control people do have to avoid from common causes of death? Many factors influence the condition of your health. You can control many but not all.

You can take steps toward healthy living in order to reduce your risk of serious diseases. For instance, eat a variety of healthy foods, be physically active, maintain healthy weight, control your sugar level, quit smoking, control your blood pressure and cholesterol, and make sure routinely to see your doctor for regular screening.

Cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke are among the nation's leading killers for both men and women among all groups of people. More than 70 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease including high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, and other conditions. It is estimated that 1.2 million Americans have a heart attack each year.

For long time, there was no US governmental funding targeted for improvement on heart disease and stroke. Recently they have come up with a funded program for building a healthier nation. This program is to establish national goals to reduce health threats, and a final goal of healthy people.

Meanwhile there are many steps you can take on a daily basis. Knowing the facts about nutrition can help you to make smart good choices. Look at the label and decide the type of nutrients you will be getting from them and decide if they are good for your health.

Pay attention to the serving size and how many servings are actually going to your stomach. No doubt, if you double the serving size that you are consuming, the double the calories and nutrients going into your body! The ingredients list will tell you how much added sugar is in it.

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Avoid food high in saturated fats, transfats, and cholesterol.
Select foods low in added sugars
Limit to 1 tsp of salt or sodium products.
Quit smoking
Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily. Walking will do it.




Wish you good health.

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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC: Healthy Living
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Health and Wellness: Watch For Your Weight!

by Seesan Ed

Wanting to eat is regulated by a phenomenally complicated set of overlapping feedback networks, involving a long list of hormones psychological factors as well as physiological factors. Many pharmaceutical companies have been trying to be the fist for developing that "magic pill" for weight loss breakthrough that they can introduce to the market.

The rate of obesity has been exploding! It is making healthcare in the US among the most expensive in the world. It has been figured out that 40 percent of Americans don’t have the habit of exercising in a regular basis.

Intake of food and reduction in any kind of physical activity have been the norm among people, consequently increased the rate of diseases- like diabetes, heart problems, cancer etc. It has been the cause of health crisis in the world. Sixty-five percent of adults and thirty-one percent of children in the United States are overweight.

There are undeniable evidences that obesity negatively affects not only the overall condition of our body but it has a major part in developing diseases. As a responsible individual, we should take necessary steps and precautions so ourselves and our loved ones will be in good health now and the years to come. Weight management is absolutely necessary. It is a must.

Watch what you are eating. Choose fresh vegetables and fruits, low fat low dressings, sauces and other food items in your daily diet. Spend time on educating yourself on nutrition and good healthy choices of food. Knowing what to do is a good starting point, also it will help you to pick the right/healthy food every day. Introduce and maintain healthy living to your lifestyle.

Most importantly, keeping your weight within the limits will have a great impact on your healthy living. A combination of good diet, exercise and a plan for maintaining ideal weight for your age is one form of taking care for yourself.

There's no lack of information on weight loss products and fat loss diet information on the internet - or in magazines and books – but I suggest you to do the research and pick the right weight loss program for you.

Whatever you plan to do with your healthy living ideas, please be sure to consult with your health professionals before you start anything. Good luck to your health.

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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC: Health and Wellness
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Feel Stressed?

Do you know what actually causes you to feel stressed?
Does it seem too easy for life to make you feel stressed lately? Yes we all are getting stressed too often. There's a biological reason why you feel this way. The biological process changes the way the nerves in your body respond to stress which causes your nerves to respond faster and more strongly to stress. In other words, it makes you feel stressed more easily, more quickly, more intensely.

The definition of stress is that it is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.

People feel less stress when they have the time, experience and resources to manage a situation. They stress level increases when they think they can't handle the demands put upon them. Feeling stress is a negative experience. It all depends a lot on people's perceptions of a situation and their real ability to cope with it.

The most important step is to Identify and Reduce the sources of stress in life. Try to calm the mind and encourage mental attitude.

When you are stressed out, follow the guidelines of positive stress management:-

Count to four as you inhale deeply then exhale on a count of four. Repeat this for 10-20 minutes in times of stress.

Tighten and relax muscles one at a time starting from head to toes. Do this 2 to 3 times. One thing you can do is squeeze hands for 5-8 sec, and then relax.

Think pleasant thoughts or praying to a higher being asking for Suggests to do this several minutes twice a day.

Take evening bath 15-20 minutes in warm water to relax the muscles.

Yoga or other Physical activity to relief stress. This can diminish tension, depression.

Get sleep 7 to 8 hours a day. This will recuperate and regenerate.

Avoid processed food and instead eat whole foods.

Avoid or reduce consumption of caffeine since it can disrupt sleep.

Avoid alcohol & tobacco.

Take your needed Vitamins every day.

Keep in mind though to find the ones that best fit you. These guidelines are not suggesting to stop taking your current medications unless approved by your physician.

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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC, Health and Wellness.

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Healthy Eating

Can you consistantly follow healthy eating? Some people seem to think that healthy eating is some kind of punishment. On the contrary, it's a pleasure!

Many people cannot enjoy Healthy eating, even though they want to maintain healthy body weight and live a healthy life. Some people think that following a healthy eating is a penalty for being healthy.

On the contrary you can find recipes for many delicious dishes that can be made with nutritious ingredients without excessive fat and sugar. You have to take initiative to find them. Internet is a good source for these. It is good idea to, whenever possible, choose a vegetarian meal. There are lots of different ingredients to choose from and numerous combinations are available.

When preparing food for yourself and your family, use your imagination. It's fun! You don't have to completely avoid meat. Eat what you enjoy, but keep in mind that we all need much more vegetables. We should try to see the vegetables not just as accompaniments but a major portion of your meal. Enjoy the food, see how it looks, feel the appetizing smell and taste of it.

When you are enjoying the food that you are eating, it is natural that you want it to last long, so take your time to enjoy every bite. Chew it well. When you eat slowly, the advantage is that you will realize when it is time to stop. You will know when you are full. This way you can avoid eating too much. One secret of healthy eating is to know when to stop eating when you feel content even if there is still food on your plate.

When you do your grocery shopping, try to get low fat or light products. Light and low fat food are not bad or boring as many people think they are. You'll be surprised. Along with this new change, begin taking some vitamin supplements. Because it doesn’t matter how hard your try, there will be something that can cause not getting sufficient nutrients into your body. This initial lifestyle change will be the beginning of a major achievement- your fist step to life long healthy eating!! Also, be sure to get quality MultiVitamins.

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Posted for Seesan and Associates, LLC, Health and Wellness.

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